The Perfect Dodge

I was invited to a party tonight. It promises to be a good one; it’s the 30th birthday of a friend who has been around for a while, and who as a result has plenty of people to invite to a shindig like this one. It’s at a shiny, popular bar somewhere in the center of the city.

I’m not going to go. It’s just not the right day for alcohol, noise, and forced gaiety. As the appointed hour approaches, I find myself sliding in the opposite direction, toward quiet introspection and the gentle melancholy that sometimes heralds better writing. Already I have a short warm-up mood piece I quite like.

Me blowing off a party is hardly noteworthy, but I’m pretty proud of the way I weaseled out of this one. I sent the hostess a message saying, “Would you forgive me for not coming to your party if I bought you lunch next week?” I explained that I was in a write-sad-things sort of groove.

“Perfectly understandable,” she wrote back.

So now I’m off the hook for tonight and I’m meeting a pretty woman for lunch on Monday. That worked out pretty well, I think.

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