Begin the Beguine

I was invited to a party last week - the type of party I never should have been invited to. I am of the boxed wine and first-class processed cheese ball party variety. This party was not such a party - it was a rather fancy gathering of New York literati types. You know the type - or at have imagined them - with their impressive eyeglasses - the severe and artful plastic frames that look German or gay - they somehow suggest that whoever is wearing them is curating some gay exhibit at a German museum. Ah, them - with their bundles of grapes and thoughtful scowls - the well-timed throwing back of the head. They who write for Karper's, The New Forker and The Paris Redo. Walking into the room they know how to dangle their participles. I, on the other hand, have no clue what to do in these situations. I have not read the Times today. Nor have I read anything else for that matter in over 3 months. I did eat a delicious sandwich for lunch and hope that if given the opportunity to engage in conversation, that this sandwich will carry me through for a good 2 to 7 minutes. And I was given just such an opportunity to regale the dance critic for The New Forker, who it turns out was actually the dance calendar compiler for The New Forker, with my many sandwich tales. After wrapping up my lunch food speech, which thanks to the help of vodka and club soda - more the vodka, less the club soda - was a real unleashing of party conversation poetry. Having warmed up the air and trying to find a way to connect with this great critic of dance, I told him a story about how I was a tap dancer when I was 12. That I learned to tap dance because I thought that would be the basis for a great career as an entertainer. As long as I could do a little heel-click-toe, everything else would fall into place - the movie roles, the repeat guest appearances on the late show, the public radio interviews. The Gregory Hines of white men said, "Isn't that a bit anachronistic?" And I smiled awkwardly, craving a little sliver of a cheese ball on a friendly cracker and trying to remember the definition of the word 'anachronistic'. Thankfully his friend walked in. This guy was named Josh. He said he'd made a movie. It was a good movie - one about smuggling drugs in one's intestines in airplanes. Gregory said Josh had smuggled drugs to pay for the making of the movie. A point for Mr. Hines - who could, after all of that dance calendar creating, be funny. I suggested the name of the drug smuggler's movie could be used as a name for a new sexual position involving two women. This didn't go over well with the witty dancer or the law-breaking filmmaker. So I turned around, pushed my way through the bespectacled gorgeous men and women of literature, dashed to the emergency exit and into the subway - which I took to the ugliest stop I could find. Once there and noticing how hungry all the banter and talk about sandwiches made me, I found the dirtiest DcMonald's in America full of crazier people than I'd seen since my days of working in that lock-down psychiatric facility in Sylmar. I did a little soft shoe and ordered a cheeseburger with no meat. Like walking up to my own front door with the mat in front of it that says, 'Welcome home'.