Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

THE STRANGER
A few months after moving to New York, I got the assignment that flew me to Paris. I was lying in
my bedroom in Brooklyn at 11 am, giving sleep a second chance. I had a pillow over my face to
block out the sunlight, and I must have looked so strange. Like someone trying to suffocate herself.
That’s when Zac called. “What are you doing on Friday? Do you want to go to Paris?”
I sat up so fast it startled the cat. “Are you fucking with me?” I asked, because fucking with people
was one of his specialties.
“I can find someone else if you don’t want to go,” he said. All casual.
“No, of course I can go. Yes. I’m going.”
I thought moments like this only happened in the movies. One minute, you are languishing in
Hangoverland. The next minute, the world’s greatest assignment is sitting in your lap.
Well, “world’s greatest assignment” might be a stretch. Zac was an editor for an in-flight
magazine, so it’s not like I was being cold-called by Esquire. The story I wrote would end up in the
mesh netting of an airline seat, nestled alongside SkyMall and laminated instructions on how to turn
your chair into a flotation device.
And the story itself was kind of silly. I was to interview the host of a popular reality dating show,
shooting its eighth season in Paris. It was odd that the magazine wanted to fly me across the Atlantic
to meet a guy whose claim to fame was the phrase “This is your final rose.” But when someone offers
to whisk you away to Europe on their dime, here is what you don’t do: Ask questions. I was a
freelance writer trying to make a living in New York City, for God’s sake. I would have written a
story for Downy Fabric Softener’s internal newsletter.
“I’m going to Paris,” I told the guys at the bodega where I bought cat food and smokes.
“Ooooh,” they said, which was exactly the right response.
After only three months in the city, I was dangerously low on funds. But the magazine had
authorized $1,000 spending money—a thousand dollars for two days!—which made me feel like I
was standing in one of those game-show booths where $20 bills swirl like a tornado around you.
I was nervous about the plane ride. I’m a clutcher of armrests, a spinner of catastrophes. I have
terrible control issues when it comes to letting someone pilot me across a vast and churning ocean. A
point arrives in every flight when I fight the urge to bolt into the aisle and scream, “We’re in the
clouds, people! This can’t last!” But I popped my sleeping pill and drank two vials of wine. Drinking
on a plane is a line-item veto in the “never drink alone” rule book. Everyone drinks alone on a plane.
We drink alone, together.
MY FIRST DAY in Paris went off without a hitch. I was staying at a hotel in the 14th arrondissement, in
a residential area on the Left Bank not far from Luxembourg Gardens. It was a nice place: a bright
foyer with high ceilings and marbled columns strung up with Christmas lights. The arrangements had
been made by the magazine. All I had to do was show up.