Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [93]
PUFF DERBY
K
now this: the Kentucky Derby is not about the horses. It’s about the hats. These creations are wider than a professional linebacker’s shoulders and cost about as much as his annual salary. They come in all colors, from that pale blue in sanitary napkin commercials to unapologetic red. Profusions of flowers or feathers or both extend at least a foot in every possible eyepoking direction. Know this also: it is apparently a Kentucky State law that the hat and dress must be a coordinated twinset. Therefore, if the dress has violet leopard-print spots, so, too, must the hat. The dress itself must hug the body like a second layer of cells, and if it is above a size four, the wearer of the dress must stay within one hundred yards of the parking lot. Said hat and dress are always, always worn with strappy, open-toed high heels in a complimentary hue.
This is Easter with gigantic, leaking breast implants.
I know these things because last week, Dennis and I drove from Manhattan to Louisville for Derby Day. But as mesmerizing as these hats are, my eyes were involuntarily drawn to the faces of the ladies who wore them. Though many were in their early twenties, they’d already racked up multiple face-lifts, evidenced by their unnaturally uniform skin and a nearly identical facial expression: “Southern cordial.” These Dixie chicks wear so much makeup that if you touched one of their cheeks, your finger would look as though you’d just dipped it into a jar of Skippy.
These ladies have one final accoutrement: a man’s arm hooked territorially—predatorily, even—around their waists. The arm is clad in a flawless Hickey-Freeman seersucker suit. At the wrist: a heavy, shiny Rolex. On the hand: a wedding band, sized slightly up for easy removal in airport lounges.
The men don’t have hats, but they do have thick, penis-width cigars protruding from the smug corners of their mouths. Their mere presence say “old money/young wife.”
Yet for all their composure and utter self-confidence, not one of these ladies or gentlemen passed by our seats without giving us a look of mild curiosity tinged with jealousy.
Dennis and I were dressed in shorts from Abercrombie, oxfordcloth shirts, and loud striped ties. We both wore linen navy blazers and baseball caps. Dennis wore Nikes; I wore New Balance. The security guard at the front gate remarked, “This is the best outfit I’ve seen today,” as she scanned Dennis’s camouflage cargo pockets with her wand. Apparently she’d already had her fill of plastic women in dangerous headgear.
But our outfits were not the source of Derby envy. Quite simply, we had the best seats at Churchill Downs. Private box seats, right on the track, at the finish line. The box seats belong to Dennis’s friend Sheila or, more accurately, to Sheila’s grandfather, Doc Twining.
Doc Twining was a doctor in the day when being a doctor meant something grand, like a Cadillac Eldorado convertible, a large home without a mortgage, and a lake house for the summer. He was a surgeon, saved lives in World War Two, and became best friends with the governor of Kentucky. Thus, the box seats. He probably paid for them with a round of drinks and a handshake. Or perhaps a free appendectomy. These days, a typical doctor who worked for an HMO might not even be able to afford digital cable to watch the Derby on TV.
When Doc Twining dies, the box reverts to the Derby, where it will be auctioned yearly to the highest bidder. Sadly, a corporation will probably be the highest bidder, and uncouth middle managers at a snack-chip company will occupy the box. I imagine they will wave flags of some sort. Perhaps they will brandish sticks.
But last weekend, the box belonged to six of us: Dennis, me, Sheila, Sheila’s husband, mother, and brother. The brother was fresh out of prison, having served time for an unnamed crime. He wore gray polyester slacks and a Hawaiian shirt and ate beef jerky. He seemed like a really