Party Pics

some parties are more memorable than others

This morning, a page representing a local paper on Facebook posted photographs of fancy people at a fancy party in Madison. I don’t know why I’m pretending like it wasn’t The Northside Sun. The Clarion-Ledger used to have pages like this quite often, but it hasn’t had the staff for it in years. I’ve always suspected that The Northside Sun still managed a profit because they pay attention to things like weddings and fancy parties and parties associated with fancy weddings.

I always thought that trying to rise among the ranks of social predators in Mississippi was a silly endeavor. There’s not much competition, and what do you get if you manage to win? You have to spend some money to get your picture taken at a fancy party that ended up in the paper, but I never knew anybody who made any money from it, except maybe Wyatt Emerich, who owns the paper.

In high school and college, there were photographers, usually our own age, who went from party to party, taking photographs of us actually having fun. Some of those pictures are among my most prized possessions.

These pictures are far from what you see in the Northside Sun. Usually, when you see photographs of fancy people at fancy parties, they don’t look like they’re having much fun. They look like they’re standing still long enough for somebody to take the photo before they return to complaining about their spouse in hushed tones with their only two real friends at the entire party. Not real complaints, mind you, more like, “Did I tell you what he said when little Jenny came home with pierced ears?”

My photograph was taken at several fancy parties, standing uncomfortably among fancy people. I never asked for it to happen. It just happened. I’m not much of a social climber. In fact, I hate it. My father, however, convinced me that I had a social and communal obligation to support things like the Symphony, the Opera, A Few Diseases, and the Zoo. As impractical as it sounds, most of these groups raised a fair piece of their operating budgets from these parties, so I was obligated to buy a ticket. “Keep a receipt,” he said, “most of these are deductible.”

My girlfriends, not the girlfriends I went parking with and wrote secret poems for that probably haven’t survived, but the girlfriends who discretely but determinedly managed my social life, reminded me that I had an absolute moral obligation to take some overlooked damsel to these parties so her photograph could appear in the paper and her position in the ranks among the social monkeys might rise. While my father left some room for negotiation in these matters, these girls did not. I simply had to do it, and here are three names of girls to choose from as my date.

My idea of a party was one with artists, writers, musicians and actors. Once, I took a little blonde girl I cared about very much to a function at Hal & Mals. Including my mother, my sister, and my niece, you can count the blondes who were ever in my life on one hand. Fay Wray was never a real blonde. As much as I cared for her, I outlived this woman by quite a few years. If I could trade and she’d be here now and I’d be gone, I would, but life doesn’t give you those options.

“That’s Michael Rubenstein.” I told her. “That’s John Maxwell. That’s Willie Morris.” I said. She didn’t know who any of them were. She took notice when Eudora Welty showed up, although she didn’t stay long. I’d been trying to impress this girl since I met her. That might have finally done it.

Nobody took photographs at that party, and they didn’t appear in the newspaper. I would have been much more interested in photographs like that instead of photographs of myself in a black suit, standing with three girls from Ole Miss pressing their bosoms together in a dress that you had to fold like an accordion to get in and out of a car.

A symphony function was coming up. My social manager, who might or might not now run a prominent local non-profit organization in North Mississippi, said that I should ask Lisa. “Lisa” is a made-up name. Lisa was getting her terminal degree in Oxford but would be in Jackson for the summer. We’d both known Lisa since we were children. My social manager often heard me say that Lisa was one of the two most beautiful women I’ve ever known. She also knew that being with Lisa made me nervous as hell. I'll be in trouble if I ever attach real names to these stories.

So, I invited Lisa to the party. She had chocolate brown hair and mirror-black eyes. Many years later, she’s still among the two most beautiful women I’ve ever known, even though her Moca chocolate locks are now silky white. We had dinner at a place I loved that Nick Apostle opened downtown and went to the party at some swanky digs out in Madison County, where, of course, we had our picture taken—a picture that ended up in Mississippi Magazine.

I thought I’d done a good thing. I obeyed my social manager and created an opportunity for this girl who had made my ankles weak to spread her memorable countenance in Mississippi Magazine, the flagship of Mississippi’s social doings and dealings. I was wrong.

“You have to get it taken down,” she said on the phone. I explained to her that there was no getting things taken down from magazines. As we were speaking, they were being delivered to homes all over Mississippi and the hinterlands, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. She said she’d never forgive me. I don’t know if she ever has.

The issue, it seems, was that there was a boy she liked at Oxford, one of my good friends, who might have taken exception to her going to a party with me, wearing a dress that showed her bare shoulders. I professed my innocence. Being a friend, I had somewhat of an obligation not to mack on the girls he liked, and if I did, I should at least be aware of what I was doing, which I was not. I had absolutely no idea there was anything between them. I was given the option of asking two other girls, neither of which made me nervous. Had I known she had a potential boyfriend, I could have chosen one of them.

“You don’t know what this means!” Lisa cried.

No, I absolutely didn’t know what this meant. I did as I was told. I was even more of a gentleman than I normally was. I spent around $300 taking her to this damn party that I was told to do, a party I didn’t particularly want to go to, and now I was in trouble for something I didn’t even know about. It’s been thirty-five years, and I’m probably still in trouble.

That wasn’t the last time I went to a fancy dress party with fancy dress people, but I could tell those days were numbered. I didn’t need my picture in the paper. Too many people knew who I was already.

Sometimes parties are fun, and I like to remember them. I’ve kept all those photos, but I haven’t kept any of the photos of me at fancy dress parties with fancy dress people or clippings of the papers they were in. That’s just not what I want to remember in life.