The Best Night

OMG. I just had the best night. I go to my friend Ed's 40th birthday. And I say friend because he is, but we only met once a few months ago at an Anti-violence fundraiser.  (The pro-violence ones just gouge you at the bar, and the takeaway bags are shite.)  Anyway, he is the cousin of a good friend of mine and it turns out he is an animation writer (Emmy nominated) and we know a lot of people in common including his agent. Today he got off a cruise ship with his partner and his parents and then he has this party at a restaurant tonight which I missed but I came for the after party at their apartment (they are bi-coastal) and there is a huge grand piano in this place and loads of people and it is not huge, but it is just a blast. I knew only Jorge, his partne, and Jeff. Jorge is a terrific host and my seltzer water is never low in the glass.  We all get to talking and one of their friends has this condition where she can't forget anything. She remembers everything!  Like the weather on June 7, 1983.  She is going to be on 60 Minutes next month with 4 other people who have this "condition" (including Marylou Henner) and they are interviewed by Leslie Stahl.  Can't wait. She was so nice and patient and interesting.  Then a woman played this song that this guy sings about IKEA and her husband did voiceover work for Tippi Hedren and then we talked about speed dating and I explained how I met Jeff and about this small world story where his mother's best childhood friend was my mother's best high school friend.  There was this guy named Chance and I told him that my sister always wanted to name her son Chance, but when she grew up and had a son she named him Mitch.  He said Chance has been hard and he goes by his middle name David at restaurants because it is easier. And then I meet this woman who was in Alaska and Poland and is unemployed like me and we talk about spas in Arizona.  The two of us leave the party together and run into this poet Rives in the subway whom she knows and we talk about poetry and that he is big in the poetry world (who knew?! ) and  she was let go from TED and lives in Brooklyn and has no idea what she wants to do next, but she is funny as hell and pretty and I am convinced that she can do just about anything.  The we get to my stop and I leave.  Fin.