"Are you German?"

When a Boston Brahmin moved to Paris for a four-year sojourn, due to her husband's business, she soon became intimately acquainted with a notable family in the French aristocracy, which is, I can assure you, an expansive entity — France has doled out titles of nobility in an excessively liberal manner, and every fifth person you meet in Paris seems to have a "de la" in front of their last name.

Years after settling back into humdrum puritanical life in Beacon Hill, the Bostonian lady returned to France to attend the wedding of a descendent of the aforementioned French aristocratic family. It had been a very long engagement, because the bride had been reluctant to commit to a British boy who, like most British boys of a certain breeding, "Didn't cuddle enough and played too much polo." The wedding took place at the modest château of the bride's family, and the groom's family wanted to contribute, so they paid for the champagne, and the 'tent,' which was more of a temporary 500,000-dollar orangerie. In short, it was a very un-New-Englandy affair indeed.

Dulce de leche

The annual polo ball in Newport, Rhode Island was a spectacle to behold. It was in honor of the match between the US and India, so the ball's theme was appropriately "The Taj Ma Ball." Held at the Rosecliff Mansion, the evening was a wine-soaked swirl of middle-aged Newport-ites hob-knobbing, while devolving into various states of reverie upon the dance floor of the ballroom made famous by Robert Redford in the role of Gatsby, the ultimate pimp. Though I have my reservations about the botched 1970s-interpretation of an iconic piece of American literature, very few male actors could pull off wearing that much white.

The Newport polo ball was a raging success. The gauche "ethnic/India" theme even added to the guests' ability to let loose—with men donning various forms of silk kurtas (reminiscent of Hugh Hefner's standard uniform) and the women sporting festive bindis, the crowd seemed free and easy for such a preppy occasion.

An attractive older couple approached me on the dance floor, wanting to know my name and where I was from...they were shocked to discover that I am from Boston—apparently my dance moves seemed more Italian than Puritan in descent.

Midnight Kielbasa

Summertime comes and people resort to meeting strangers on the street and agreeing to go on first dates with them. Unfortunately, the lighting at night on said streets often obscures the person's true mimbo factor, and a man who at first appears to resemble Jude Law in fact resembles something a bit closer to Jack the Ripper.

Gauche things to do to a girl on a first date:

1. Inviting her to your parents' house. Especially if you are over thirty-five.

2. When she arrives, offering her a beer at the kitchen counter.

3. Leaving "the game" on in the background so you can glance at the score.

4. Intermittently catching flies with your bare hands.

5. Talking about how you're "between careers" and recently underwent vocational testing to discover your "true calling."

6. Telling stories about doing shrooms.

7. Giving her a tour of all the make-out spots in your parents' house and neglecting to turn on any lights.

Disengagement

I hosted a reunion fête for my oldest friends in the world—the ones who used to accompany me as a twelve-year-old girl dressed in drag parading around the local video store on Friday nights banging on tambourines to attract awkward attention. Our nostalgic slumber party was upgraded from our middle school days of Toll House cookies and prank phone calls, by prosecco and a trip to a typically Boston, typically preppy bar.

But in the end, we still stayed up until 5 am, watching a VHS tape of our 8th grade musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (quite possibly the tranniest musical of all time). I guess the only difference was that this time we did not pee in our pants from laughing too much. And this time we had a lot more to say about our various experiences with mimbos and wankers. When my mother asked, "Do any of you girls have someone special in your life?" my friend responded, "Well, I have a boyfriend, but he's not that special."

"just a really hot day"

Apparently many Americans are moving into motel rooms, indefinitely, because of foreclosures and the recession. That sounds somewhat tiresome, but in a way cinematic and inspiring. Right now I am in Santiago, Chile, exploring the Almodovarian aesthetic and encountering the friendliest and most endearing people. They are so willing to assist whenever it becomes apparent that I speak only three words of Spanish.

People are much freer here with their bodies than the Northeasterners to whom I am accustomed: Chileans often take their shoes off while eating at restaurants, and put their feet up on chairs in public. Today I saw a man washing his face in the outburst of water from a fire hydrant. Last night in the middle of dinner I did a dance for the restaurant guests to the lovley guitar music. The specialty drink here is the pisco sour, and it is delicious with "pamello" (like grapefruit). This morning I noticed a cute Spanish guy wearing a neon-colored t-shirt of Abraham Lincoln. He sat on a picturesque cafe terrace with his barefoot friends, and one of them took my pen and notebook and sketched some primitive portraits of my sister and me. He offered us a midday whiskey and the t-shirt off his back that I had admired.

We also became friends with a French man from Marseilles who was selling crepes in the middle of Santiago and wearing a t-shirt that said "Boston" on it. He was a charmer, having fun all day and strumming his spatula like a violin.

The above picture is of me back home in Beacon Hill with an owl from my neighborhood antique shop.

Wigged & Dangerous

Last week a band of cross-dressing jewel thieves stole 102 million dollars worth of loot from the Harry Winston store on Paris' fashionable Avenue Montaigne. Armed, wigged, and dangerous, they not only snagged items from the display cases but also knew the ins and outs of the goods in the back room and called the salespeople by their names. Maybe they were the husbands of international socialites doing their recession time Christmas shopping.

I recently watched the 1968 Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway film, The Thomas Crown Affair. The Pierce Brosnan remake had a sexy art heist tone to it. I figured that the original would be even more alluring, especially since it was shot at my favorite mansion on Mount Vernon Street in Boston's Beacon Hill.

Verdict vis-à-vis The Thomas Crown Affair original
(click on the highlighted links for visual examples):

***** for pre-1970's cheese-factor
(though rather fetching male short shorts)

***** for atrocious Steve McQueen acting
(and absurdly unrealistic smoking skills)

***** for erotic chess-playing incidents

***** for fabulous over-sized hats

***** for excessive use of snazzy new split-screen editing

(and of typical high society leisure activities such as
polo playing, sauna sitting, and small plane landing)

Maybe the cross-dressing Harry Winston robbers are merely bored tycoons expressing their secret fetish for women's luxury items. It seems like more than a violent criminal act: perhaps the culprits have performance art aspirations.

W + Anchor

Things are strangely familiar these days. I went on a jaunt to New Haven to meet the celebrated transvestite-potter-artist-extraordinaire, Grayson Perry. He was in his little girl persona, Claire, who wore a poufy silk dress (pictured above) with red tulle underlay and a black bib embellished with rhinestone-encrusted phallic rocket ships. Perry's main source of inspiration is his childhood “cuddly toy,” Alan Measles, a teddy bear who takes on dictatorial status as “ruler of the establishment” in Perry’s art.

I sat in the front row and admired the artist’s dazzling glitter eye shadow and red patent leather shoes. I loved Perry’s insights into aesthetic, emotional, and global topics, especially his/her view that “testosterone is the most dangerous chemical on the planet.” I am also fond of his obsession with adding gold to most anything he creates: he says, “even the most sophisticated of collectors find their heads turned by a bit of gold.” Perry's firm belief in Barbaric Splendour (e.g. blinged-out pimp style, gauche use of patterns, etc.) contrasts any “minimalist or puritanical sense of restraint.” I like to think of it as Miami Beach vs. Beacon Hill.

Perry also showed his ingenious design of the letter “W” suspended above an anchor symbol--how clever: W + Anchor = Wanker (a pejorative term in British slang that literally means “one who masturbates”). I am in the midst of having a much-regretted tattoo removed from my hip bone (in a lengthy and somewhat painful five-month process), but I already envision my next tattooed mistake to be Perry’s W-anchor symbol. Maybe with “wanker” perpetually inked on my hip, I will cease to seek out these sub-par male characters in my everyday life.

When I approached Perry after the lecture, I noticed a fake black-glitter heart-shaped tattoo beneath the corner of “Claire’s” eye…the girlish embellishment speaks loads to art and life in general: glittery, heart-shaped, and black all over.

Gold Sequin Hot Pants

On Halloween I was lured to Brooklyn’s Dumbo to help out with a Tisch student film. The cinematographer happened to be Hollywood It boy and newly enrolled NYU film student, James Franco. He was wearing a very intense long green coat that had an odd fur hood—think football coach meets Russian militia meets Prada Sport. I was supposed to play the role of “Jogger,” but I failed to receive the memo and was wearing my Bond-girl tailored white coat and jeans. I was “Girl on Cell Phone” instead. I think it will sound better on my illegitimate acting resume anyways. Since I couldn’t play “Jogger,” James Franco ended up chasing after a random Brooklyn fireman and recruiting him for the part.

In the evening I absconded to my family’s neighborhood in Boston for the famous Beacon Hill Halloween: with the cobblestone streets, gas-lit lamp posts, and Louisburg Square townhouses embellished with ghoulish decorations and multi-colored gourd bouquets, it’s the closest event I can imagine to a Martha Stewart wet dream.

My sister and I shot the footage for a silent film entitled The Mysterious Hatted Woman Escapes into the Night, a tale of Princess Cricket, who “lives in an enchanted urban village untouched by the hypermedia of modern society.” She sleeps soundly in her bed (bathtub) to prepare for the festivities of the monthly Bacchus, when a sinister intruder, Boris, creeps into her chambers and shuns her with the curse of perpetual blindness. The only remedy for her condition: a kiss from a man of the people. We enlisted our favorite cashier at the posh Beacon Hill 7-Eleven to play the man administering the curative kiss. Moral of the story? When one retreats into fantasy there are fewer Wankers of the Week.