A great way to experience the diversity of New York is to go to the most reputable diner in your neighborhood for lunch from twelve noon to about four pm. Anytime before or after is either tediously boring, or mildly depressing; who wants to see a bunch of drunks - clinical or social - trying to sop up their alcohol with hamburgers and ranch dressing? Or the early dinner self-same stroller brigades? No thanks. At lunch, you'll see the restaurants peppered with rich people "slumming" it, along with the real and slumming - mainly frugal old ladies and gents, eating the most expensive meal of their month. The old-school old New Yorkers and the old-money old New Yorkers: all together at the watering hole, for a tab under twenty dollars! The rest of us fill in all of the spaces with very little of the interesting.
I had the chance to spy on the future of the rich who "slum" yesterday, as my daughters and I became privy to some of their madness at the Metro Diner on 100th Street/Broadway via a table of private school "Gossip Girl" high schoolers. These were definitely the cool kids and they were a wannabe Motley Crew, only "Chicks and Blokes" Barney's style: Five boys (four Jonas Brother look-alikes with one dead-ringer for High School Musical 3 crooner, Corbin Bleu) and one odd-girl-out non-descript girl; most were strategically "downtown" sloppy in $250 designer jeans with rumpled cashmere over American Apparel T-shirts, topped off with that so-cool-so-Strokes $500 haircut. My mouth was watering: over french fries, or casual chic "school clothes", I am not sure. These kids were all under the age of sixteen, as I heard the loathsome distress of one particularly fetching boy settling for Mom's BMW - when he gets his license - and how "it wasn't fair that so-and-so would be driving his Dad's 'sick' Masserati" to school - in The City -
Incredulously, I think my targets were part of the middle tier of rich private school children: they were on the West Side and in the 100's - not a place of ostentatious cash. I saw no driver out front to pick them up, there was no upper-crust accent of any sort, and the labels, albeit expensive, were understated and mixed with plenty of "street". No, these were not Joe the Plumber's kids, as I overheard one Corbin Bleu boy calling Dad's driver for a ride home with Daddy from Wall Street, but I'm sure the kids in the mid-sixties on Park with live-in white glove service and designer last names are sneering. Anyway, I was happy to have the distracting "cover" of my messy, spaghetti-clad three year old preschoolers in front of me, as I indiscreetly salivated over nonchalant $2k "10-spots" among many other luxuries that us "commoners" with salaries under seven figures simply cannot afford:
"Dude, like, my tutor takes the same percentage rate per hour as those lawyers do. I think he probably makes just as much, too! HAHAHAHA!!!" (Hubby would be curious to know this, as he, undoubtedly, is one of "those lawyers"...)
Despite my repellent disgust/material envy, I found myself smirking as the boys compared notes of their mothers' "sniffing tests" after coming home late, confirming their worst suspicions of "boys being boys".
What I heard next, was completely in its own category:
Corbin Bleu boy was loudly telling all of his friends while gesturing to his girlfriend (?), "Yeah, she was so mad that I put her head on my DICK!!!" (Simulates pulling her head on top of his penis.)
Lots of loud laughter erupted between all of the boys, while the girlfriend (?) just sat there, smiling quietly, listening as a bystander and not as the derogatory subject. The bay of mommies-with-babies around me averted their eyes and tuned out the conversation, happy that their precious little ones could not walk or talk yet. Me, the writer-spy that I am, moved in for the kill, ears-wise, thinking: "I gotta get to the bottom of this", as I maintained my cover of harmless, deaf-and-blind-to-the-world-outside-of-my-babies "Mommy".
The conversation went around and around about their fabled penis sizes, sexual bravado and brushes with drugs - I became fascinated by the skill-level of this little liars club: confidently competing in their bull-shit contest about so-called, late-night smack conquests uptown. (I swear: the kid said "heroin"!) "Plain Quiet Girl" (and no one else) looked back absently toward my table in a small reality check of self-consciousness. I was openly staring at this point. I wanted to smile a "I'm old enough for you to care, Missy" steely smile, however, she turned before I had the chance.
Suddenly, I heard the distinctive squeak of entitlement: "WAITER! W-A-I-T-E-R! Check, please." (Phew) The restaurant staff looked on with curiosity and resentment at children who expectantly see them as having no purpose, but to serve them.
