Hot Literati at The Box

Tonight I went to the box for the first time.

The first time I heard about the box was from a classmate in my eating club back in 2022 after they attended a party there with a former mayor, lots of models, and other A-list sorts.

That world felt so glamorous and aloof to me and a year later that same friend would bring me into their world here in New York and I would begin writing about clubbing online and begin accquiring an audience and something like momentum.

An open bar and lots of literary people, you know. And sitting there I had one of those moments where I realized that I was exactly where teenage me wanted to be, looking forward.

I'm grateful to have been there today, and not as an earlier version of myself because I would have been too green and insecure, wanting other people to think that I was cool or talented.

And now, not being quite as young or insecure, I told an editor who emphatically said hello, that I was simply there to "hang out."

I don't drink during the week. I'm straight-laced now, even though there was a time that I wasn't.

When I was 23 the founder of a tech company was trying to bring me into a throuple. He asked me what ideas "got me off" and I didn't know how to tell him that the real answer was pursuing my own success in life. Not in that grimey, step on people way, but in that midwestern, "God what am I here for" flavor.

I do this thing, I think, when I meet people. At a party, on a train, on the Internet, even during a brief call. Where, in the container of a single conversation, I want to give everything I can possibly give to someone, and the problem is that sometimes you meet people who will take it and more and more and more and then soon enough you're in a hotel in Euston and you don't understand why saying "I love you" felt like a kick to the gut.

Last night someone asked me what I was working on and I kept saying "Hot Literati," but then she made it clear that she meant "what are you writing," and it's sort of silly I guess because I have a full manuscript for a novel and a full outline and tens of thousands or words of a memoir and I guess the thing I need at this point is simply an agent to move the whole thing along.

But I've been learning how to code.

I met a writer and his wife last night, and she was brilliant. And I was happy that I was sober, even though I wouldn't have been if it were a Friday.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I always knew that I'd be the sort of person who would never forget how to touch their toes. And I'm happy that I'm not a partygirl anymore, even though I'm grateful to have been one at one point.

But when you lose someone you love so young, you really start to look toward settling down.

And that's what I want, I guess. To settle down and just write some things.

And to hang out.

Always.

xx

hailo