After dozens of Saturdays lying down in the air-con at 9pm and playing Sudoku on my phone until de la Gare’s finest kicks in, the other weekend I made myself do two things long, if not well, after bedtime.
Firstly a generous but foolhardy acquaintance invited me to drinks with some proper rich people at one of CharmingVille’s five-star hotels. I surprised myself and went. The spangled attendees weren’t just circumstantially well off because three-grand-a-month-goes-a-long-way-when-you’re-living-in-a-third-world-country. They were secret Swiss bank account, island-owning, red-soled pumps loaded. It was supposed to be a casual thing and I took them at their word. I put pants on. I was wearing shoes. Come on now. But when I arrived, there was an imported Viennese string quartet playing baroque hits in the vestibule. Shit. Except for a matronly NGO freegan in an elephant skirt and electric blue Tevas, everyone else had, as my Nana used to say, ‘made the effort’.
You can forgive the social development lady her execrable Christianist wardrobe choices as she was most likely from Ohio. Be that as it may. I’m a faux-artsy, demi-mondrian layabout with a whisper of a job and frankly tenuous raison d’etre. Wearing a lot of black and looking angsty might still work in Zagreb. But here, midst the scent of fougere and ease, my imposterment was shag-like. I had on bright yellow $2 eyeshadow from Soriya, for fuckssake. I might as well have had a thumping great neon rhino horn nailed to my forehead. Or at least my skirt tucked into my undies at the back. Even though I wasn’t wearing either I furtively checked my reflection in the ice sculpture at the elaborate hand-caught wild salmon tableau.
The ladies, mostly white and mostly in their 40s, had plenty of appropriate clothes on. I saw an actual Von Furstenberg wrap dress and a Pucci blouse. No one had lipstick on their teeth and there wasn’t a daisy pedicure in sight. They waved their tinkly gold bangles and nano-talked golf. Their men wore suits but weren’t sweaty at all. I wanted to bury my face in everyone’s hair. Instead, under the guise of plucking an airborne canapé from a passing tray, I discreetly smelt my own armpit just in case. All in order in that department. Yay me.
Drinks were French and free. After a few fortifying sorties to the bar, I managed a halting conversation with an investment banker about rabies, and confused some nice women with an inappropriate and nervous burble about Vincent d’Onofrio, with whom I have an unhealthy TV relationship.
Forty seven minutes after I arrived I slipped out on a nature break and kept going, but not before stuffing my Olympic PVC cheetah skin handbag with tiny snacks. These came in handy for later.
Back at Marital HQ Hubster had set the alarm for 1.45am for us to watch 22 cashed-up Spanish soccer crumpets sashay around a pitch for 90 minutes. ¡Ay caramba! All that thrilling manly hugging, prayerful fist biting and primordial, goosebumpy chest beating. Plus the bonus off-pitch, head-in-hands thespianism from Armani-suited second stringers watching from the sidelines. There was a lot of expensive grooming and Bon Jovi teeth on display, and who doesn’t love a good dark stovepipe pant with a sharply fitted jacket on a superfit twentysomething beardyman with blue eyes and olive skin?
Anyway. We quite enjoyed the first half rooting for those shaggy underdogs Atletico. While Hubster cracked open a dozen consecutive ABCs I sipped mint tea and gorged on the contraband canapés. But after a lacklustre middle and the equaliser by shiny white Real in the dying stages, I knew it was all over. The fastidiously groomed Cristiano Ronaldo ripped his top off at the end apparently, but I missed it because by then I was a bit bored. I’d gone back to bed for some critical beauty sleep, though I admit to a modest nest egg set aside for a little nip ‘n’ tuck when the time comes. Apparently that’s sooner than I’d hoped for: the ladies earlier did tell me there’s a guy in town who does nice work. Money’s like beauty steroids for average-looking people. Have you seen young Cris’s before pictures? These days he’s magnificently bangin’ but I would be too if I got paid $100,000 a day.