Dan's Papers - July 27, 2007 - Twentysomething... with David Lion Rattiner

"Hey David how are you? It is so great to see you, it has been such a long time!" said the woman at a chic party in East Hampton.

"Holy cow! It's great to see you too! How are you?"

"I'm doing good, enjoying life out here."

"That's awesome, me too."

What the hell is wrong with me? I have absolutely no idea who this person I'm talking to is. She seems vaguely familiar, but to be honest, if my life was on the line, I would not be able to conjure up any kind of memory of what her name is or where we know each other. And yet, here I am, doing everything I can to not let on that I not only don't know her name, but really am not sure if we've ever actually met.

In this situation, I tend to do one of three things. The first thing I do is nod and keep quiet and pray to God that it won't be necessary to use this persons name throughout the entire conversation. The second thing I do is begin to pray to God that this person is not going to be the type of person that has the ability to tell by my facial expressions (which I do my best to control) that I have no idea what her name is, then asks directly if I remember her name and then gets angry at the fact that I don't remember her name. The third thing I do is that I pray that they will recognize the possibility that I don't know their name, and then just say their name in an odd way to avoid embarrassment on my behalf because they care about me and know me well enough to know that I am a complete idiot.

Of course, at these fancy parties, life is never easy.

"Yo Dave what's going on?"

"Oh hey Colin what's up dude?"

"Nothing much, just hanging out."

Life likes to embarrass you I think. Of course, at this point, the three of us are standing in a circle and this woman is obviously not the type of person that can tell I don't remember her name and will introduce herself to avoid my embarrassment and she is also not interested in publicly humiliating me. No, she is the very rare type of person who is a tester. A tester waits for you to introduce her to a friend to the point of discomfort, then finally, "Hi I'm Colin, Dave's old friend, it's nice to meet you."

"Hi Colin, nice to meet you too."

"What a great day," I said.

"Yes it sure was. Really great to see you again David Rattiner."

She was rubbing it in, doing a double verification on my inability to say her name. I'm not going to take this! I'm going to be a man about it and come clean, what could be the harm in that? "It was so great to see you again, feel free to shoot me an e-mail sometime. I've got to run to the bathroom. Excuse me."

I am such a spineless piece of foot lint. I ran off towards the bathroom with my tail between my legs. Then hid for about ten minutes like a pathetic wimp in high school that can't handle lunch table politics and chooses to eat a lousy peanut butter and jelly sandwich crying to himself. Of course, that NEVER happened to me in high school; let's just say I don't enjoy peanut butter without getting depressed these days.

After doing a fake pee in the stall, which can be stressful, I headed back out to the party and hit bar. "I'll take a vodka, on the rocks, without the vodka and a little bit of Malibu rum," I said.