As a young woman I viewed them with excitement. Would Mr.
Right be there? Would I see or hear something wonderful?
As I matured, cocktail parties became stages where one would
display clothing, personalities, searching for the juicy bit
of gossip while engaged in a continuous comparison; do I
look younger than ___ is my husband making more money than
___ is my dress more expensive than ___ grading one's
evening on pluses and minuses.
As I sailed into middle age I experienced cocktail parties
as battlegrounds.
What should I wear, how should I do my hair, what should I
not discuss? Is this dress too young? Does it clash with my
jewelry? Does it make me look too fat, expose too much old
flesh? Should I dye my hair? Is this style too frivolous?
As most debs I had married an older man. At twenty one the
fact he was forty was not insurmountable. When I was a young
forty five that he was sixty four was still tolerable.
Now that I'm fifty five he is a feeble seventy four so I
attend these obligatory social events alone.
I know almost everyone, almost everyone knows me. I pretend
to enjoy cocktail parties, just as I pretend to enjoy my
wasted life. For it is wasted.
Sometimes, as I am driven through New York I envy the
working girls with their futures ahead of them. Many will
'be', not marry someone who "is". Many will create an
adventurous life where things change.
It is not that I romanticize poverty or labour, it is that I
have done nothing with my life except attend cocktail
parties.
I pose, posture perfect, as the manicure, the hair do, the
gown, the jewelry, the remarks, and I see the Cat among the
pigeons.
It is not every function to which the Cat arrives and he is
not the same Cat today he was twenty years or twenty months
ago but he is the same Cat among pigeons.
I know what he is here for. He is here for a woman like me.
An older rich woman who will pay dearly for a night of his
lies and keep paying.
He will find an older woman who will buy him enough to
please his young girlfriend. An older woman who will keep
buying until she learns of his young girlfriend.
She, who has jeopardised her marriage, her social standing,
her existence for his fraudulent passion will become
schizophrenic, unable to reveal her heartbreak forced to
perform her social gestures as if her heart hadn't become a
lead weight sinking into her stomach.
Cat will shake off his loss and find another older woman,
perhaps another young girlfriend, until he is no longer
young. If he's bright enough, just before he turns rancid,
he will trap a rich widow, not impossibly older, who will
marry him.
Cat is staring at me.
This one is tall, as most are, blond as perhaps half of them
are, thin as all of them are. Thin and hungry for a life he
doesn't deserve for he is not willing or capable of working
for it.
I wonder if this one will be a dancer or an actor or a
painter or writer, some nebulous sort of career which
permits huge chunks of free time especially when the husband
of the pigeon is out.
I wonder if he will have an accent, French or Greek or Other
to give an exotic flair.
I turn away a look of contempt on my face. He should be
astute enough to read my mien to know I am not interested in
beautiful young men and find another pigeon.
I pretend to listen to Marianne's description of her new
villa. She is a decade younger than I, a recent divorcee,
who believes in Ivanna Trump's philosophy.
She babbles about her villa in some Caribbean paradise where
she could ensconce a gigolo like our Cat, and pretend he
cares about her, not the clothes she buys him, the food she
feeds him, the places she takes him, on and on.
My Cat is speaking to Cynthia Dupont. He's wasting his time.
She has a lover; a well known actor she took from the gutter
who is married to a simpering actress.
I laugh, surprising Marianne, who smiles foolishly, trying
to imagine what she has said which was faintly amusing, but
I am thinking of Cat, thinking of walking across the floor
to where he is flattering Cynthia and inform him, "You're
wasting your time."
Of course I do not move.
Marianne and I are joined by the Severins. They've just
returned from somewhere and need to impress us. He's an
affable drunkard, she saved from obscurity by the marriage.
She clings to him as if he would run away; perhaps he would
if she let go.
Her eyes trace the room, ah, she's seen Cat. Is that lust on
her face? Does she remember what it was like when sex was
important? She turns back to Severin, measuring him,
wondering if she should gamble, decides not. Coward.
The waiter offers canapes, I take to be polite, know Cat is
hungry and will try to unobtrusively clean the platter. I
wonder who invited him.
