1) It’s been such a long time since I traveled (last July), that I’d forgotten I sleep badly on the night before I leave! And so it was this time, tossing and turning until I finally just started the day 5:15. Oof.
2) It takes guts, or just an absence of brains, to wear winter white for travel on a rainy day. After my walk to the subway, though, I was indoors until I popped above ground in Manhattan. Still, one looks at station benches and paper coffee cups differently! I’ve spilled coffee on this coat before, and the benches at the far end of Back Bay Station Track One are grimy with old pigeon poop.
Track One at Back Bay Station may not have been cleaned since World War II.
2a) There is a special place in Heaven for drivers who slow down and avoid (as much as they are able) puddles so that they don’t splash pedestrians.
3) This trip I was not in the quiet car. And that was made very obvious by the two women (of my age or a whisper younger) sitting directly behind me creating a profile for a dating website (!) and sharing Dreary Suburban Gossip. Worse, their tickets were not together, but they sat together anyway, which created trouble with the conductor (“You told the wrong guy, lady”) and inconvenience for others — which one of them simply did not understand.
3a) So I spent most of the trip catching up on my etiquette course (yes, I’m a student again!) with my earbuds, and daydreaming.
4) On arrival I had just enough time to drop my bag and dash uptown to Dempsey & Carroll to meet one of the nicest and kindest etiquette professionals on Instagram, Old Soul Etiquette. She and I settled in for tea down the street at Orsay and had a really absorbing talk about all things manners. She was so generous with her time, and — well, she is the one of the people I wish I could truly be more like.
An art installation using clouds of colored tulle in Madison Square Park.
5) Then it was whoosh! back downtown on the 6 train to Apotheke NoMad, a plush basement speakeasy, to meet another IG follower — who quite took my breath away with his deep knowledge of food and travel, his razor-sharp tailoring, and his general presence. He was, I think, genuinely shocked when I mentioned I was 60; I told him my skincare secret was good lighting. Apotheke was wonderful; I forget what I had now, “Oh, the essence of a few woodland herbs and flowers, tra-la, tra-la” no doubt, but it was light and involved gin. I was going to order something called Clouds of Gold until the waitress explained that it was a foamy drink. It would not be very elegant to risk a foamy mustache.
6) It was noisy at Apotheke (but I would go again), and eventually we each had to go on to our next engagments. Mine, later that night, was the Green Fairy Society, an absinthe-oriented group, which had a tasting and cabaret/burlesque show on the third floor of an old building on East Fourth. I had not really had dinner (or lunch, for that matter), and you know how I am about being late. After taking a cab down to the bar, I killed time over a couple slices at a nearby pizza joint (being very careful to keep grease spots from my winter white) and a saunter around the block.
7) As it was, they didn’t open the doors until ten minutes after the stated time, and I had to kill some more time over a G&T in the Red Room itself. But what an amazing evening! People really took the trouble to dress, and I saw some incredible suits, ties and hats (not on inside, as is proper) on the gentlemen, and some remarkable cocktail toilettes on the ladies. A sleek black sheath, nearly backless with the backline accented with a double row of pearls. A 1950s wide-skirted royal blue off-the-shoulder gown worn with a disk of blue feathers topped with a smaller disk of white feather that looks like a chrysanthemum; the overall agreeable effect was of elegance married to one of Mae West’s chorus girls in She Done Him Wrong. The bartenders know how to make a perfect Sazerac, too.
7a) I wore my black suit with pink accoutrements and one of Gramma’s Mexican silver filigree brooches. It got so crowded I was glad I didn’t tear anyone’s clothes with it.
7b) Everyone present was a) straight, b) knew everyone else in the room, and c) did not cease talking loudly even during the absinthe experts’ remarks, which made me feel bad for them.
7c) Before the festivities officially commenced, the burlesque girls kept moving back to front through the long narrow crowded room in scarlet shorty kimonos, finishing whatever tech prep they needed I guess. A fierce honky-tonk pianist bashed fire and blues out of the upright on the tiny stage, we had the absinthe remarks, and then the burlesque got started. Most impressive, sultry, salty, provocative. The legacy of Betty Page lives!
8) As engaging as it all was — truly incredible! — by 11:15 I was fading after all the events of the day. I made a new best friend by giving up my barstool (from which I had as good a view of the action as possible), grabbing a cab and heading back to my hotel. I fell into bed just after midnight feeling — well, to be honest, feeling old and provincial — but happy with the events of the day, all the good conversations, and the energy of Manhattan.
How it ended.
9) It’s now early Friday afternoon and I still haven’t left the hotel — which just goes to show that if I don’t schedule something, I tend not to do anything!