Last night was an evening that exemplifies what it really means to be a thirtysomething, single, urban professional. At 7 p.m. I was negotiating with my opposing counsel in San Francisco about how to take all of his pending motions off the table while leaving all of ours on schedule -- which he remarkably agreed to do. My opposing counsel is a Chinese Jew who grew up in Arizona and lives in San Francisco. I am not kidding. I learned this during the deposition of the Hebrew-speaking American-born Italian Jew which I took in May (careful readers will recall it).
At 8 p.m. I was sitting with my parents and my mother's Wellesley classmates at Les Halles, swilling wine and talking about El Presidente, women in the workplace, project management, and the flat (and therefore inefficient) organizational structure of investment banks and law firms. One of the women was a VP at Merrill Lynch, the other is an executive head hunter.
Then at 10 p.m. I found myself two blocks from monumental Pennsylvania Avenue and one block from stodgy Arnold & Porter and Covington & Burling, at the rocking 70s dance club, Polly Esther's. DC denizens will have noticed the post-9/11 mural of a giant American flag on its exterior wall.... Anyway, inside was a private party for someone I don't know. Every single person in the room was between the ages of 30 and 35 (v. v. unusual in DC, where everyone is either an intern, a student, or 50 years old) and most of 'em were getin' jiggy to tunes that were popular when we were all about five years old. There was a smoke machine, a strobe light, and legions of people dressed in what is our generation's best approximation of what grown ups wore in the 70s. There was one excellent man in a dark mauve sequined pant suit. We kept losing him in the smoke. Another exceedingly short man was in a white tuxedo, and then there were various women wearing pale blue eye-shadow, cheek sparkles, giant arm bangles, bobby pins and lace-up espadrilles. The short man in the white tuxedo tried to find out what the names of me and my two friends are -- all three of us have names that begin with "ck" sounds. He failed miserable - "Katie? Kathy? Karen? Christine? Chloe? Crystal? Clarabelle?" I wandered off in disgust.
Highlights of the DJ's evening included Men at Work's "Down Under" -- ("I met a man in Brussels, six foot four, and full of muscles...." --- also known as the Vegemite Sandwich song), ABBA's "Dancing Queen" (which brought shrieks from all the foreign service brats on the dance floor, of which there were a startling number), James Brown's "Sex Machine" (which is actually pretty boring to shake your moneymaker to), and then "Whip It" -- artist unknown ("we both are here to have some fun, so let it whip..."). The 70s and 80s were THE time for dance music -- I don't care what the boomers say. Do we all remember that great song by the Bubbles... "Video Killed the Radio Star?"
Lowlights included waiting in the endless Ladies Room line, which was surrounded by predatory men, listening to people talk about the fate of their stock portfolios. It was like SOOO totally March 2000....
posted by Anonymous @ 9:11 AM
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