I was able to find a taxi driver that we had to pay $1600 EACH to for a quick escape out of Lebanon. Paris kept wanting to stop to shop, however. Finally I gave up and slipped her (another) Xanax after the third time she screamed, “STOP!” outside yet another boutique that had been bombed. “Paris, it’s burning,” I said. Her reply? “In a war zone you can get crazy good deals on couture!”

While we’re on that topic of flying covertly into a war torn country, risking your life to track down a friend, and finally rescuing your friend and expecting at least a thank you, can I just say that Paris Hilton is a BFFW – a Best Friends Forever WHORE! The whole time on the private jet back, she talked on the SkyPhone to You Know Who. And she actually asked me if I’d go get her some warm peanuts from the galley. And a diet coke. She can be so insensitive sometimes. So I slipped her another Xanax and called it even.

Looking back I feel so foolish – all the “friends” around her who she just burns through like Whitney on a bender. I guess I was blinded by happiness … I thought I really was her BFF. Now I’m just another person in the background of some spontaneous porn video or lewd party photo. But I’m glad I got her back home to her real friends safely, and that makes me a better friend than she’ll ever be or ever have again.

I’m just another name programmed on her speed dial, sure to disappear the next time she loses her SideKick.

But back to the Missing PH: We were having lunch at Fred Segal, talking really loud and dropping names, hoping someone would buy us more champagne, when she gets this page and said she got invited to jet-set to some country “she didn’t know how to pronounce” (god, yeah, that narrows it down, PH), and that they had a bulldog who’s ready for the open bar. “Must be the name of the club or a secret pass phrase.”, says the wise PH with humble certainty – her parents certainly synergized up on the “gene” ladder. An open bar for Paris is like pointing out a lonely, rich Filipino businessman to a hooker – she just can’t say no to a good time! I dropped my napkin and by the time I picked it off the floor and looked back up, she was gone, leaving just a little pink butterfly barrette spinning in mid-air like when the witch in Bugs Bunny would zip way very quickly and leave that black … bent … thing … spinning in the air. She was gone that fast!

I only just recently became concerned this evening, however, because when I went to check out the New York Times to see if they had kept their promise to use my pen name and not my real name in the “What’s Up Slut?” article, (which really is a true article title!!!!) written mostly by my gal-pal Maureen Dowd, who I really really admire, and it made me think of Paris. The next article down I see “Hezbullah: We’re Ready for Open War” and there’s a little voice in the back of the back of my head telling the back of my head something is wrong. “Oh dear.”

Please, if you see Paris, do tell her there’s no open bar, that there’s no bar at all. And frankly there’s nothing funny about war like this, except when you imagine a perpetually drunk, rich, white pampered heiress wandering around the crumbling sidestreets of a little Middle Eastern town, all puffy-faced from the vengeful sun, her little doggie days-dead in her purse from dehydration, asking anyone who will listen if they’ve seen “His Bulldog”, the new, hot club that opened up somewhere near … somewhere, “‘Cuz she’s on the guestlist, she’s on the fucking guest list, slut!

It’s not her fault, really. Her parents did the best they could with what they had to work with. All the private nannies, the tutors, the swiss boarding school (PH calls it a BOREDing school), the plastic surgery to try to correct her Dougherty Syndrome (one eye lower than the other, named after the foundation Shannon Dougherty started to combat this silent but deadly career killer) … nothing seemed to make PH any smarter.

So there we are, two best friends, lying in bed eating popcorn and sharing a tear over Pretty Woman (PH really gets it … more than anyone will never know!!!) and I made a joke about PH‘s new meds and how now I’m going to call her PH Balanced. She laughed really hard and vodka came out her nose, and I don’t even think she got the science reference. Oh well. That’s what best friends are for – to love and hug and tease! Proof: I’ve included a picture from a time when PH played a little joke on ME, going out in public with my name on her shirt! I love that she wore those hideous UGG boots she bought on eBay and used the wrong form of “your”. I think she did that on purpose because she knows I’m “grammar fragile.” Maybe secretly, deep deep deep (like really really deep) down, she’s smarter than we all could ever imagine.