Last night a friend took me to a wine bar. I enjoy wine but my knowledge of it is minimal, and correcting this state of ignorance isn't exactly high on my list of personal goals. Wait, do I even have a list of personal goals? Making one should probably go on the list, near the top. Anyway, I had a good time regardless. He tried to teach me some basics and we each had several glasses, but then I got so hammered I forgot everything. This was a night when forgetting everything was just what I needed, as earlier in the day I'd been in the grip of an upsetting emotional event triggered by a succinct two-word email.

Sitting in this stylish but unpretentious wine bar, I found myself gorging on pita and baba ganoush, stuffing my face and making deliriously manic conversation with accompanying dramatic gestures. I am one of those people who flee scenes of emotional devastation by using inane nonstop chatter as a desperate drill to bore a passage into some adjacent chamber of calmness. The problem is that as these smoldering crash sites multiply in one's life there are fewer and fewer untouched mental spaces to which one can escape, the whole landscape looks like the scorched earth of a battlefield.

As usual, I didn't realize how smashed I was till I stood up to go to the bathroom. I always hum Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk" when I embark on such weaving personal journeys in bars. In the bathroom I heard Judy Garland's comforting voice. There was a tiny pointless mirror on the wall next to the toilet, and as I stood there peeing I kept glancing at my reflection in an attempt to recognize myself. No luck, but there was mango-scented hand cream available, which made everything better.