Why Not Me? (7 page)

After hours of asking people this question, the results are in! Ninety-nine percent think Gisele wore it better. One percent say Mindy wore it better, and that was a blind woman who was looking for a bathroom.

I can actually save the magazine editors behind “Who Wore It Best?” some time. Here’s the answer 100 percent of the time: it’s always the more famous or classically beautiful woman!

I laugh thinking about if they ever tried to do “Who Wore It Best?” for men’s magazines. They wouldn’t, because no one would care. Men don’t care which men looked better in the same clothes because it’s so obviously a huge waste of time. It’s also why they don’t have astrology sections in men’s magazines.

Cool Women Want to Be My Best Friend

One very gratifying compliment I sometimes hear is that women want to be my best friend. This endlessly amuses my actual best friend, Jocelyn, because in her estimation I’m “a good friend, but not
that
great.” Here are the pros of being best friends with me: I am one of the best people you could take to your ex-boyfriend’s birthday party that you were dreading going to. I am always up for dessert. I am always up for skinny-dipping. If you want to talk to any hot guy at any party, I will so be that girl who gets drunk and introduces us, then inches away so you can roll your eyes about me and sell me out so you can bond with him. I will dance almost anywhere with anyone. I have one of the sickest closets of clothes, and I will let you borrow anything and spend hours doing fashion shows in my bedroom with you. There are no cons.

Change People’s Lives

The single best outcome of my (minor) fame is that women—usually young women who feel marginalized for some reason—come up to me, or write to me, to tell me I make them feel more “normal.” That is profoundly moving to me. I’m not saying I’m some kind of pioneer here, like, Indian Dorothy Dandridge or whoever, but I love that. I’m a role model now. It makes all the stuff I can’t do anymore completely worth it. It’s actually the way that my (minor) fame has changed me the most. I want to be a better person because I don’t want to disappoint those girls. I stop and think about my actions more. I tip great, I try not to swear too much, and I remember to thank people and be grateful. And all that stuff I do to “appear” better has actually made me a better person. I wish I had always acted like I was a little bit famous.

¹
Jealous, haters?

THINGS TO BRING TO MY DINNER PARTY

I
F I HOST
a dinner party at my house that you are invited to, then first of all: congratulations! You are living in a thrilling science-fiction world where robots probably walk among humans as equals, and also, I know how to cook.

I spent a great deal of my youth fantasizing about entertaining. In my early twenties I would spend hours poring over cookbooks at the Seventh Avenue Barnes & Noble in Park Slope, planning elaborate parties that I would throw when I was older and had money. Now I am older and have money, but I almost never entertain. I have yet to throw my
Great Gatsby
–themed Super Bowl viewing party, but when I do, it will be a big hit, as will be my Daisy Buchanan slow-cooker chicken enchiladas.

It is more than ten years later and, in some ways, I am the person I hoped I’d turn out to be when I was twenty-three. I mean, I hoped I would be married to a Laker and have an Oscar and an ass that doesn’t quit, but I’m doing pretty well. I do not, however, throw nearly enough dinner parties. But if I ever do, you will
never
be asked to bring anything. I believe the potluck tradition of entertaining is the equivalent of a teenage boy wanting to have sex with his girlfriend but who is too scared to go to CVS to buy condoms. If you can’t handle providing all the courses for your dinner party, you can’t handle the hosting duties of a dinner party.

However, if you
feel like
bringing the following non-food items, boy, will you be my favorite guest. Here’s what I suggest you bring:

A great story about a near-death experience.
Did you ever get mugged at gunpoint on the subway late at night? Did you ever almost fall over the ledge of the Grand Canyon Skywalk? Did you ever have dinner at a restaurant the same night a serial murderer also ate there? Are you a ghost? Tell that story, please!

A great story about a scandalous celebrity experience.
Did you ever hook up with Jimmy Fallon before he was famous? And was he into something in bed that would surprise and titillate us? Oh my! Please go on!

My mail from my mailbox.
Thanks, bud. Just leave it on the counter. You’re a good friend.

An old picture of us you found.

We looked like that in college? Ahhh, we were so weird!

An old picture of Colin Firth you found.

Oh là là.
No need for dessert, am I right? (Don’t worry, there’s obviously also dessert.)

A new kind of hot sauce you want to introduce me to.
I eat hot sauce on approximately 70 percent of my meals. Learning about new hot sauces is the least expensive way to improve my quality of life. Remember when I tried Sambal Oelek and I wouldn’t shut up about it? This is a very thoughtful gift that shows a deep understanding of your hostess.

Your ukulele to play a song after dinner.
Classic tunes only, like “Over the Rainbow,” or songs that would sound funny on the uke, like Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me.” No original music allowed! You know I can’t stand original music! Please stick to the hits. This is a celebratory event, not an open mike night at the Campus Events Hall.

An enormous vintage diamond engagement ring you are giving to me because you are going to announce at dinner that I am yours.
I can’t believe it! I’m being proposed to at my own fussy dinner party even though I had all these irritating restrictions! I’m the luckiest girl on earth!

A huge appetite and a cheerful tolerance for solid B-minus cooking.
Just a friendly reminder: I truly cannot cook.

PLAYER

I
WAS AT A
friend’s birthday party at one of those bars in downtown L.A. where the cocktail waitresses have to dress up like Sally Bowles and take your drink orders in character. I was twenty-five and pretending to like the taste of absinthe. I had just been dumped by Nate, a guy I’d dated briefly. Nate was a comedy writer I had met at the gym. Every week or so he would wander over while I was on the elliptical machine and make small talk. Well, small talk for a comedy writer, which meant asking me nervously about some perceived environmental hazard at our gym. Once he asked if I thought there was asbestos coming out of the air-conditioner duct. Another time if the towels smelled like mildew. Every time, I told him no. I never think environmental hazards are going to kill me. I only think serial killers are.

After months of thinking he was simply a friendly hypochondriac whose neuroses extended to bothering strangers while they did cardio, Nate asked me out. He turned out to be cooler than I thought, and I was impressed by his opinions about movies and music: he liked nothing unless he knew someone personally involved (I was twenty-five, this was a cool attitude to have then). But after two months of dating, he stopped calling me. Perhaps it was because I was never as alarmed about our health safety as he was; maybe it was because it was clear I wasn’t going to have sex for months and months (again, I was twenty-five); maybe he just thought I was lame. I will never know. It surprisingly hurt my feelings, because I made the mistake of talking about him excitedly to my friends, and then it was over.

So it was not a great night at this Sally Bowles bar. It was a birthday party for a friend of a friend, but the first friend ended up not being able to go, so I was stuck with a room full of strangers. I could’ve bailed, but I was feeling a little lonely and therefore susceptible to a naïve spurt of positivity where I convinced myself:
Who cares if you don’t know anyone? That’s the only way to
meet
someone!

Of course, Nate was there, and he was making animated chitchat across the bar with a briefcase model from
Deal or No Deal
. She didn’t have her briefcase with her or anything, but people kept marveling about it. Something about having the prop of a briefcase made this model go from simply “hot” to “hot and interesting.” It was like the briefcases were fooling people into thinking all these models were not human display cases but in fact accomplished businesswomen. I was wearing a black pinafore-style dress with a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath, which, when I was getting dressed at home, seemed very stylish and French. But suddenly, in the face of the unabashed hotness of a
Deal or No Deal
girl, I felt like a middle-aged au pair for a family in the Pacific Palisades. I was nursing an absinthe because, though I loathe any alcoholic drink that isn’t brimming with maraschino cherries, this was the specialty drink of the venue, and I was in the kind of mood where I desperately wanted to fit in.