That's me.

Last Friday night out was one of "those" nights. I fell asleep in at least two of the four bars that we hit, so the night reads like a series of snapshots – not because I was blacking out, but because I was passing out. It had been a very long week. So long, in fact, that I'm posting this up almost a week late.

Flash!

I get out of work later than I'd planned, which has me frazzled because Jackie's cell phone is switched off, she's sitting alone at Pat O'Brien's on the Upper East Side, and Marta is also running late. Jackie's gonna think we ditched her, I fret.

I'm so worried that I actually decide to throw my money away on a cab, so I'll be fifteen minutes late as opposed to thirty. Waiting in line for one in front of Penn Station, however, things go irritatingly awry when a man and a cabbie get into a fight in the street over two f*cking dollars. That backs everyone up, and of course, tourists in New York are like cattle, and instead of just walking past the cop (who had previously been placing people into cars and who was now breaking up the fight) and just getting into cabs themselves, they stand there stupidly waiting for someone to help them. I politely suggest that they move on down and grab one of the half-dozen cabs idling curbside, but they blink at me, clutching their suitcases, and explain they want to be told what to do. It's people like this who keep Bush in the White House.

Finally, an irritated handful of seasoned pros and I walk past the luggage-clutchers and file into cars ourselves. However, I make the grave mistake of cheerfully conversing with my cab driver, who is also part of a small-time art museum in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he learns I'm in the press, he excitedly tells me all about this exhibit he does with his friends, where they collect rocks and "pieces" from famous landmarks around Manhattan; like a rock from the Flatiron Building. He gets so into the conversation that he takes his sweet time driving me uptown. He drives through Times Square. During rush hour. It takes me half an hour to get to POBs, after all, and when I do the hits just keep coming.

I get to the door the same time as some gawky-lookin kid. I'm fishing for my ID and some money, when the bouncer takes the kid's ID, looks at it, and stares the kid down. "This is a fake Jersey license," he tells him. Sucks to be you, I think, finding my own ID and a twenty. I hand the twenty to the bouncer, who takes it, but he's still looking at the kid.

"Er, oh. It is?" the kid asks. Idiot.

"Yeah, it is," the bouncer says, and hands me back five dollars.

Um, the cover is five bucks; I'd handed him a twenty.

"I gave you a twenty," I tell him.

"Oh! Sorry!" he says, and hands me back the twenty.

I'm puzzled.

"Um, isn't the cover five?"

"Yeah, but your friend can't come in."

I look at the Stridex-ad with the fake ID and (mean, I know, and I'm really sorry) say "What?! I don't know him!" The bouncer, embarrassed, goes, "Oh, oh, sorry. I thought you were together," and takes my twenty back and hands me three fives. Glaring at them both, I go inside. Incompetence comes in threes, it seems, whenever you're late for something.

Once I finally get inside, I see Jackie's face, which, having waited alone for almost 45 minutes, is indescribable. I immediately buy a round.

Flash!

I'm a mite drunk at Jake's Dilemma on the Upper West Side, now, after having pre-gamed with friends at POB's a few hours prior. By friends, of course, I mean my rugby teammates, because my NYU crew has apparently decided to cut me out, lately. I know that thinking such things is ridiculous; we're all adjusting to new work schedules, some of us are moving, etc – but it does seem that any gatherings planned lately just don't garner the same enthusiastic response they once did. Or, I'm not invited. Except for dear Erin Coe chummily downing a couple of pints, and a few very nice congratulatory emails and text messages, no one from NYU came out to celebrate the publication of my first real story in the paper. Pity.

POB's was a lot of fun, and definitely greased the wheels for the rest of the night's debauchery.

Flash!

As I'd started saying, I'm a mite drunk at Jake's Dilemma on the UWS after having pre-gamed with friends at POB's for a few hours prior. I'm starving; the News was so busy today that I didn't eat lunch (as has been the case most of the week.) My body is running on three cups of coffee and a bagel. And beer. Lots of beer. I tell Marta, Gin, and Maria, ruggers all, that I'm just getting a slice up the street. I end up disappearing for 45 minutes. I get an elaborate piece of pizza with chicken on top, as well as garlic knots. My mouth will retain a slightly nauseating taste of garlic for the rest of the night and well into the next day. When I return to Jake's, we're leaving. Everyone wants to know where the hell I've been.

Flash!

The next bar is nameless. We're sitting at a wooden table sharing a giant margarita. It's in a huge goblet, and a rubber toy alligator is floating in it. We sit around this thing like a foursome around a hookah, and each take a straw and suck it down. It's definitely after midnight, and I definitely haven't been up this late all week; my big breakout story for the News was covering the possible closing of 14 Catholic schools across the city and northern suburbs. As former-Blooddite, current-fellow-intern Jenny Clevstrom pointed out, I worked harder on this story than I ever did on anything at NYU. I was up at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday to hop on a subway at 6:30 to be up in the Bronx at 7:30 to stand in the cold for two hours trying to get parents to go on the record about how they feel about possibly losing their cherished parishes and elementary schools before returning downtown for a full eight-hour workday. After two hours in the frigid, damp air, only one mother would go on the record. On returning back down to HQ by 10:15 a.m., I'm told, of course, that this is not enough, so I have to go back out. I punch out an interview for our wedding column over the phone first, try to work on the daily calendar, get slapped with a second assignment to work on while I'm back out covering Catholic schools, still need to work on the weekend hot list as well as train to assist one of the columnists all next week while his assistant is on vacation, am ready to cry because I cannot get all of this DONE, until I meet the photographer that I'm working with this afternoon, and I'm happy because he's friendly (and cute.) and used to live in Atlanta, so that ends up working out well. I survive that day, and the day after, and the day after, as we're wont to do, but those days involve me getting up between five and five thirty and not getting home until after eight or so, eating lunch (a packed sandwich) at my desk when I do eat lunch at all, and practically main-lining coffee. Hence, I pass out at the bar with my alligator and empty margarita glass, and wake to see the bouncer is kicking us out. He points to me, "This one is Done," and also to Ginessa, who fell down while she was dancing. She tries to convince him that she "just slipped," but he cuts us off and sends us out. I keep the alligator, however; he's currently rocking out on my bookshelf.

Flash!

Bar Four. I promptly fall asleep at our table. Wake up to use the ladies' room, and come out to see blood on the floor. The blood is following Marta. I point to the tracks, and other people are staring at us like we're ... well ... weird. That's something I've learned about New York City – the longer you live here, the more you become one of those people that you used to be afraid of.

Gin gets some napkins and bandages Marta's feet; I go back to sleep. When I wake up, another bouncer is asking us to leave. The girls try to convince me to hop into the cab with them to Penn Station and take a train back to Long Island. I just want my own bed, though. Plus, LIRR tix are expensive, and spending money is a luxury that I can't afford ... if that makes any sense. I start walking toward the subway instead, already trying to remember whose foot was bleeding. Marta's? Ginessa's coworker? I'm grumpy about now having to take the subway – going from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, I'll have to ride allllll the way down to the end of the park, transfer to a subway going across town, then transfer again to a train going allll the way back north. This time of night, I'm going to be waiting on each of those three subway platforms forever. So -

I cleverly decide to walk through Central Park, instead. It's about 2:30 a.m.

Flash!

I'm lost in Central Park, and my feet are killing me.

Thank god, I do not meet a single soul. Nobody! Not a bum on a bench, or a stray cat, or a duck. (Roommate-Martha tells me this is because there is a curfew, and no one is supposed to be in the park after midnight.) I stick to a main thoroughfare at first, hoping to shave a half hour off my trip home by just heading crosstown through the Park. But my mind wanders – it's dark, it's damp, the streetlamps each have a glittering corona due to the moisture in the air, and I hear one or two birds chirping, but I don't hear a single car. I have never felt such silence in Manhattan, or so much at peace. So, in my reverie, I don't realize the path I'm on stops going west-east, and instead curves and starts taking me south. I don't realize I'm actually walking down the length of the park, rather than across it, until I see the twin peaks of whatever that famous hotel is on the west side, and learn I've just wasted 20 minutes walking even farther away from home than I was when I started. I put the hotel at my back and walk away from it, almost due East. Every time a path I'm on starts looping, I check to make sure the hotel is still behind me. Eventually I emerge from the Park, victorious, and find I'm all the way down in the East 60s. Dammit. I still have a ways to go. I walk home, afraid I’ll fall asleep if I sit in the subway station, and not having the cash to hail a cab. By the time I do make it home, the coffee vendor is already setting up on our corner, and the neighborhood is poised to come alive. I drag myself up the five flights of stars and collapse on my bed, exhausted. It's going on 4 a.m. I hear the first of the rain drops start to fall.

Flash!

Wake up, it's almost noon; have not slept this late in ... a month?
The first thing I do, before I even brush my teeth, is slip on my sneaks, run to the bodega on the corner, and buy two copies of the paper. It's pouring, the sky is gray, I wouldn’t go running in this even if my legs and feet weren't killing me from my adventure the evening before, but inclement weather and hangovers cannot quell my ego. There's my story on page 42. Almost an entire page, and in color, and with my full name in black caps right beneath the headline – a real, honest-to-god byline – in straight-up, bold-faced type as opposed to tiny script stamped at the story's end, lost in the grafs. This is the big league, kids. It looks great. I call Mom, I call Grandma.

The rain falls relentlessly all morning and early afternoon, but I duck out to Barnes & Noble to treat myself to two books (and a cookie) in celebration of being published. I spend the afternoon on the couch reading, dozing, waking and reading, with the cat purring against my stomach. Spend a good two hours catching up with Katt over the phone, and curl up on the couch with my book and a blanket, actually alone in the apartment for the first time all week, with a cup of warmed milk, the TV droning in the background, and my neighbors yelling at each other in Spanish through the thin, thin walls.

It's a satisfying sort of life, indeed.