Yesterday I set the stage: glamorous women, men in plaid pants, fur stoles in August! Yes, it was the 52nd annual Southampton Hospital Benefit, called “Some Enchanted Evening.”
Today, I’m continuing the saga as we enter The Dinner Hour!! (cue scary music)
The Southampton Hospital Benefit is so huge, so gigantic, that it can only be held in a tent. Nine hundred people were at this benefit. And not one of them knew or cared who I was. Typical day in the life.
After the hors d’oevres free cocktail hour, we entered the dinner tent. Our table, #79, or as I like to call it, The Jewish Table, (why the Jewish table? I’m guessing that our dinner companions, the Kaplans, the Fienbergs, and the Goldsteins were Jewish. Just a guess.) Anyway the Jewish table was in the back. But haha on them, because the back was also where the food was, and since we’ve already established that at a party, Jews eat – well, good luck to them getting any rubber chicken!
I could write about the long lines for the buffet dinner. I could regale you with stories of how the aggressively white crowd got down to the strains of Brick House, played by a band of 60-something white guys. But the real story of the dinner took place at table #79, where the first person we met was a bleach-blonde, fake breasted, poufy lipped, heavily eyelined and even more heavily jewel encrusted woman of an indeterminate age.
After all that surgery, it was hard to tell. I’d put her anywhere between 35 and 55. Only her plastic surgeon knows for sure. She introduced herself:
“Hi. Do you know anyone single? I’m going through a divorce and I’m getting $50 million dollars in the settlement. So the guy has to worth at least half that much. Got anybody?”
Well, you had to hand it to her: she wasn’t coy.
BBB (bleach blond bimbo) went on to tell us how she had a driver, an assistant, and two boys who were living with their father. She grilled the men at the table about their friends. Were they rich? Could she have their number? Did we know that the diamond earrings she was wearing were three carats each? At one point, Mr. Kaplan, a charming, funny man in his seventies, looked at me over her flat-ironed head and mouthed the words “Help Me!”
Help him? Why of course not! I needed fodder for my blog post!
I spoke to BBB’s date – her mother. “Who’s gonna take her seriously?” she moaned. “She tells everybody everything! Me? I’m not like that. I’m quiet, private. Ever since my husband died.”
And then, quiet, private Mom told me the totally unfunny and truly sad story of how her husband had been killed in a car jacking. Not to be insensitive (did you ever notice that when people start a sentence with “not to be _____” they’re about to be totally and completely _____?” but what a buzz kill.
Meanwhile, BBB hounded my husband. At nearly 50, and the youngest man at the table, he must have seemed her best bet for a kill, date. “Gimme your business card!” she yelled at him over a very loud rendition of Kool and the Gangs Celebrate.
“No!” my husband yelled back, and – and I’m not kidding here – physically ran from her.
So she descended upon me: “Your husband won’t give me his business card. He thinks I want to break up your marriage. I would never do that! Never!” Well, that was a relief! I mean, any man who is interested in me – a size 10 (eight on a good day), ethnic looking, ivy educated, left-wing upper west side Jew – well he’d be bound to go for a girl who looked like she was an “air quote” dancer.
“I know!” she squealed! “let’s be best friends! What’s your name?”
Luckily, I was saved by the Blackberry: “Ma!” she said “It’s my assistant! The driver is here with the Bentley.” then, to my husband “I have a Bentley.”
“You have a Bentley!!” my husband suddenly grew animated. “We have a Bentley!” And then he showed her a picture of our Bentley, that’s him there. The Shelter dog from Arkansas. BBB was not impressed. She stormed off. But me and my husband? Well, we’d had the time of our lives! I guess society ain’t so bad after all.
I really, really enjoyed this. Hilarious and such a caricature that women was!
I love your writing and I’m obviously going to have to live a NYC life vicariously through you – what a blast!
If by “living a NYC life” you mean cleaning up after the kids and desperately trying to be as thin as everyone else in this social x-ray city — then have at it!! Glad you like my site…I’m off to check out yours right now!