full circle

Many, many moons ago, when I was fresh out the joint (grad school), I wanted to be an entertainment writer. I wrote for some pretty cool publications, including a certain hip-hop mag that shall not be named, and interviewed some relatively famous people. It was pretty fun. One of the many perks of being in this line of work was going to as many "industry" parties as one could possibly squeeze in and still keep your day job. This was much easier said than done, as the vast majority of these parties involved open bars and teeny-tiny hors d'oeuvres that had absolutely no chance of soaking up the massive amounts of alcohol these people were quaffing for free. For the most part, the crowd at most of these things consisted of three or four truly famous people, a dozen relatively famous people, and a couple of hundred posers who waited on line for at least a half-hour to mingle amongst the other two groups, trade business cards and catch contact highs off each other's (perceived) fabulosity. I could call it another, extremely vulgar term (one that rhymes with "herkle perk"), but I'll refrain.

Call me cynical, but that's exactly how I felt after I attended one of these parties last night. I was actually looking forward to it, as I hadn't gone to one of these since I traded in hip-hop fab for alt-weekly anonymity four years ago. I also wanted to support a friend who had contributed to the coffee table book being feted that night, and since these things are basically happy hours on steroids anyway and I'm still a broke-ass journalist, I appreciated the rare opportunity to drink top-shelf shit for free.

I'll admit this right now: the party was dope. A gorgeous hostess greeted me and my friends at the door with a smile and a snifter of Hennessy XO. Not bad. I crossed the threshold, looked to my left and spotted Common (looking waaay hotter than the hostess...swoon) granting a television interview to a college friend of mine. Even better. I spotted the young pianist and took note of the wood paneling, crystal chandeliers, winding staircases and waiters carrying around trays of caviar on toast points, and realized, to my amazement, that this was some pretty swanky shit (and I hadn't even seen the rooftop pool yet!). Considering that most industry parties consist of blasting hip-hop into the ears of people way too bourgie to actually dance to it at some random club somewhere below 14th Street, I thought this was a marked improvement.

And then I started mingling. I made my way upstairs....and upstairs...and upstairs (seriously, there were like five floors to this place!) and started realizing exactly why I didn't miss this at all. Men in suits futilely chatting up model chicks, people who despise each other giving insincere air kisses along with their business cards, and impeccably dressed women I badly wanted to tie down and force-feed, all circling around each other until it became a whirling vortex of fakeness threatening to suck me in. And no one was dancing! (Sorry, but I hate that shit.) After awhile, I gave up on having any sort of interesting conversatin with anyone, joined my peeps downstairs and sucked down premium cognac with the homies for the rest of the evening.

It was a fun night, considering all the fake. I actually spotted a few celebs (which happens way less than you think at these functions). I stood less than a foot away from Perez Hilton (which was pretty cool), seriously considered force-feeding the girl from Drumline, and recognized a model whose name I can't remember for the life of me from a documentary I'd seen about aggressive lesbians (go figure). We took off to Fort Greene, and after a little bar-hopping, we ended up at Frank's, a not remotely famous bar on Fulton Street that had about a half-dozen regular, everyday brothers gulping down that last brew before last call, a jukebox with all the great blues and R&B hits from the 70's, and, most importantly, a chance for a group of friends to laugh, talk, drink (yeah, some more) and finally, be real. The night finally ended with the boyfriend playing me his favorite tracks off of the first two Outkast albums (basically, all of them) before I finally fell asleep. I thought about the party and the world I'd left behind. I figure, it's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't wanna live there.