"How would you like an authentic New York experience?"
I was laying on the couch, in my temporary home deep in the depths of Brooklyn, with the ever-present aroma of cat urine wafting through the air. A chorus of horns blared and bleated outside, as cars crammed into the one-way street like angry sheep, trapped by a rambling garbage truck inching down the block. Having just eaten a bagel, I was licking cream cheese out of my beard's whiskers so hard that it was straining my tongue, but I was too lazy to get up and get a napkin. So yes, I was already having an "authentic New York experience," although the way my friend pronounced "Nu YAWK" certainly added a bit of glamour.
I hoped he couldn't hear my lips smacking from the cream cheese. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"I'm going to a dinner party tonight at my friend's house down the street from where I live," he said. The hosts, he explained, lived in a glorious brownstone in the Upper West Side, and just seeing their place was worth showing up. But it wasn't going to be a pretentious affair; these dinner parties are pot luck, not a big crowd but an interesting mélange of friends. "We get together once or twice a month. Everyone is really nice. It's like Mayberry."
I will always accept an invitation to dine in the company of people with unimaginable wealth. And my friend is a fun guy. So I accepted. "I'm bringing asparagus," he said. "You bring a bottle of wine."
After a thorough scrubbing of myself and a cream cheese removal from my beard, I hopped on the subway and zipped out of Brooklyn and under the East River and stepped into a brisk evening in the wondrous isle of Manhattan. I then popped into a liquor store and, not knowing what specifically was being served for dinner other than asparagus, picked a bottle of rather nice wine just because I remembered it from my days as a server at a fancy restaurant. Buying wine is always a challenge when going to a dinner party; the host undoubtedly has drinks already planned, and people can have finicky palates. So I hoped they would like it. I just didn't want to look stupid, walking in with a bottle of Clos du Bois or something else I could buy at Target. Because that is usually where I really buy my wine.
With one last sniff of my sweater to make sure I wasn't carrying any fumes of cat piss from Brooklyn, I rang the buzzer at my friend's apartment, and he let me in with much hugging and chitchat. I showed him the wine; he smiled and shrugged, in a gesture of gracious indifference about whatever I had in my hand, and he said it looked great. Then after putting the finishing touches on his asparagus he grabbed his coat and we stepped back outside to brave the evening chill to walk down the block for the soirée. The street was lined with stately brownstone homes, built with actual stone instead of brick. Even the trees here, without any leaves, look like they have money.
My friend turned up some steps and rang the doorbell. I looked up, admiring the ornate stonework. "The windows are beautiful," I said, arching by back to get a view all the way up.
"Just wait until we get inside," he muttered. "They own the whole building."
"All four floors?"
"Five," he said. "They have their own elevator."
The host of the party opened the door and warmly shook our hands, graciously accepting the bottle of wine I brought, and offered to also take the asparagus and our coats. Clenching my jaw as I said a prayer in my mind, please God don't let him smell any trapped fumes of cat piss in my coat, we walked down the hall. Several guests were gathered in a formal sitting room, holding drinks and laughing at whatever was so delightfully funny, not full howls of laughter but the polite laughs you would hear at a country club. The hostess, a lovely matron wearing impeccable ready-to-wear and an enormous diamond ring, introduced herself and her friends, who stood up from where they had been lounging on furniture that looked like something out of Antiques Roadshow. Ornately carved couches and chairs, with luxuriously stuffed upholstery woven in patterns of yellow, white and blue, sat next to a grand piano, surrounded by walls painted a buttercup yellow with white trim. The room gently curved at the far end into an oval, with pocket doors that followed the bend, and the doors glimmered with gold accents of the beveled panels. The shape of the room was matched at the front by the bay windows, which were adorned with leaded stained glass. If I tried to decorate an oval room with yellow and gold, it would look like we were sitting in an ugly Easter egg. But here, the effect was stunning. Regal. Obviously professionally executed.
"This is really beautiful," I said. "I love the gold paint on the doors."
And there was a pause. I just kept looking at the door.
"...nnnn-No, dear," said the hostess. "That's not paint. That's leaf."
Faux pas #1 and I just walked in the door! Great.
The hostess overheard something else to laugh about across the room, so she went back to her mingling as her husband passed around libations. They then took turns sharing tidbits of personal history of each person in attendance, until there was not a stranger among us. This couple has three kids, that couple just completed a mission trip in El Salvador. This friend was in Rome and a gypsy stole everything out of her fanny pack, can you imagine? The gypsies in Italy really are such a problem. And as I was the new face in the room, I automatically piqued the crowd's curiosities, so I regaled them with tales of my home in the exotic land of Kansas and my recent road trip to New York, to live in a friend's apartment in Brooklyn so I could care for her 21 cats. I assured them, after fielding a few requests for clarification, that I really had just said 21. It was a lot of cats. (...and this, Dear Reader, is another story for another day.)
"Why on Earth would someone want to have 21 cats?" asked an appropriately exasperated friend.
"Because 22 would be too many," I said. And laughter erupted from everyone, HA HA HA HA HAAAAA, all around, this time with real laughs, not the country club kind. If they laughed at a line that was that easy, I thought, this party is going to be a cinch.
Feeling very impressed with myself after several more rounds of laughs, and equally as accomplished for not spilling a single drop of my cocktail on any priceless antique furniture, I triumphantly followed the group into the dining room when it was time for dinner. These people were fun! They liked my stories! And we moved to the dining room table, the ornate centerpiece surrounded by equally extravagant chairs, I gently placed my cocktail glass down on the table. Exuding utmost grace and gentility, a most pleasant and genteel smile upon my face, I sat down in my chair and slid into the table.
CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRACKKKKKKK.
In case we haven't met, Dear Reader, I should mention: I am 6'3" tall and weigh somewhere above 240 pounds. So the weight of my extra-large body proved to be too much for the antique sensibilities of my chair, and as I slid towards the table, the front left chair leg cracked out of its joint and bent back at a horrifying slope.
I didn't immediately register what had just happened, but the noise startled my reflexes and locked my thighs into a squatting position. Still holding the chair, I managed to keep smiling, although the cold air on my eyeballs disclosed the fact that my eyes were widened in what could only be construed a look of horror. My friend, sitting on my right, was engrossed in a story with the person on his right so he hadn't noticed what was going on. So I looked to the left, and there was the host, standing with a giant bowl of salad, looking down at me. He had the same smiling but wide-eyed expression that I had.
"I seem to have done something to your chair," I muttered to him.
"It's fine," he said, with a gentle wave of his free hand. "Those chairs are very old." Yes, I thought, antiques usually are.
A woman across the table, sitting perfectly straight in her seat, had noticed the sound of splintering wood and leaned slightly to her right to look down. I knew the moment she saw the leg of the chair, because her eyebrows raised up so high they almost disappeared into her perfectly coiffed hair. And then she looked up at me, and smiled. Everyone was smiling. When anything goes wrong, apparently rich people just keep smiling.
I wrenched the leg back into position, and if I didn't shift my body weight, the chair was stable enough to hold me up, so I sat through the dinner and balanced precariously without any future incidents. And after much pleasant conversation with a sprinking of another story or two, the incident of the chair seemed to have been forgotten. I pretended to not notice how everyone at the table chose to not drink the wine I had brought, so I just shared it with my friend who was entirely happy to have more wine to himself. A true friend will drink the wine you brought to a dinner party so you don't feel low-class and stupid.
Towards the end of dinner, the conversation had turned to decorating ideas, so as we moved to the living room for an after-dinner drink, the hostess mentioned to her friend with the perfectly coiffed hair that they should go upstairs and look at the newly-remodeled top floor. Perhaps emboldened by all that wine I drank at dinner, I asked if I could come along. The hostess energetically welcomed me to join, and we progressed to the stairs. And there, in all its glory, was their elevator, a little wooden box filled with magic, golden light.
"You two take the elevator," she said. "It isn't big enough for all three of us." I hesitated, as I hadn't originally been invited on this adventure, but the hostess insisted she took the stairs all the time anyway, and she would meet us at the top. The friend stepped onto the elevator, turned, and looked at me with those eyebrows raised again. And she looked me up and down.
"Are you sure this can handle both of us?" she called to the hostess, who was already up a few stairs.
"It's fine!" she said. "It was built for two."
The woman on the elevator grimaced. "Yes, but..." she said, as she undoubtedly remembered that dining room chair. "I hope we don't get stuck."
Having lived my entire life pushing back against people who would prefer me to be different, to fit into what they define as socially acceptable--not so gay, not so flamboyant, not so much whatever--I have developed a reactionary behavior which I certainly make no claims of being able to control. If people say they don't like something about my personage, I give it to them double. Full-throttle. No holding back. Tell me to not be so queeny, I become obnoxious. Tell me to shut up, I get really loud. And in this case, this woman, with her passive-aggressive eyebrows, was obviously telling me I should not be so big. So forgetting all my efforts at being polite amongst this crowd of social elites, I did what I had no choice to do.
I barreled into that fucking elevator and shut the door. "DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT!" I boomed, amplified by the tiny space of the elevator. "IT'LL BE FUN!" And I punched the button for the top floor.
As we passed the first floor, this person seriously stood there humming nervously, and actually said "Oh I hope we make it," not meeting my gaze as I stared at her down. The elevator hummed as we rose up, two, three, four, until we reached the top floor and surprise, the doors opened without incident. "There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" I said, as I stepped off. Although as soon as I looked at the splendor of the magnificent room around me, this time a neutral-toned refuge up in the sky, flanked with windows, I instantly no longer cared what she thought about anything.
"Yes," she said. "But I'll be taking the stairs back down."
