This week I had the pleasure of attending my second MOMA member affair, courtesy of my friend S., the member. There it was, the glorious open bar, and after we had guzzled our way through a few glasses of wine, we had perhaps less patience for art than usual. S. is less enthusiastic about modern and contemporary art, anyway, preferring the old stuff, and I mean old--classical, greco-roman. I luff contemporary art, but I was less thrilled about the pieces on display than about the Jack Daniels awaiting my return. The pieces that stood out to me the most (to my dismay) were photographs (by a British photographer) of street scenes in New Orleans. There was a photograph of a (seemingly) poor woman eating food out of a styrofoam container. A photograph of someone standing between a highway and a gas station, maybe, or maybe a fast food joint, or a Wal-Mart, I don't remember. The implicit commentary seemed stale, and the photographs themselves were dull, perhaps purposefully formless. As usual, I wondered if the people in the photographs even knew that they were on display.
As the clock ticked away and we hurriedly drank booze as freely as we breathed air, we ran into S.'s friend H., one of the duo of Mexican artistes we had met up with last time. H. introduced us to another friend, a young woman, whose name I have since forgotten, who was definitely pleased with herself and her ability to seduce anyone in any room. She and some others were going to a party at some swank hotel top floor bar, and we all simply had to go. This was a Tuesday, now circa 9:30pm, and I excused myself, explaining that I had to get back home to Bushwick (in Brooklyn, between Williamsburg and East New York), which might as well have been a foreign country to them. The enthusiastic girl, henceforth referred to as G., would not take no for an answer. "You must come," she said, only it didn't sound aristocratic, as it looks on the page. Her tone of voice was more BFF, which was more flattering than off-putting, one of the perks of being attractive--she sounded more generous than needy. "You must come," she said, possibly even taking my hand. Everyone was taking cabs. I asked how close the hotel was to a subway. I said I had eight dollars in my purse. She said not to worry, she would take care of anything if needs be. I didn't have to be at work until 5pm the next day, so I acquiesced. I was a little beyond pleasantly drunk. I was feeling a tad reckless, like the world needed to catch up to my expectations. I wanted to play reversal of fortunes.
The bar was nice, with floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a sweet view. I mean, it was nice in a very expected sort of nice--mood lighting, polished counters. It didn't smell like beer. It didn't smell like anything. All the men were wearing sort of boring suits. The DJ looked like a 14 year old Korean boy who had watched too much Miami Vice. It was Mardi Gras, so some women at a table were hawking charity beads. G. pulled a wad of cash--and I mean a wad--and peeled out a twenty for two strings, one for her and one for me. Hers was gold and mine was purple, an inferior color according to her, so she tore it off my neck, marched back, and replaced it with a gold one. I asked her what the charity was far, and she marched me over to the table, asked the lady what the charity was for, and pulled me over to listen. "At least one of us should know!" she said, turning away, leaving it up to me. The charity lady said something along the lines of, "This money goes to help third world countries." No joke. She didn't even have to try. No one there cared what it was for. They just needed the beads as status symbols. G. proceeded to bully the guy in the boring suit (that she was getting to buy us drinks) into buying a string, too. While she was working him over, I sipped my wine, more out of having something to do, and somehow began talking to an objectively attractive guy, the kind of guy who might have played lacrosse in high school, the kind of guy who might have been the older brother of an Abercrombie and Fitch model, the kind of guy who has been groomed for a life of bars like this. I forget his name, but he was from Sweden. He was in New York on business. He was promoting wind turbines. Alternative energy--cool, right? Er, I asked him what his favorite part of New York was. He said the strip clubs. They didn't have strip clubs in Sweden. In fact, it wasn't just New York. He like the strip clubs in Chicago and Las Vegas, too. He didn't actually care about alternative energy. He could care less about his product, but he was a good salesperson. I asked him what tactic made him so successful, and he said the most insightful thing all night: that selling is more about listening than talking. Then he asked me if my friend (G.) was "with" that guy. "She's really attractive."
"I know," I said. For half a second I felt the sting of rejection. Worse--the sting of him assuming that I wasn't even in the game. Of course Mr. Swede wasn't talking to me for my sake. Five years ago, that might have devastated me. But then I realized, I was totally disgusted by him...I probably failed to hide my disgust at his dismissal of alternative energy (which was more offensive to me than the strip clubs, by far), why should I care that he wasn't interested in me? Hello, ego. My friend S. finally found us in the melee, and we took photographs of ourselves in front of the glossy window while H. chastised us on how the flash would be reflected, obliterating the city lights. Then we left, satisfied with poking through that membrane into how the other half lives, happy to tumble home to Brooklyn and Queens. As we made a beeline for the elevator, G. was talking to the DJ, coaxing him to play a song for her, but making him feel special, bathed in her affection, so in the end everybody won.
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This is hilarious
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