GO TO A party on a Saturday night where you know no one. Then, stand alone, leaning against a wall trying to look nonchalant.

Is there any better way to bring on a bout of self-loathing? –But feeling bad about yourself is what tonight is all about. The editors of To-Do List magazine are throwing a pity party at Espresso Bravo Café in the Mission to celebrate their new issue, whose theme is "self-loathing: a resistance manual." No outrageous costumes, stupid hats, or phony merriment required, just bring your insecurities and self-doubts, as if you ever go anywhere without them!

Just looking around, you'd never know you were in a den of closet self-loathers. Most of the partygoers are women in their 20s whose animated banter makes them appear happy-go-lucky enough, even with the DJ blasting the Smiths. One group stages a mini debate: Is self-loathing necessary for artistic greatness? Isn't that just what all your friends back home think people in San Francisco talk about in cafés?

Over at the self help-book swap table, you're invited to discard a life instruction manual you've already mastered and pick up a new one. One book advises that hypnotherapy is the key to sexual satisfaction. Translation: Put your lover in a trance to get what you want in bed.

But that's not the book that I intend to take home. I squirrel away the 1987 paperback edition of How to Marry the Man of Your Choice, by Margaret Kent. A previous reader has underlined all the adjectives in the following passage in purple pen: "Tell your man that he is the most intelligent, most creative, most precious, most unusual, most interesting, most fun, most ambitious person you know."

It's touching, really. Did that studious reader marry the man of her dreams? Is she somewhere right now drowning him in transparent flattery? Or did she give the book away in disgust? It's all a mystery. Heartening thought: perhaps a glimpse into another person's pathetic life is all the treatment that's needed for self-loathing.

Then a visit to the to-do-list shrine sends me back to pondering my own shortcomings. The shrine is a bulletin board where partygoers post their to-do lists. "Lists are also self-loathing documents," says Sasha Cagen, the magazine's publisher and editor. "They're documents of the things that we have to remind ourselves to do that don't come naturally to us, the things we want to change and improve."

Tacked on the shrine, a yellow Post-it note reveals that on a recent Saturday someone remembered to "kiss boyfriend" and "talk @ length w/Kevin." Those two to-do items are crossed out. But, apparently, she didn't get around to "Petco shopping." Reading these lists feels vaguely dirty and thrilling, even though they are offered up for voyeuristic consumption. It's like going through a stranger's trash for telling scraps about her life.

The trouble at the shrine starts when I admit that I don't write to-do lists. This is apparently sacrilegious. I'm certifiably listless.

"How does your laundry get done?" asks an incredulous, bespeckled woman.

"Uh. It doesn't. I guess," I feign meekly. Her to-do list proudly posted on the bulletin board before us documents her superior determination and resolve.

"OK, how about New Year's resolutions?" Uh oh. She's just warming up.

"No way! Those are the worst," I say.

Now she's really had it. "Do you have any goals in life?" sputters this woman who does not even know my first name.

Goal no. 1: Get out of this conversation.

Now seems like a good time to consult the self-loathing resistance manual. Alone with my 16 ounces of coffee, I settle into a corner table with To-Do List.

One highlight of this issue: an interview with a 37-year-old woman who decides to marry herself. The bride even gets down on one knee on her bathroom floor to propose. A few questions the story does not answer: How exactly did she spend her wedding night? Did she wear special lingerie just for the occasion? Did she act all demure?

In the magazine this bride's grand matrimonial gesture is treated as a heroic act of self-love to fight feelings of self-loathing about not yet having found a mate. (But after her wedding to herself she ends up marrying a man. Bigamist!)

Yet, I can't help thinking of the bride-of-herself as Narcissus staring into his pool. It's intoxicating. Me. Me. Me. Isn't that what all this self-loathing is about? And is the flip side, such rank self-love, really any more flattering?