“He looks like the kind of guy that could sit on a toilet for hours,” she whispered.

“What?” I moved my gaze from her face to that of Jay McInerney’s. Up there, seated on the dais with Candace Bushnell, poised to read erotic passages from his novels, he looked more wizened and worn than his crisp prose and youthful witticisms betray. He sipped his vodka drink and leafed through his books and those of Bret Easton Ellis, never letting a wry smile leave his face. That’s it—he looked naughty. Jay loves the stage and, to my eyes, looked far more comfortable there than he would on any toilet.

“Can’t you just see him with the ‘Times’ splayed out, a sports magazine or two by his feet occupying a bathroom for at least 90 minutes?”

Hmmm, Jay in a night shirt with his boxers down around his ankles… not so sure. But, we all know that he can do no wrong in my eyes. I’ll always think of him as the enfant terrible of the “Odeon” and its surrounding territory. All he needs is a good farm girl to make an honest man out of him. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

“And then his wet fingers parted her… plunging inside, he… she fell off him…” Jay spoke into the microphone with obvious pleasure, hoping to offend someone, anyone. But, of course, the New York literati, socialite crowd found it all to be fabulous. Everyone gulped their drinks and laughed.

Finally, at the witching hour—the time when Fabian Basabe decides to sniff out a new venue—Jay walked toward me. I thrust my hand in his direction and took full advantage of the fact that I blocked the one major exit way.

“Mr. McInerney, I’m a huge fan. I carry “Bright Lights” and the “Last of the Savages” with me at all times. And I…”

So I got a little carried away. But he was kind and listened and talked books and, unlike so many of the men I’ve met in the city, asked about me. Sure, his vowels were a bit curious-sounding but every icon has his hiccup.

“You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute,” McInerney wrote in “Bright Lights, Big City.” And I’m the kind of gal that believes miracles happen all the time. Here’s to Tuesday night, vodka cocktails and conversation with Jay.

Oh, and I didn’t see him leave the room once to use the bathroom.

I ate lobster before I could pronounce it. I planned the family’s southern road trips around food exits (peaches, pecans, turkey farms). Summers in Europe were more about markets, vineyards and specialty food stores than museums.

And then I met my Chef…

Y’all know I’m an hopeless foodie but I bet you had no idea this mild obsession began at such a young age. Check out Bella magazine’s, “From Southern Belle to Hostess Diva” for embarassing tidbits about my childhood (Mamma does an impersonation of me before I could pronounce my “r’s”–thanks Mom) and an inside peak into my cooking/entertaining guide, “Fresh Affairs.”

I think Mamma did me in when she packed pate’ de foie gras for our road trip to Disney World…

A slow day over at “Gawker…” So slow, in fact, they had the column space to make me an “item” and dig up a 2 year-old snapshot of me from the National Book Critics Circle Award party. I prefer last night’s picture…My forehead is big and beautiful, isn’t it?

 Oh, and for those of you that weren’t aware, Ms. Allison and I have been annoited the “Betty & Veronica” of media parties…

I love Ellen Barkin and that brash, soulful, sexy, more-than-a-little-tough thing she does on the big screen. “Sea of Love” convinced me to put away the altar girl robes for a spell and invest in a slinky black number and a passable set of highlights—Mr. Pacino, are you out there? Time for our close-up. But it was this October when she unceremoniously dumped $15 million of wedding baubles— and any lingering sentiments for ex-husband Ronald Perelman—on the Christie’s auction block that I became mildly obsessed with Ms. Barkin and her bravado. The “purging of the [Perelman] union” was one heck of a move. Brassy dame. [End scene.]

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Off the silver screen and somewhere on Lafayette Street, I fielded the aforementioned line from the ex Mr. Barkin—corporate raider, billionaire and blonde aficionado. Ronnie (this is my site, I’ll call him what I please) smelled vaguely of tea tree oil and menthol; his hat was the orange of a traffic cop’s vest and his line of vision met my décolletage straight on.

“Pardon? Oh, no, I don’t think that we’ve ever met.” Original, I know. Not to worry. I followed that line of vanilla with a request for one of those adorable mini bottles of “Moet.” We were standing at the bar of the “Spy” magazine book launch party, after all. A girl needs something to occupy her nervous fingers. But before I could wrangle my bottle of bubbly, a photographer came over to take our picture—me, Ronnie and my favorite sex columnist, Julia Allison. Such a happy–ridiculously mismatched– trio.

Within the next two minutes and with the aplomb of, well, Ronald Perelman, he informed me of his profession—“CEO and chairman of the board of ‘Revlon’”—and his religion, “I’m Jewish, you?”

My Lord, this was the most straightforward Manhattan bar pick-up transaction that I had ever experienced! Was this how the media elite operated? I had just sipped a drink next to Anna Wintour, spoken with Kurt Andersen, admired the coiffes of Graydon Carter and Harvey Weinstein… Clearly I was way out of my league.

Ronnie and I parted ways and I wondered what it would feel like to wrestle a fifteen carat diamond over the ring finger of my left hand. Pretty uncomfortable, huh?

I’m leaving the city. Just for a spell. I need an undefined number of days (months if I had it my way) to see the last colored leaves cling to their branches, to look out at an ocean that I rarely see (except when I’m flying ‘coach’ class), to breath and not smell ambition and trash.

This year has been hard. New York is hard. You think that if you stay in the city just a little bit longer, you’ll crack the code. So I’ve stayed and I’ve stayed and I haven’t taken trips, like the smart people, to warmer climates, to undiscovered pockets of pristine countries. I haven’t even seen my beautiful niece. She’s turning into a little person, wearing cowboy hats, eating avocadoes—I’ve missed all that. Instead, I’ve sat at my small kitchen table, stared through the burglar bars on my window and tried to write a book. There have been too many dinners out and emotions kept in. I walk the same path to Union Square and back and forget about Carnegie Hill, the Boat Basin and museums where I can lose myself and the minutiae that crowd my everyday thoughts. I’ve forgotten the rest of the world.

The ‘even’ years have always been good to me. Age 22, 24… and then, age 26 came along. My grandfather died. It was the first month of the year. I should have just given up then, crawled into bed and slept for eleven months. Maybe I could have asked my sweet mother to wake me up with a bowl of black-eyed peas (good luck down South) on New Year’s Day, 2007. But, of course, I didn’t do that. My grandfather was dead and I tried to compress my sadness—the black hole, the grief, the despondency—into a week of ceremonies and dinners. I nodded my head and smiled and everyone was really very lovely. I was cured. Twenty-six was going to be wonderful.

Ah, yes, but I had forgotten that the promise of Pappy (my grandfather) carried me through so many of my New York days. He was my fairytale, the guarantee that all was well, the assurance that men—or even just people—like him existed. And then he died and the dream went along with him.

I’ll be back soon, fresh and new and with a little faith restored (let’s hope so, anyway)…