Party Girls
Gazing back into the brain to run fingers through the last few days, months, seasons, years that is a jar of overflowing memories always waiting to be refilled.
Sliding a dollar and a quarter to the cashier as he slides my coffee into my awaiting, cold fingers.
Typing MENstruating in my Notes app.
Putting library books on hold.
Remembering my umbrella and thinking I’m Ted every time I walk around Manhattan with it.
Catching all the flights, but never any feelings.
Craving a wild, chaotic night out.
Putting myself out there.
New conversations soaked in alcohol flowing with questions of where are you from, where did you go to college, how many siblings do you have.
Waking up in the middle of the night with horrible cramps leading me to stumble out of bed searching for the bottle of ibuprofen.
Thinking deep quotes are cheesy.
Looking forward to Tuesdays so I can watch the new How I Met Your Father episode.
Drinking two pornstar martinis on a date.
Facetiming friends.
Buying a bodega coffee and sandwich for lunch when I was shaking from a hangover.
Watching friends growing up.
Wishing I could keep my room cleaner.
Romanticizing dance floor makeouts when in reality they are soaked in beer, sweat, and hazy images.
Listening to Match Made in Manhattan episodes every Friday morning.
Reading How I Met Your Father Reddit threads.
Drunkenly passing out on my bed.
Becoming obsessed with the book A Career in Books by Kate Gavino and already looking forward to a reread.
Contemplating if I should start running again.
Jumping on the Emily Henry train and now looking forward to A Happy Place coming out.
Watching people light cigarettes on the street.
Going to the gym and disliking that I keep skipping abs.
Walks through Central Park.
A flicker of an excitement for summer inching closer.
Posting random photo dumps.
Writing, writing, and more writing.
Remembering to refill my water bottle.
Smudging my eyeliner.
Leaping on the subway seconds before they shut the doors.
Swiping on Bumble and liking on Hinge
Thoughts of why have I been going on all these dates? Maybe because it potentially can be fun, makes for a good story, and it adds to the plot.
Rereading Nothing I Wouldn’t Do for the fourth time.
A year and a half ago, I read Nothing I Wouldn’t Do by Sara-Ella Ozbek for the first time and since then, I have read it four times. I have never identified myself with a main character more than I have with Jax Levy, the protagonist of Nothing I Wouldn’t Do. When I first picked up the book at the Argyle Street Waterstones in Glasgow in the fall of 2021, I was struggling with an issue or issues that Jax was struggling with.
Jax starts the book as a twenty-eight year old who works at a magazine as an events coordinator, but is an aspiring journalist/writer and living in London with her best friend Clara in Clara’s family’s flat. She had a good group of friends who have become her ride or dies. The book goes through the last couple years of her twenties as her life unravels before her.
Jax and Clara are opposites as many best friends are. Jax views herself as the extroverted, career-striving, free-spirited party-girl. Jax thinks she always has to be on and the fun one in social settings. She feels responsible for keeping conversations going, prides herself on spending her twenties single, and fears the thought of spending a Friday night at home alone. Clara is more reserved, an introvert, over the going out scene, and has been in a relationship with for the previous two years.
Clara gets engaged to her fiancé Ed in the beginning of the book which leads Jax to spiral, and she reflects on how much Ed has changed Clara. She shows pictures to one of the characters Ned of Clara when they were at a music festival when they were twenty-five. In the picture, Clara is smoking a rolled-up cigarette and wearing an elaborate outfit. Neither things Jax thinks Clara would do now.
As I read the book for the first time, I was shocked by how much I related to Jax. Jax was determined to spend her twenties single, boozing, creating memories with her friends, and never down the opportunity for a party. I never wanted to be tied down in my twenties to a relationship, a career, a place, or anything. I wanted to be a free-spirited, nomadic girl who loved going out. Creating memories pours golden nectar into my cup as it does with Jax’s.
Both of Sara-Ella’s main characters in her books, Jax and Scarlett Willems (from her other amazing book The High Moments) are girls I would consider certified party girls. Both are trying to figure out how to conquer their dreams, careers, love lives, ever-changing relationships with friends, and their finances in the expensive city of London. Despite this, Jax and Scarlett are very different characters which you are probably familiar with if you’ve read the books. But both Jax and Scarlett have struggled with turning down the opportunity for a fun night out on the town dripped in booze, cigarettes, laughter, and drunk friends.
I used to never consider myself a party girl because of a trail of events from not drinking in high school to being called innocent my whole life to thinking I was an introvert to being a three season athlete in college, but still a scheduled wild night outs. Eventually, those things faded into the past, and as the years went on, I realized I wasn’t as introverted as I thought. I actually loved being around people. After I graduated college, I gained a lot of confidence in how I wanted to live my life which meant I was going to stay in contact with my amazing college friends and always be building a community around me wherever I was. I wasn’t scared to ask people to hangout or text them to see if they wanted to facetime anymore. I knew I wanted to be the girl who had plans on the weekend and made the most of my twenties in the way that best satisfied me. I knew I loved making memories with my friends whether it was getting sake poured in our mouths at hibachi restaurant, laughing at each other popping prosecco bottles, doing cartwheels on the sidewalk after we left the club, going on trips, having wine nights, or finding adrenaline in the search for finding greasy food to cure the drunken munchies.
Growing up, I never realized how youthful your twenties were. I didn’t know they could be full of spilling red wine on your friend’s shirt, drinking a can of cider as you got ready to go out, drinking too many vodka sodas, sticking straws into pornstar martini pitchers, dancing under the strobe lights, groaning as the lights come on at the club, wiping out up the stairs and spilling your coffee everywhere, kissing the wrong ten or twenty or more guys, hungover mornings, hangxiety ridden days, swiping on dating apps, joy pouring out of you as you dance on your dirty feet at your friends’ weddings, praying you did everything right at work that day, spending too much money on coffee, experimenting with different workouts, working a lot of odd jobs jobs until you find the right one, taking flights to your visit your family and friends, and never ever taking a day for granted. I didn’t know all that when I was an oblivious teenager. I didn’t know how much I would fall in love with life and never want to waste a moment, but eventually, I learned and didn’t want to miss any of it. I became a more extroverted version of myself while realizing I wanted more, and I searched for it until I found it. Which I guess in a way, I found myself being a party girl as Jax and Scarlett found themselves.
Once Clara gets engaged Jax is panicking that her friends are growing up without her. She knows Clara will soon move in with Ed leaving Jax down a roommate. Jax feels inadequate to her friends with her financial struggles, her toxic situationship, her lack of never being able to stick to anything, struggling with staying consistent with working out, or finding motivation to write. Things many twentysomethings can feel. As the book goes on to more spoilery parts, it delves deeper into friendships, friendship group dynamics, and how friendship change as you get older which is something that I’m sure many of us can relate too
My heart feels so deeply for Jax every time I read the book. Jax surprised herself as she went throughout life as I surprised myself finding I was more extroverted than I originally imagined. The story is a warm hug showing you are not alone in the isolating depths of growing up, getting older, trying to figure it out, and navigating all the different types of relationships in your twenties. If any of these topics interest you, I hundred percent recommend reading Nothing I Wouldn’t Do by Sara-Ella Ozbek. It showed and reminded me it’s okay not to have your life figured out. We all make mistakes and are trying our best.
Thank you Sara-Ella for writing such an amazing book.
