Daily Blague

This update gets its own entry.

Despite everything - and everything is a supersized miscellany here, ranging from arthritis to splashers (watch for my post on splashers) - despite supersonic adversity, albeit supersonic adversity that had somewhat faded away, Kathleen and I got to the Met this evening so that she could see the van Gogh drawings. We arrived at eight-fifteen. The invitation read "Six to Nine." In Gotham, we write our numbers out.

At eight-thirty, I was seized by the conviction that anybody who showed up at 8:59 would be allowed to enter - only to be told a minute later to leave. So I began hustling Kathleen through the show (which I had already seen). She was docility itself. I learned from her leisurely study of the early, Dutch-subject rooms that her natural pace contemplated a ten-o'clock departure. And while the early stuff is very good. the later stuff is IMMORTAL. So I hustled. When we entered a new room, I led Kathleen straight to what I thought was important. This is what Miss G means by my telling Kathleen what to do, I suppose, but in fact we had seen nearly all the drawings - but only "nearly" - when a guard announced, not that the galleries would close in fifteen minutes, which is what I'd expected, but simply that "these galleries are closed." You can imagine the insurance issues that the museum faces with members' previews. For the record, there was no search of bags. A delicate balancing act meant that some unscrupulous thief-of-an-invitation (there was none of the new swiping* of membership cards) could have blown the joint up.

But this entry is really about dinner, at Caffe Grazie. Caffe Grazie is a boîte that advertises itself as a cheap Italian place. And it's cheaper than many other Italian places on the Upper East Side. But I want to know if $135 for two (including generous tip) is really to be thought of as "cheap." I don't think so, myself. But it was good. The food was fine-to-great, where "great" is "just what I wanted." And the service was great, too, where great means "how long for the next martini?." And the eavesdropping - well, the eavesdropping was world class.

The guys we were eavesdropping on came from Minnesota or Wisconsin. Or perhaps Nebraska. One of the Wholesome States. They were old friends who live here now.  Accents aside, they spoke like naturalized New Yorkers, and one of them was married to a denizen of Queens. But they were obviously corn-fed. My own family, after all, moved here from the Midwest in the Thirties. I Know What It Sounds Like.

The conversation was riveting - possibly because it was conducted at a volume that New York natives avoid. A Nebraska, we're-all-friends-here volume. Not that anybody was loud exactly. But the two old friends from out West were speaking with a complete disregard for the dangers of being overheard. Correspondingly, they said nothing, absolutely nothing, that was indiscreet. Except that one was gay and wanted to talk about Fernando Ferrer vs Michael Bloomberg vis-à-vis "the Community." I should have loved to know his opinion, but officious waiters kept interrupting with dessert choices. And Kathleen actually thought that the entire table was for Bush. (It WASN'T!).

The married couple asked the gay guy when his apartment on Seventh Avenue would be renovated. The usual tale of delayed kitchen cabinets followed.

And I could have thought: out-of-towners. Sure. I was born here, and Kathleen was being tortured in 96th Street about proper diction at the age of five. ("We don't say 'sneakers'; we say 'tennis shoes'.") Kathleen and I are the locals. But New York is different from Paris and London and Rome and Tokyo and everywhere else. Here in New York, you can become a Genuine New Yorker within your own lifetime. You will be welcomed as a native, under certain circumstances, even if you're not one.

I broached my new theory to Kathleen. She said, "What about the Book?." It's true that the Social Register remains a vitally important source of other people's information for certain New Yorkers. It is equally the case that neither Kathleen nor I appears in its pages. But we know enough people who do to know that New York has moved on to a new social register. It's the one that includes Martha Stewart and Donald Trump. Even if we're not in the Book, we didn't go to school with Martha Stewart and Donald Trump. On the other hand, we did go to school with George Bush. So we're ready for a new set of distinctions.

The people from a town in the Midwest that would probably embarrass me by its civic excellence if I knew what it was - they're New Yorkers.