Artsy Fartsy

So my friend S. has a membership to MOMA. The perks include occasional after hour events for members (and a guest—lucky me) in which you pretty much have free reign of the revolving exhibits and…can you believe it?…OPEN BAR. We’re not talking donated beer from some corporate sponsor, either—wine and quality liquor. I went to one of these events last November, at which point we also connected with S.'s artist friends, two men from Mexico City who split their time between Mexico, New York, and Greece. I don't believe they have ever had to work a day in their lives. Most of the night I made the mistake of thinking these guys were a couple. The art, what I saw of it, was underwhelming. I prefer MOMA's bastard little cousin, the edgier P.S. 1 in Queens. But the event was gorgeous with gorgeous people, all made up, from old lady elegance to stupid Brooklynites with carefully crafted, obscenely bushy beards. Afterwards, the Mexicans invited us to see a friend’s studio in East Williamsburg (never West Bushwick), which miraculously was near the same subway stop of another party, Mexican-themed, no less. We spent less time in the artist friend’s studio than upstairs in the two apartments in which it seemed a few other elite Mexico City natives dwelled. They were all reminiscing, and S. and I got bored until the neighboring couple’s children came over and began vying for our attention. There was a girl and a boy, approx. seven and nine years old? Maybe eight and ten? They were amazing. I’ve never wanted kids, but they made me reconsider. The little girl was really into drawing, and when she asked me to name my favorite animal, I said an okapi, an answer that rarely fails to elicit a puzzled frown. Well, she frowned for a second or two, but then she ran over to her crate of plastic animals and pulled out a miniature okapi (a shorter-necked relative of the giraffe, with zebra-esque stripes on its legs, a rare and shy creature). Then she proceeded to draw three okapis, two larger and one smaller that I assume is meant to be mom, dad, and baby. She wrote the title “Okapi” and flanked it with two hearts. It is my favorite work of art, ever. Meanwhile, one of the (original) Mexican men kept trying to get S. to make out with him, which is when I realized he wasn’t gay. And then I felt stupid because I realized his not-boyfriend hadn’t necessarily been so interested in my conversation for conversation’s sake. Oops. We finally made it down the three blocks or so to the Fiesta. Many of the partygoers were replete with sombreros and crudely penciled “Mexican” mustaches. My friend there, M. feared that the Mexican artists would be offended. I don’t think they cared less, but they were more interested in wooing young women in somewhat elitist settings than playing homemade skee ball in a converted warehouse. Tequila was imbibed, a piñata was busted, and we all warmed up enough to re-venture back out into the night and stumble home. I never stumble home, actually. I soar. The other day, I cleaned out my desk (well, I didn’t exactly clean it, but I was hunting through it in search my generic sleep-aid), and I rediscovered my okapi picture. The little girl and little boy had put their emails on the back of the paper, and I remember being tempted to email them, but then that seemed like a creepy thing to do. You can’t email children of people you don’t really know, right?