I wasn’t even invited to this pre-wedding dinner party, a room filled with self-impressed McKinsey folk and a grab-bag of doctors. It was the only dinner party that I’ve attended that didn’t have, well, a dinner. Also, I'm not sure if it's my ineptitude at making small talk but my attempts caused the prospective groom to undergo some sort of emotional break down. The very thought of marrying his bride-to-be, he confided, had him sobbing in despair just days before: "I haven’t cried since I was a kid. And I just found myself in tears."
What does one say to something like that? I patted him on the elbow: "There, there…erm, it's probably the pressure of weddings, it's natural to feel tense. I'm sure you'll both be very happy."
"Well, she's very ...practical."
Practical? Hmmm. What an odd response. I laughed nervously and drained the rest of my martini. "Oh my, I need a drink …erm, can I get you another?"
During the evening, I somehow convinced a vole-faced woman that I had nefarious designs on her husband. We were engaged in conversation on my pet topic of the month: bio-engineered foods. And as everyone well knows, the evils-of-industrial-agriculture bit is the oldest trick in the book of seduction—the clothes start flying off faster than you can say "GMO."
During the evening, I somehow convinced a vole-faced woman that I had nefarious designs on her husband. We were engaged in conversation on my pet topic of the month: bio-engineered foods. And as everyone well knows, the evils-of-industrial-agriculture bit is the oldest trick in the book of seduction—the clothes start flying off faster than you can say "GMO."
I guess can never know with people. It wasn't so much the crazy sexual insecurity that I found so off-putting as her posturing as some sort of modern-day M.F.K. Fisher and the insufferable presumption to teach me a thing-or-two about food writing: "Chinese food. That’s what you should write about. Not this food politics stuff. Write about what you know or you’re just a phony."
Oh, indeed. That’s rich—coming from a writer of traditional Westphalian cuisine who hails from, no other than, Cincinnati. Why did she assume that "what I know" is Chinese food? Was it my gender or ethnicity that she assumed that I should care more about recipes than I do about science? Just because some older women still cling onto retro stereotypes of race and gender does not behoove me to have patience for that. Besides, I wanted to point out that her husband seemed to be plenty interested in the practices of industrial farming that night.
The martinis I downed by that point made me ready for a fight. As Gisele and Huli took turns breaking it up, I allowed myself to be pulled away from the vole-faced lady. The evening looked to be a lost cause, leaving the three of us to our own devices for entertainment.
By midnight, the prospective groom passed out in the Moroccan-styled banquette. Those with medical training swarmed around him, taking turns compressing his chest. By that point, the three of us said our goodbyes, since the only person who seemed to appreciate our being there at the party had fallen unconscious, compromised by too much drink. We also needed to get some food into our bodies if were to keep ourselves from befalling a similar fate.
No comments:
Post a Comment