adventures in midtown

Three hot ladies.

One buffet table.

And a hangover so bad my feelings hurt.

It must be friday!!

Last night, at my mother's behest, I took my dear friends Thea (see last week's adventure here) and Sarah to a cocktail party at the Yale Club. I had visions of all the cute guys I went to college with circling us like hungry sharks, feeding us witty conversation to match the dim sum and crudite. And I won't say that we didn't meet smart guys who offered to buy us drinks. We did.

And there's even a chance Sarah made a valuable business contact. But it was not quite the scene I had imagined (i.e., one not involving a semi-sober yalie who bore a striking resemblance to Gilbert Godfried... had he been from the Ukraine).

So we left, bellies full of cheese and raspberries and squid, and found our way to the bar at the Bryant Park Grill. Now, for those of you not familiar with this location, let's just say that the last time I went there I woke up on the upper east side. Yes, it was a long, long time ago, but no, not a whole lot had changed about the clientele of the bar. Two words: Meat. Market.

Suits! Suits! Everywhere suits! For Sarah, who already has a marvelous boyfriend, this was nothing great. For Thea, who likes them poor and skinny, well, the bar staff was poor... But for yours truly? I dig a boy in a suit. So you'd think I would be in paradise.

You'd be wrong, of course.

We did some very important sociological research that night and put a going-out theory to test in true Carrie Bradshaw fasion: Can three hot women pick up guys? The answer: a resounding no. While the three of us were at the bar, the only guy who approached us was Thea's sweet, short, foreign lover in a bright orange shirt who said something like "he [the guy behind him that he was pointing to] has never see such a beautiful women all his life."

After one drink, Sarah gave up the fight, and surrendered to the voices in her apartment calling her away to do "important stuff." And Thea and I toughed it out, because as you learned last week, we're troopers.

And that's when things got weird. Weird. WEIRD.

First of all, this very odd, off-center guy approached us, telling us he-was-Eduardo-he-was-a-law-student-at-nyu-and-an-interpreter-for-the-UN-and-for-the-supreme-court-and-did-he-know-us-from-somewhere-we-looked-very-familiar. And he stared directly at Thea, like she was on fire. We start slowly backing away from him. He asks where-she-works-and-what-she-does-for-a-living and she tells him the Cadillac Grille on the west side. (I ask her later if this restaurant even exists. She says no.) He asks me where-I-work-and-what-I-do, but I can see from the way he's still staring at Thea that's I'm a fly on his windscreen, and won't even have to make something up.

Then Thea and I just stop answering questions. He finally gets the hint. "Are-you-having-a-private-conversation-I-don't-want-to-interrupt" and I jump through that open door and say "Yes! Yes we were! A very private conversation! Sorry!"

He wanders off, I fall into a fit of hysterics, and Thea just stands there stunned. Turns out, she's met him before. He's followed her around before. She is more than just a little uncomfortable.
So I position Thea betweeen myself and Oddy McOddball, so her back is always to him -- a tricky task for a girl who a) has had two drinks on nothing but calamari and b) is trying very hard to pay attention to what Thea is saying.

And then Weird Part Two happened. This guy standing in a group right next to us turns around and says, "I need your help." And we jump at the opportunity, saying in unison "We need your help!" Apparently we have to rescue him from a pack of cackling long island chippies, and he is to protect us from Senor McOdball. Turns out he's pretty much what you'd expect at Bryant Park: a jerk in a suit. He flirts with Thea -- and to me, it's clear that Thea is the one he picked out, and I'm the extra baggage. (Not that I mind at all. To me, Thea is so gorgeous she's the obvious choice. I like to be pretty, and then sneak in with wit and a disarming smile. But I digress...) So I joke about making myself scarce and being a third wheel and ha ha ha. But as the night wears on (and I have more to drink) it seems more and more likely that he's trying to work his lack-of-magic on me. Thea is completely repulsed by him and all his jerkiness.

I, on the othe hand? Let me just say that I love a challenge. If someone's going to be a dick to me, he'll take it as good as he gives it (or I'll walk away). And there was something to this guy -- I could give a shit about him. Hell, I even called him by the wrong name at one point (oops!). I didn't ask him about what he did for a living, I didn't tell him how impressive I thought he was, being a big bond trader and all. I didn't swoon over him at all. In fact, he said something annoying more than once, so I pushed his head.

But I did give him my number. (Ok, it was my service number, so he won't reach me directly, but he'll be able to leave a message. And then I can decide if I want to call him back or not.)

We left when the bar closed (yeah, that's right, first time I closed a bar on a weeknight!), turning down offers of "free sex in the back of the bar" that this guy and his clan were going to next.

("Free sex?" a girl next to me said, "What, like we're paying for it here?") Thea got a handshake, I got a kiss on the cheek, he got a smack on the ass.

And then I got into the most expensive cab I've ever taken home. The driver was my neighbor, and yet he still took me the longest way possible -- across 42nd street and down the FDR to the Brooklyn Bridge. If it weren't already 1:00 in the morning, I would have made a stink.

But at least I was going home, and not to the upper east side.