Serigraphs etc.

Trolling around Manhattan for a series of vaguely art-related events, I found myself having a drink at one of those typically midtown Manhattan hotels, where all the clientele are bankers. And where there are NYC bankers/wankers, there are models nearby. In the bathroom I encountered a few pretty underage models who were in distress over an upcoming trip and some guy who was presumably responsible for jetting them off to Europe. As I fixed my heels and they re-applied their lipstick, I introduced myself and one of the girls said to me, "We're going to London tomorrow—do you want to come?"

As I stepped out of the ladies' room with them, a herd of white thirty-something wankers in post-work suits stormed up to us. One of the men look at me and exclaimed, "Thank god. They have a white friend." I didn't see the tall pretty black girls again, but I keep wondering if the racist wankers took them to London.

Exquisite Landscaping

I passed by a gaggle of local New Haven high school kids processing from their hotel prom into limos and yellow school buses. They were en route to the 'after-party,' whatever that can entail at age 17 and in shiny synthetic visions in satin reminiscent of Olympic figure skating, TV ballroom dancing, and bridesmaids circa 1990.

Amidst the hormonal hair-sprayed girls, and their delinquent soon-to-be wanker-mimbo escorts, there was one boy who stood out from the crowd, mostly because he was not wearing a shirt, but also because he was wearing a white tuxedo vest and gold tie. I congratulated him for the flamboyant gaucheness of his outfit and even snagged a few photos of the all-in-white-semi-nude exhibitionism. Of course, he was very obliging and more than comfortable in front of the camera. His confidence gives me hope for the future of embracing homosexuality in America's public school system.

Money: Get vs. Make

The opening of the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Met was full of semi-elderly men in well-cut suits and well-preserved women wearing furs, in spite of the balmy weather. Art openings are my all-time favorite venues for ogling people, as they provide a compelling mixture of stuffy socialites, wealthy wannabes, preening pimps, and on occasion, actual artists.

People rarely look at the art, and I don't blame them, since the canapés are usually delicious and the 70-year-old women in glass platform heels are mesmeric. I fall prey to exceedingly gauche behavior that involves as many glasses of champagne as possible and staring at the old woman dressed in a black python tutu that has been stretched almost as many times as her face has been lifted.

I became a serious creeper and felt increasingly like a cougar as the night progressed. There were two tall dreamy boys who looked to be fresh out of St. Paul's. They had been impeccably dressed by their matriarchal Upper East Side mother, who hovered over them the whole evening. She hampered my advances toward her floppy haired, Gucci-loafered older son, but in the end, I bonded with some Italian men who were, in theory, more mature.

Angel Face

The kids of my generation can be inordinately absurd, evidenced by the fact that I just used the expression "inordinately absurd." Instead of being defined by fiery social change and the advent of free love, we are mired in Adderall addictions and trips to the therapist, where we grapple with our ennui, our parents' divorces, and...wouldn't you know it? The very Adderall addictions that began when the psychiatrist prescribed the zippy little drug to us as "easily distracted" twelve-year-olds.

Gauche things to do during a therapy session:

1. Saying, "Sorry I'm late! I would have been on time, but I was having sex with that boy—you know, the guy you wanted me to compose a 'goodbye letter' to after our session last week."

2. Leaving your cell phone turned on and answering calls in the middle of the session, while not busy reading your emails.

3. Taking a photo of your therapist on your camera phone, and then saying, "Don't worry. I just need a quick shot so I can upload a new post on Mytherapistiswhack.blogspot.com."

4. Eating dinner, especially if the dinner you brought looks suspiciously like something taken from the fridge in the kitchen of your therapist's office.

5. When told at the end of the session, "See you next week," replying, "Yeah, hopefully."

King Tut

It's an abandoned university dorm room in the middle of the night. The place gets eerie at this time of year, when all the undergraduates are gone, except for a few straggling seniors awaiting graduation. My friend is an artist and uses her oversized single as a studio. She says, "It's great—I keep lumber, and power tools, and all sorts of things in there." She grew up on a farm in a "very rural blue-collar part of Wisconsin" that afforded her about 20 acres of personal space. One of her first worldly experiences was when she traveled to Siena at age 16 to do an apprenticeship with a 50-year-old painter. Her parents shipped her off with a little duffel bag, and she arrived at the man's falling down house in the middle of the Tuscan countryside.

Her Sienese painter/master was a typical Italian man...he would grab the paint brush out of her hand and smack her with it if he didn't like what she was doing. Plus, he expected her to cook him dinner. She mixed his oil paints for him and ran away to the city whenever possible. The best part about authentic travel experience is that, after enough time has passed since the traumatic 'culturally enriching' period, you always look back on it with fondness, even if it involved a middle-aged creeper and crying yourself to sleep every night.

Silver Foxes

Valentino: The Last Emperor, the new documentary about the famous Italian couturier, is an explosion of diamonds, dandies, pugs, and real estate porn. It was difficult to discern the exact theme of the movie, except for to say: "Valentino is a divine Italian gentleman who leads a life of decadence, is very demanding about the details, and represents a bygone era of true handmade La Dolce Vita." There were a few amusing debacles between Valentino and his 'business' partner, Giancarlo, over the following 'issues': crystal beading on a white dress, sand dunes on a runway set, levels of skin tanning, and the height at which to hang mannequins.

But frivolities of the fashion world aside—the ending of Valentino's career is a symbol for the end of people getting properly dressed. As the Jet Set society photographer, Slim Aarons, once I photographed in exile in Sicily in 1949]...The gangsters wanted to look nice. Today everyone wants to look like a gangster." Between the pimp-chic and hipster-homeless aesthetics that permeate the celebrity circuits, soon enough we'll all be wearing nothing but shiny chain-link jewelry, ripped tights, and ratty Converse sneakers. Oops. I am wearing that right now. As always, I am well-situated on the cusp of all things gauche.

Champagne Socialists

Sometimes it's nice to steal things even when it's not necessary. In fact, rich people are often the most dangerous ones prowling through luxury department stores. I'm sure that Winona Ryder had something other than pinching pennies on her mind when she scooped up 5,000 dollars worth of Marc Jacobs and Gucci items at her corner Saks Fifth Avenue. The phenomenon of kleptomania is like many destructive addictions, such as alcoholism, or watching reality TV: it seems like a good idea at the time, but after you've passed out in the shower, buried in floral print blouses, having watched 48 hours of Jessica Simpson prancing around her McMansion wearing velour, you realize that your favorite pastime is a destructive one.

I had a firsthand experience with thievery in the notoriously "ghetto" New Haven. Anticipating the closing of the campus dining halls, I became anxious about my access to food while squatting in my dorm room during the coming weeks. My friend and I decided to "get even" with our exorbitantly priced meal plans. In the space of 72 hours we went on an ultra-gauche shopping spree and stealthily pilfered the following items: 1 carton vanilla soy milk, 4 boxes Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, 2 boxes Cinnamon Life/Cracklin' Oat Bran/All-Bran/granola, 4 c. Quaker Oatmeal, 1/2 c. cashew nuts, 3 c. chocolate sprinkles, 8 slices luncheon meats, 1 c. hummus, 2 c. grape tomatoes, 2 c. yogurt, 36 Anjou pears, 5 bananas, 49 apples, 12 oranges, 1 loaf potato bread. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. And in the end we have decided to book it to Manhattan and leave all our precious rationings behind.

A Handsome Catalogue!

I found a wayward Mother's Day card soaked and dirty on the streets of New Haven, under one of the flowering trees next to an elaborate wrought iron gate. I am not sure if the card ever made it to the mother, or if it merely fell out of the son's pocket en route to the nearby post office. The front cover had an illustration of a book on it: "Mother Knows Best: The critically acclaimed best-seller." And then there was the boy's personal heartfelt message:

To the author of many critically acclaimed best sellers,
Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for all your wisdom. This mother's day is especially meaningful mostly because we had such a great mother-son bonding/quality time :) Thank you for everything, especially for supporting me through the amazing and challenging year!
Love,

Jack

I always thought of parents as being more like crutches for when you have a sprained foot and less like books for when you are in need of "wisdom." We go to our mothers kicking and screaming, and rarely seek them out when we are at our mature contemplative intellectual best. But the son's card was a soggy, wrinkled mess in the street. And it's the thought that counts.

"Take Us To Martinique"

In Connecticut a man just turned himself into the police for the brutal murder of a 21-year-old philosophy student at Wesleyan University. He and the girl weren't strangers but met two years ago when they both enrolled in a summer course at NYU on "Sexual Diversity in Society." He became obsessed by her and proceeded to send her 38 threatening emails.

The shooting took place on the day of the college's annual "Spring Fling," a time for students to start drinking at noon and engage in the customary undergraduate green lawn revelries. And the campus became like a deranged ghost town: “Everyone was trying to compute the whole thing while slightly intoxicated."

All the news articles display a very sexy, wet-lipped picture of the girl, Johanna Justin-Jinich, part of a trend in the media's glamorization of young female victims of violence. One commenter wrote about the culprit: "he looks like a creeper too. wish we could just lock all creepy dudes up for good. solve all our problems." Creeper seems like a good word to add to the list of wayward male personalities: wankers, pimps, and creepers...OH MY.

Perfect Confection

At a lovely British Art Center lecture on Victorian paintings, which are notorious for being no body's favorite, the overriding theme was Morrison's Pills. Or, something to do with philanthropy and a rich English man who patronized the arts thanks to the phenomenon of his diuretics.

Gauche things to mention while lecturing at the Yale Center for British Art:

1. "The mounting of this exhibition was a long and arduous process that required the full strength of 12 Herculean men."

2. "This picture of the Babylonian marriage market always makes me think of America's Next Top Model."

3. "If you'll allow me five minutes to finish off, I'll discuss this picture of cheeky repose."

4. "I would take a few questions, but it's definitely time for a drink."

In proper Anglican fashion, the elderly audience, along with a slew of thirsty graduate students, trotted to the miniature crab delicacies and appropriately named "Hob Nob" wine. I bonded with a striking woman wearing fabulous ethnic jewelry and a frisky tunic dress—and there's nothing Victorian about her.

Platitudes

The Way We Were, Sydney Pollack's melodrama starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, is classic 1970s Hollywood: a somewhat geeky schlock-fest involving romantic montages of the couple cooking dinner, frolicking on the beach, lying by a roaring fire, etc. etc. I love how the sex scenes always cutaway to large bodies of water. Robert Redford's character is often shirtless and is named "Hubbell Gardner," reminding me of my prep school classmates called things like "Joth Cabot Thurlow" and "North Blodgett."

The Way We Were is quoted in an episode of "Sex and the City," and it turns out that Sarah Jessica Parker and Barbra Streisand share many critical elements: same push-pull relationship with curly hair, same struggle with their noses, same interest in awkward hats, same cult following in the gay world. In spite of the film's sappy elements, it ended in realism: Hubbell leaves "crazy Katie," and finds a gentler, simpler, more passive, more vanilla kind of a girl, even though they were meant to be together.

Fly by Night

There are certain things about college that I find terrifyingly gauche. Tonight I was lying awake in my cozy extra-long twin bed, while a gaggle of inebriated underclassmen hosted some sort of end-of-year alcoholic extravaganza in the suite above me. I could bear the incessant throbbing of their dreadful music, but then, the terrifying occurred: I heard the sudden pitter-patter of dozens of nineteen-year-old feet storming the staircase, accompanied by the following chant: "NAKED RUN! NAKED RUN! NAKED PARTY!"

The Yale phenomenon of the 'Naked Party' is on par with the proliferation all-male a cappella groups: I suppose it is a nice pastime for those involved, but I'd rather not have to hear about the nude pseudo-homoerotic bonding rituals central to both these Yale 'institutions.'

When I was a senior in boarding school, I would jump into the pond with underclassmen boys, but it was more of a spur-of-the-moment encounter involving wet t-shirts and broken curfews. In college this sort of midnight debauchery seems pretentious, premeditated, and, consequently—prepubescent. The same goes for a cappella singing.