Men to Avoid (in NY) - Part I of XXMMCV

I’ve always hated the saying “you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.” It’s brutally cliché, utterly detrimental to your reputation if put into practice and most importantly a total waste of energy. However there is some truth to the matter – as a wise man once told me relationships are a lot like doing the dishes: a rather endless cycle of lather, rinse repeat, until “ok this is tolerable” or perhaps “wow this is actually rather nice.” The thing is, in New York, dating isn’t really like doing the dishes. It’s more like scrubbing an obnoxious risotto pot where the rice is so crusted into the bottom of the fucking pan that you’d prefer throwing it out altogether than scrub it clean again (even if you did waste like 210 dollars on it at Sur la Table). In short, the memories of the disasters always stick. Worse, if you’re as lazy as I am and categorically refuse to date uptown (or more specifically, above Chelsea on the Westside and Union Square to the East) chances are you will run into your former paramours again, and again, and again. Ad nauseum.

As such, recounting highlights of run-ins and freak behavior has become quite the parlor game. Every girls’ first words in conversation, before even throwing her oversized Miu Miu down on the brunch table, are inevitably “You will not BELIEVE what Blabbity Bla did last night.” What follows is usually a tail so freakishly awesome, it would be entirely unkind not to share.

And I’m not unkind dear readers, nay, I seek to serve a greater good- to warn the innocents (all 65-97 of you on a given day!) of the harrowing characters lurking in their cellphones, soon to be inundating you with invites to their summer homes of ill repute and excellent muffinery.

Our first top 6 list of men to avoid comes from Winnie de Wouse, a darling Upper East sider.

In her own words:

1. Winthrop -the "boyfriend" who hid me away so he could play footsie with Mitzy von Muffling. A TOTAL tool who forgot Valentine's Day year after year and reserved his true affections for Stella, the dog.

2) Rutherford-the ex lax player who pretends like his graduation from Harvard never happened and continues to LIVE THE DREAM

3) Peter- the ex FBI AGENT who drives around in a scary Mercedes and stalks people. Retains a serious hatred for thongs and prefers white granny pantaloons on all his girlfriends, if you can call them girlfriends. (K seriously, there is NO excuse for that)

4) MH-the baboon whose only talent in life is throwing girls 10 feet in the air when “Oh What a Night” comes on at Martignettis. (Ed Note: But that’s a pretty great talent?!”)

5) George the Gopher-did we mention that he has grey hair and wears tennis shoes to work?!? Need we mention he's been 29 years old for about 30 years now?

6) Westville Robinson- sports Whales on his pants and has striped CK Bradley curtains, need we say more?!?

Actually, we need say more.

Recommendation:

Any such encounter with footsie playing, thong hating, keg tapping, tennis shoe wearing, striped curtain toting varieties are to be aborted immediately. No exceptions.

Unless perhaps you’re in for a good time on some frattastic furniture- in which case # 2 is like, totally your guy.

Ever Yours,

Girl

** Please note that in some cases names have been changed. We assure you however that they sounded that ridiculous to begin with.

Tales from my Inbox: Correspondences related to the Restless Leg Committee Spring Fling Benefit

Girl (sent at 10:16 a.m.)

Dear RLS Committee,

I am rather in agreement that the 3 of you leaving your jobs at the same time is a "visual impairment to the halls of New York's top firms". I sadly must remain lest those top firms become devoid of such a nice rack.


In all seriousness, however....I expect to be utterly WOWED by the invite, however you choose to compose it and whichever theme strikes your fancy. My guest list SO FAR (as i expect Miffy's to include all our mutual friends) is as follows:

xx von yy

xx al- xx

et al.

ps I’m left the last 3 slots open for whomever I’m dating at the time of the event.


Bop: (sent at 10:54 a.m.)

Dear Girl,

Please resend your list in English. I can't cope with names that don't end in numerals.



Girl: (sent at 11:06 a.m.)

Dearest Bop,

It sincerely troubles me that you aren't aware of the chicest possible addition to our guest list: oil barons? I trust you may suitably take care of the Tillbot Winston the 6ths.



Token Guy: (sent at 11:08 a.m.)


I do suppose we do need to have a few people at the party who might have something besides great aunt Kiki’s spare china set to donate to Restless Leg.


Miffy: (sent at 11:17 a.m.)


I Concur, though Girl, you may need 5 extra spots for dates. I myself can only handle 2 Tilbot’s during a given hour.



Bop: (sent at 11:30)

Touche. I will see what Tillbot is doing that weekend regardless.

Parenting 101

I find that a significant portion of my days are spent waiting for the elevator; waiting to take a meeting on another floor, going down to Starbucks, grabbing some midday sunshine or a much needed cigarette. Thankfully, my company anticipates our collective boredom and provides reading fodder for the wait. There are sign up sheets for the corporate challenge, booklets on the Tribeca film festival, and anything else that we can direct our focus toward instead of deigning to make conversation with our horrifically boring colleagues.

This week, a flier caught my eye: an Agenda for the Parenting 101-103 Seminar Series. I picked it up.

Scanning the list, I couldn't help pondering what my mother would think of these classes, and this time (unlike countless others) I couldn't silence her hilariously requisite disgust of anything too studied, too complex....too (dare I say it?) serious.

Herewith, the original curriculum coupled with her imagined retorts (a curriculum in and of itself that I strongly suggest {company name redacted} adopt as their own. She did, for all intents and purposes, create me).

Parenting 101-103

Class 1: Confidence, Intuition, and Decision Making

Or, coming to terms with the fact that Dad's decisions trump Mom's.

Class 2: Creating Work/Life Balance

Class 2: Dad works, Mom handles the Life. The rest of you are shit out of luck.

Class 3: Sleep!

Class 3: Get Some!

Class 4: Socializing: Playgroups, Activities, Stimulation

Class 4: Have lots of kids, give them bikes/tennis rackets/ pool memberships, the rest will take care of itself.

Class 5: Nutrition: Easy Food Rules

Class 5: I don't care if Lisa's mom lets them eat Oreo's, you're eating Salmon like a civilized person.

Class 6: Spotlight on the "Terrible Twos"

Class 6: The Death Stare, how to inspire fear in your 2 year old.

Class 7: Care giving: Nanny Issues

Class 7: Just make sure she's legal.



Though naturally, these could all be condensed into a singular session of Parenting 100:

How not to be Billy Ray Cyrus.

Conversations with my beloved guy friends- part II

Guy: So, I'm seeing someone!

Girl: You mean the girlfriend who lives in your apartment, with you?!

Guy: No, not her, she's still there. A new one... She's great!

Don't Believe the Hype

Hey there little Judy,

How did you like ‘Take Your Daughter to Work Day? What? It's take your Child to work day? Thats ridiculous, men don't have to be convinced to go to work, they don't have any other choice! Haha i know, sucks to be them, right? Anyhoo , Daddy took you to his very important office with very important ID cards didn't he now?

I bet you rode on an elevator with the TV inside which was so cool! It was like a spaceship, right? And then you saw all the people he spends time with when he’s not going to your ballet recitals. Were they nice? Most of them don't have hair, and the ones that do talk too loud. Some of the ladies have candy on their desks, but then they expect you to talk to them like all the time. I hope you stayed away from the bad candy people, Judy.

What next? Did he have pictures of mommy in his cube? He usually keeps those in the drawer where his assistant can’t see them….what did you ask?...why would he hide mommy?... no sweetie, of course they still love you- they just don’t really love each other anymore! That’s why they sleep in separate bedrooms. Anyway, I’m just kidding about the pictures, mmkay? Here, have a cookie I scavenged from the conference room. That meeting was over like 4 hours ago anyway.

So Daddy gets to leave the office at noon everyday? That’s so cool, where? Oh, just to the cafeteria?! That's okay too. Were the lines long? They’re always a mile long in my super sweet subsidized cafeteria!

Did he get that mediocre sushi that he’s utterly sick of and pays out the ass for before returning to his desk and fighting back tears to keep his eyes open through the remainder of the day? I do that too!

What did you do next? Did you ride the train with all the crackheads and numerous other suited up wierdos? I know- that’s totally the best part of my day! Did you fight back touching any of them so that when the train car jolts, you made sure not to contract AIDS?!? That’s an important part of the journey. Weeeeeeeeeee work is fun!”

Sign you up, right? Tennis games and sit down lunches are for wimps, Judy.

This sounds SO much better than being a trophy wife.

If Gordon Gekko were around today he'd be on the cover of VF preaching "Green is Good"

This whole going green thing is getting a little out of control. I'm not saying global warming isn't a "real" phenomenon and that I shouldn't be separating the Grey Goose bottles from the old issues of Vogue that comprise the bulk of my trash, but all this other stuff is driving me batty.

Consider energy saving toilets; if I wanted a toilet that couldn't handle the "detrimental" effects of toilet paper, I'd move to Europe where all the toilets are unintentionally this fucking weak and probably a lot cheaper to boot. "Organic cotton underwear" is another one- I quite like underwear that is spun from years of one Nepalese caterpillar's hard labour- it gives me the extra oomph i need to get through the day. And I can't even get really started on sustainable lightbulbs- mostly because I don't change them, the doorman does. And something tells me that despite the ever resplendent smile he's got on, he couldn't care less if the world were going to hell in a hand basket.

Given how outrageous the demands of this whole eco-sustaining organix purification of a mess we've gotten ourselves into, I really shouldn't be surprised then when the demands to go green become increasingly ridiculous. But lo, they have.

From this morning's Shopbop, (a luxury fashion website I bought a singular pair of shoes from, that now spams my inbox on an hourly basis) we get the latest in Declarations of Green: A lookbook of styles that I wouldn't wear at the threat of going naked. Drapey dresses paired with dirty converse, headbands worn across the forehead hippy style, shorts paired with ratty tanktops and vests of varying colors and homogenously hideous fit. It was as though someone rounded up all the dirty looking girls on the lower east side and promised them a line of coke if they could just sit still long enough for the molestor behind the lens to take their photo.

As if the visual onslaught didn't suffice, ShopBop introduces their green store as follows, heralding the likes of "This season's designers who used their creative powers to ease the burden on Mother Earth, bringing us sustainable styles with a couture sensibility and artsy totes that make plastic totes looks positively passe."

All I have to say is, thank you fashion gods, for smiling with such sweetness upon your clueless children, forcing the hobo sensibility down my fucking throat in your effort to capitalize on the whole green trend.

I really don't have many important things to think about on a Monday morning, except for perhaps retaining my clients, but lets be honest, thats not important. Not as important anyway as my buying your "organic cotton" 90 dollar t-shirt that provides about as much coverage as a Hanes undershirt after being taken to with a hose (Guys love boobs anyway! It's a net net win).

Furthermore, I am forever indebted to you for telling me how passe grocery bags are!! I always knew that guy at the supermarket who just automatically assumes I want plastic (even though i like totally would have asked for paper!) was trying to ruin my look. I think an artsy tote would set off my french cuff shirts and pencil skirts rather nicely anyway.

Anyway in short, thanks for saving me from being such a has been. And thanks to all companies that unleash these hideous goods onto the marketplace so that I, ever the "responsible" yuppy, may be forced to consume them.

I hate you all.

Psuedo Pompous Musings

From the esteemed Bop (of Musings on Wasp Parents I notoriety), in response to a query on whether the turtlenecks and J Crew crewnecks of our youth would pass on the inimitable streets of New York:

"Darling, a crewneck sweater from JCrew is a J Crewneck. Double use of crew in one sentence..tsk."

Indeed, Bop. Indeed.