NEWS UPDATE! I Didn’t Attend A Sex Party In Atlanta I am going to do my best to write about this so the hilarity of the night is captured. Sometimes these things are funnier in person than on paper. I’ll do my best…. ‘cause the night was funny.
When I began to book my travel to the Rev3 Knoxville race, it was much less expensive just to fly in and out of Atlanta and drive to Knoxville. My ex-boyfriend, Mark (he lives in Atlanta), asked if I would have time to join him for an event before I returned to Boulder. Mark and I dated years ago but have remained great friends. I’m glad he overlooks my obvious lack of intelligence for never having married him. :)
Mark laid out the concept for the party we were attending; I was intrigued. The event, thrown by one of Atlanta’s contemporary art museums, featured three parts:
First, you arrive at a cocktail party held in the museum. There you receive an envelope containing an address where you’ll be going for dinner. Apparently, ten wealthy art collectors had volunteered to open their homes (and their impressive art collections) to twenty or so random guests. (Think of it like a pot luck dinner, except you couldn’t afford to bring anything even if you wanted to.)
After the dinner parties are over, everyone reconvenes at Atlanta’s beautiful downtown Glenn Hotel, at its elegant rooftop bar, to compare notes on what they stole from these people’s homes. Or talk about art. Whatever.
“So it’s a sex party,” I say to Mark.
“It’s not a sex party,” he replies. “Just because we’re getting dressed up and going to some strangers mansion for dinner with a group of random people we’ve never met doesn’t mean it’s a sex party.”
“Actually, I think it does.”
_____________________________________
So – Phase One of the night. Here we go.
Here is my handsome date saying cheese for a picture.
We arrive at the cocktail party fashionably late, walk in and survey the crowd. Three facts jump out immediately: 1. We know no one here. 2. Everyone else knows everyone here. 3. The only other people here in our tax bracket are the waitresses, the bathroom attendants, and an old, shifty looking security guard who is keeping a rack of free magazines under constant surveillance.
Mark and I look at each other and as if on cue say: “We’re going to need to be drunk for this.”
We approach the bar and I order a vodka and soda. Even the bartender looks rich, and I’m pretty sure he is flirting with me using only his eyes.
Bartender: “I don’t have soda. Only tonic.”
Carole: “Fine, I’ll just have the vodka.”
A few minutes later, Mark runs into the woman who invited him to the party. In our cab on the way over, Mark told me that we would be meeting two women who were the key organizers of the evening, both of whom were named Valerie. “So it’ll be easy: They’re all named Valerie. If you can’t remember someone’s name, just call them Valerie. Valerie. Valerie. Valerie.”
“Hey, Vanessa!” Mark shouts as the woman approaches. (This first embarrassing moment is sponsored by Vodka.)
The stylish, beautiful lady is wearing a cute, 1920’s style flapper hat. To try to cover for Mark not knowing her name, I quickly try to move the conversation forward. I comment on how much I like her hat and ask her where she got it.
“It’s vintage,” the woman replies.
“What?! Venice!?” I scream over the music.
“No, vintage!!!” she repeats.
The conversation is so awkward that Mark excuses himself to go to the bathroom. He comes back to find the two of us standing in the same spot, except now I have a mouth full of food, so no one is talking. Awesome.
Mark knows me well enough to be able to read panic in my eyes. He pulls me aside, telling Valerie that he has to borrow his girlfriend for a moment. Immediately I thank him. “I don’t know what happened,” I say while taking another swig of vodka. “I think I complimented her hat like five times.”
We decide the best course of action is to stand off to the side, taking up a posture of cool nonchalance (i.e. like on “The Hills”), the only problem being neither of us really gets the concept, so we end up standing in a corner next to what Mark thought was a table for drinks, but turned out to be a waiter’s stand for clearing trays. Classy.
Mark (clearly fed up with the situation) hands me his drink and disappears. So now I’m the weird chick standing next to the clearing tray with two drinks and no one to talk to. Except soon the waiter takes the tray, so all that’s left is some sort of makeshift table with a white table cloth draped over it.
Then I get a text message from Mark:
“I left. WILDCARD!”
(Of course he didn’t really leave, because if he had this post would be titled “And They’ll Never Find The Body, Either” and have a much more macabre tone. Still, classic Mark moment there.)
Twenty minutes later, it’s almost time to head over to our second destination. As everyone is mingling near the exit, we run into Valerie again. I proceed to have a nearly verbatim version of the conversation I’d previously had with her.
Carole: “I love your hat!”
Valerie: “Thanks. It’s vintage.”
_____________________________________
Phase 2: The Mansion
The alter-ego I have chosen for the night (because obviously being myself amongst the hoi polloi isn’t an option) is a non-fiction writer specializing in urban youth. After sending out text messages to some people for suggestions, Mark’s brother came back with the best: “You’re currently working on a book called
Legit: The Urban Youth’s Struggle for Identity.” Personally, I preferred his other suggestion,
Harrowing Home Invasions: The Unfathomable Crime, but Mark thought it might be “too dark” for dinner conversation. (Though I still beg to differ. Who doesn’t love a good home invasion story?)
We also decide that we need an escape plan just in case the event turns out to be even more awkward than anticipated.
“Let’s say we have a kid, and the babysitter called with an emergency,” I suggest.
“We can’t do that,” Mark retorts. “Vanessa knows I don’t have a kid.”
“You mean Valerie?”
“Whatever.”
“OK, then how about we’re babysitting someone else’s kid. And
it called with an emergency.”
“Perfect.”
We roll into the gated 6 mile long driveway and pull up to the home listed on our invitation. Not only it is the biggest house on the block, it is the biggest house ever constructed.
As soon as we step through the door, I lose Mark. The house is immense – perhaps bigger on the inside than on the outside. Apparently, I veered right (looking for a bathroom) and Mark veered left (looking for the bar).
I approach a man who seems to know his way around to ask where the nearest bathroom is, but before I can open my mouth he yells, “Watch out behind you!” Not yet aware that there are works of art everywhere, apparently I’ve nearly backed into a sculpture. Not just any sculpture, though, but a cube of toothpicks held together by nothing more than the magic of art.
In other words “if you bump into it, it will fall apart.” I make a joke about thinking it was for the hor d'oeuvres, and the man introduces himself as the owner of the home and directs me to the commode. (Awkwardness: 1. Flying Under The Radar: 0.)
While I am admiring the bathroom’s pillowed walls (seriously, they were like couch cushions) Mark is entertaining a crowd of rich cougars out in the great room. After I leave the bathroom, I locate the bar and order some champagne, which was served in a pop-sized bottle with a straw.
As Mark mingled with the rich cougars (who clearly wanted to borrow him for 10 minutes), I absentmindedly toured the great room to admire the art ... and my champagne bottle suddenly bubbled over. Desperately trying to suck up the overflow before it could spill on the floor, I rushed off, mouth over champagne bottle top, to a different bathroom just as Mark goes the opposite way to begin looking for me.
With Mark and me, it’s “John Candy and Chevy Chase Go To A Dinner Party.”
A few minutes later, Mark finds me at the bar. “Where were you?” he asks.
“In the bathroom. My champagne bottle exploded", I said. "Check out this sculpture in the bathroom though.”
Mark: “You took pictures in the bathroom?”
Me: “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
Mark: “So many reasons?”
Me: (blank stare)
Regrouping, we decide to join the other guests on a tour of the mansion’s many works of art. The sheer diversity of the pieces alone is enough to make your head spin. Their philosophy as collectors was that art can be made out of anything:
Styrofoam:
Plaster:
Wood:
Even Water:
It’s not enough to admire art for its aesthetic quality, you have to wonder "WTF?" And to their credit, you do. You may say to yourself, “I could do that, but I would never think of doing that, at least not without a big, fat Quaalude.” It got to the point where Mark and I were paranoid that everything in the house was a work of art; no table was safe to put down your drink, no chair was safe to sit on. Even while I was in the ridiculously oversized bathroom, I thought, “What if I am peeing on a piece of art right now.”
In the end, though, the night proved to be an enjoyable experience. We met a plastic surgeon (Me: “Like Nip/Tuck?” Him: “Ha! No.”), an art dealer who had recently married his estranged secretary who he first fell in love with 26 years ago, and a guy from Israel who repeatedly brushed off his mega-hot girlfriend while talking with Mark and me, presumably to hear more about my harrowing writing career. (Him: “What do you write about?” Me: “Lots of things. Mostly social sciences. You know, urban youth.”)
Plus the problem of when it was polite to leave was solved for us when a drunk woman spilled her bottle of champagne on the pool table (OR IS IT ART?) and Mark and I looked at each other like, "That’s our cue", stopping only to shake the hosts’ hands and grab a few bags of homemade donut balls on the way out the door.
“Do you want to go to the afterparty at the rooftop bar?” I ask as we get in the cab.
“No, we should be getting home to our imaginary baby. Plus there’s still the sex party portion of the night.” (Wink.)
“Not happening, pal. This cow’s milk ‘aint for free.” :)
