I went to a gala last night, got out the old tux. Actually, I’ve only worn it about three times. I wasn’t happy. I sure didn’t need the suspenders. I needed a tailor. I feel like there’s a clock ticking on that thing, like an annual exam. It’s worse than a finger up your butt. It’s a Donna Karin.
My wife looked great. She’s much too thin lately, a nervous wreck over her son. But in a little black dress, you sure couldn’t tell there was anything wrong. Still, we were fighting. She was pissed that I was pissed over what happened at dinner the night before. Even though we were fuming, she kept asking me: How does this look? And what could I say? You know how she looks.
Normally, I would have gotten jealous once we arrived. There were guys on her like flies. But those are not the guys I’m worried about. I’m worried about the guys who stare at her and don’t make a move. Those are the guys that get me upset. Consequently, those are the guys that interest my wife, since she likes to make me jealous.
But last night I couldn’t give a shit, which is best. The guy on her left was an Italian pop star wannabe who got up to sing during the antipasto. This joker actually thought he had a chance. I felt sorry for him. You only have to hear my wife call someone pathetic once and it will put you on guard for life.
There were more speeches than I could handle from founders, chairmen, and Grand Knights. I even missed the main course because I couldn’t sit still. I was wandering around looking at the blind auction, though I couldn’t see what was blind about it. You had to write your name and phone number next to the last price you were willing to pay.
This year it looked like a yard sale for Italian swells, competing to pay more, not less. But that isn’t too bad when you have Frette and Portolano clearing out prime inventory. It was a benefit for my stepson’s school, which is where all the spoiled Italian kids go. And if my wife is serious about anything, it’s spoiling her kid and being Italian.
It was at Cipriani, which is quite a racket when it comes to dishing out food. They draw Bellini’s from a well, make cannelloni by the mile, and they can deep-fry a mule. And they have the same set-up all over the world. McDonald’s Platinum, baking cheese and frying bread for people who think they have an excuse. Last night they fried a school of branzino, which would be seven hundred fish delivered hot simultaneously at $1000 a plate. That’s franchising.
Our fight started a day earlier, when my wife’s cousin came over for dinner. I went out of my way to make something good, which was pasta con zucchini al minestre and rollatini di vitello with broiled asparagus. My wife’s cousin is a Professor of Philosophy and a very important guy who looks down his nose at my wife because he doesn’t approve of all her choices, including me. So we’re always a little on edge whenever he comes over. I work it out by cooking, since the guy is a big eater. My wife spends the whole time acting like we’re the perfect little family, and that her son is not picking his nose or pouring salt onto the tablecloth just to see how fast it comes out. I might be inclined to ignore it myself if the kid wasn’t staring at me the whole time, daring me to say something, which I’d rather not do, since my wife would immediately respond by telling her cousin that I had no patience, was very intolerant, and otherwise limited in my understanding of teenagers.
Knowing this, I managed to hold off until the moment when my stepson told us he was going out for cigarettes and demanded ten dollars. My wife said no, very embarrassed. My stepson started a 'you promised' argument, which my wife dismissed as absurd, as if to say to her cousin that she would never promise such a thing as cigarettes. She drew me in with a 'help me' look. So, I told my stepson to get lost and let us adults finish our dinner, at which point he started shouting at his mother in Italian, which is his way of telling me to mind my own business.
In the middle of all that, my wife suddenly told him to take ten dollars from her purse, leaving me twisted with a message so mixed we were all stymied. The little shit was smug, I was steamed, and her cousin was speechless. My wife acted like she asked for the time of day and was waiting for someone to look at their watch. I did promise him, she said.
For me, everything up until that point was just garden-variety, but her cousin raised the stakes. I want to appeal to this man, I said. The most basic precept of behavioral psychology has just been violated. Rewarding certain behavior encourages that behavior - or didn’t they teach you that in your school?
Here I went beyond the pale. My wife is very sensitive about the limits of her formal education, especially as regards her cousin, who has more formal education than anyone I ever met. In fact, whenever he comes to dinner, my wife directs the conversation into the upper reaches of refined thought.
In an attempt to regain ground, I referred to her cousin’s son, a fine young man my wife admires for his intelligence and temperament and to whom she would never compare her own son, as if that would be wishing for too much. At 24, he is already at work on his second masters degree – the first being philosophy, to please his father, and the second in economics, to please himself. His father, sitting with some veal on his fork, looked contemplative. I beat my son, he said. I beat the shit out of him for years.
Italians, especially Italians like my wife, have excellent table manners. She offered her cousin more asparagus. Maybe I was wrong, he said, but I did it anyway. So my wife offers him dessert and coffee.
I was sure that her cousin’s confession would somehow end up reflecting badly on me, and it wasn’t ten minutes after he left the house that she made an attempt. You think that it makes you right; it makes you want to beat my son, she said. I wouldn’t dare, I said, as it might involve the authorities, who would certainly be called for when I was finished.
Her son came back from buying cigarettes like he went down to Delaware, but I was asleep by then. The next time I saw him was at the gala. The whole senior class was there, in evening wear as they imagined it. Massimo the blackguard was glued to my stepson except when he came to say hello, bowing before me as bold as brass. As for my stepson, he was the one holding the pot, and he smelled like it from three feet away. I chastised him for this in the hallway and he promised to stash it, which he didn’t, since he stank of it all night, which was more or less why I didn’t hang around the seats for which I paid two grand. He was busy crashing our table and wolfing down his mother’s dinner like a dog reeking of skunk. Not only was I embarrassed, but I wanted the guys who had been eyeing my wife to get a good look before they did any bidding.
