My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [69]
“I love when Facebook’s more than just a place to play Mafia Wars.”136
“Or to be stalked by creepy high school boyfriends,” I agree.
“Anything else we need to cover, or are we all caught up?”
“I guess that’s it, except . . . um, can you help me get this pencil out of my hair?”
With my updates complete—and once Stacey stops laughing—we launch into a long discussion of Project Runways past. We should be watching it right now, but with the Lifetime/Bravo legal battle over which network will get the show still not settled, all show fans are temporarily auf’d. As we’re reminiscing about Santino’s brilliant Tim Gunn impersonation, I suddenly snap my fingers. “Oh, my God, I didn’t even tell you my big news! I wangled my way into being invited to Authors Night!”
“Which is?”
“A fund-raiser for the East Hampton Library in New York. But your question should be who’s that because you’re going to die when you hear who the honorary chairmen are. Brace yourself. . . . I’m talking Jay McInerney, Candace Bushnell, and Alec Baldwin! Plus, there’s going to be a hundred other authors there, now including me! And the best part? Bethenny Frankel from Real Housewives is going to be there! Could you die?”
“I could die!”
“You should come!” Yes! That’s brilliant!
She gives me a wry grin before saying, “I spent enough on vacations for a while.”
“Okay. That makes sense. Anyway, after the big book-signing cocktail reception dealie, there are private dinners for some of the featured authors at mansions all over the Hamptons. I’m not a featured author—and why would I be?—but to go to a dinner all I have to do is buy a ticket. No one knows who’s hosting which dinner until all the parties are assigned, but one of the hosts is Rudy Giuliani! I could go to Rudy Giuliani’s house! How surreal is that? I mean, six years ago my electricity’s being cut off and my car’s getting repossessed and I’m being evicted from my apartment,137 and now I’m all, ‘Yeah, havin’ dinner with Rudy in the Hamptons, what of it?’ ”
“That’s absolutely crazy. How will you make sure you get his party?”
“I went through the list of authors and tried to pick which one he’d most likely want. There’s a dinner with this general who was in charge of the armed forces in Iraq. I looked him up on Amazon, and his book was paired with a bunch of conservative books, so I figure that’s my best bet.”
“Smart. And hey, that dinner can be your goal.”
“Exactly!”
As I’ve been forwarding my cultural education, I’ve lost some steam because I couldn’t figure out an end goal. When I was working on Such a Pretty Fat, my objective was to be healthier, and I had ways of calculating that. I could step on the scale, measure my cholesterol, check my blood pressure, et cetera.
“Be less of a lazy dumb ass” is kind of amorphous in terms of goals. How do I measure that? Count all the times I don’t get pencils caught in my hair? Not poisoning myself every couple of days? Actually getting off the couch to find the remote control instead of watching yet another Snuggie infomercial?
Now, “Be able to carry on a conversation at Rudy Giuliani’s dinner table without breaking into terror sweat,” that’s concrete. Plus, at the book event, I’ll see Candace Bushnell and I can honestly tell her, “Oh, yeah, Baudelaire? I’ve been reading him for a while now. Big fan.”
This event will really be my test, my version of the Empire Ball. This will be my chance to move among figurative royalty and see if I can blend in with them.
For some reason, I’ve always linked the idea of being cultured with the notion of having class. I realize they’re two separate entities, yet in my mind they’re inexorably tied. I feel like one can’t be classy if not first cultured. I liken this concept to Maslow’s hierarchy