Monday, February 27, 2012

Drinks with Proles

-->
-->
Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve recently released another controversial book titled Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010, in which he theorizes, that the widening chasm between upper-middle/upper class, and lower/working class whites is one of the most threatening factors facing the survival of "America" as we know it today.
The Bell Curve argued that intellect is largely conferred through genetics, and is, therefore largely inflexible, and that raw intellect is an operative factor in all facets of daily life. The controversial portion of The Bell Curve was that Murray argued that IQ is a layer cake largely determined by one's race, he used three races for purposes of simplicity, and the recipe leads to a cake that has black on the bottom, white in the middle, yellow on top. He argued that this pattern repeats itself across nation boundaries, political affiliations, sex, and income, and that as the IQ scores of the races do not change, we must except these differences and establish policies in education, employment, and the like with them in mind.

One of the main focuses of Murray's new book is that birds of an (IQ) feather, tend to flock together, and thus, your latte-sipping, Heidegger-reading, Ivy-League graduate, starting-nonprofit-in-their-spare-time type whites, tend to enjoy the company of each other, rather than that of your NASCAR fans, blue-collar factory workers, or whites who's wheels spin when they are stock-still at a stoplight. I have observed this to be mostly true, and a young man named Christian Lander has made a small fortune writing about the youthful, kinder, gentler subset of the type of upper-class whites to whom Murray is referring.

So anyway, I go to a melting-pot hip-hop nightclub on Saturday night, the type where every race of man is represented, and every woman, most between 20 and 28, looks as though she aspires to hang upside down off a pole for a living. I was possibly the oldest guy in the club, yet being almost impossibly dashing and dangerous, I got my fair share of attention from the ladies. At the end of the night, the patrons moseyed their way out to Central Avenue to try to convince another to continue their conversations in a "vertical" fashion. A woman comes up to me and says "you are the most handsome man here tonight, you HAVE to take my number."
She told me that she was "in her 30's" and was concerned about me being younger; I wasn't.
STATS: "Blanche" was about 20 lbs. overweight, but not totally unshapely, I would say 5'5 with heels that pushed her to about 5'10, and flowers tattooed above her left breast. She was Caucasian, with a sort of racially ambiguous look, and a mop of hair, that was just kinky-curly enough to suggest some overser - mammy activity in the family, a few generations back. She then told me that she was from Louisiana, and gave me her last name which was Cajun sounding. That pretty much covered it. She had nice skin and really beautiful green eyes, and the back view was a month-and-a-half in the gym from being pretty darn good.

Sixteen hours rolled by, and the next night around nightfall, I called "Blanche" and she quickly invited me to her daughter's/best friend's combination birthday party, which was happening as we spoke. I went. It was kind of sweet that someone I had known since 1:47 am yesterday would invite me.

Now, to tell you a little bit about "Truth"; I am certainly not a patrician, in terms of income, but in terms of interests, I tend to shade that way. I like film noir movies, drive a VW, and live alone downtown. I hang out at coffee shops where I can read The Atlantic for free, and vote independent, generally for 3rd party candidates. I listen to language tapes as a hobby, and read self help books for personal improvement. Blanche....didn't.

She lived about 15 minutes away from me in a suburb that was probably solidly middle class about 20 years ago, until the solidly middle class people got to see their new neighbors and moved further away still. She greeted me at the door, and led me through a sitting living room with three people on the couch, and 5 others splayed out upon various chairs and ottomans. I was led through the kitchen to the dining room, and finally to the living room, and introduced to a bunch of other people whom I could not have named 5 minutes later with a gun to my head. Her 16-year old daughter sat on a black leather couch in the living room, wearing a slut-prom type, black dress, hooker heels and just a shad too much makeup. I was transfixed watching her play some video game with what I discerned to be a cartooney Tony Montana getting run over repeatedly, trying to drive a Ferrari on a Miami Beach boulevard.

I was just a little ashamed at my first reaction which was, "My god, every adult here is so...fat!" Just then Blanche offered to make me feel comfortable by taking me into the sitting room to "hang out with the adults.

We went through the kitchen again, and on the table was a veritable feast, of MSG, steroid-aflicted beef hamburger and pig parts hot-dogs, white bread, A large plastic trey of cupcakes with the "Costco" label displayed prominently, and, to garnish the burgers, iceberg lettuce, and extremely GMO-looking, too-big-to-be-legitimately-farm-grown, slices of tomato. The kicker was when I asked for something to drink and she said, "I have kool-aid!" cheerfully. "Do you want purple or blue?" It's probably a prole party when your host refers to your fruit beverage by it's color rather than its ersatz fruit.

I dusted off an ottoman and the mid-twenties, mixed-race, African-American gentleman sitting next to me offered me a drink of Patron after taking a swig himself: There were no shot glasses.
He then continued to pass the bottle around to the other seven people in the room. It was a bit, endearing I must say, but I probabably wouldn't drink behind seven members of my nuclear family.
The Blunt came counter-clockwise, and although Truth hasn't fired up in at least 10 years, it smelled like the kind of $25 a quarter skunkweed, that gave one a headache and a buzz at the same time. I had to pass upon that as well, opting for a sanitarily sealed, bottle of Coors light from the upright freezer on the floor next to the couch.

Other than my patron buddy and I, there were; a 24-year old chubby white kid with his belt sinched up just below his buttcheeks, the kind of sneakers kids beat each other up for, and his face framed by a beard that was just about 1/4" thick. He introduced himself as "Hi-Tech" and he was the only party-goer who's name I remembered outside of "Blanche" herself. He had an slightly more rotund buddy who looked like he could have been Hispanic, Gypsy, Mulatto, Arab, or South Asian, with a round face, and the same syle in pant-wear as his homie. "Mundo" had a sad, world weary, totally un hip-hop, look, and appeared to be about 30 - 33. He didn't say much, but checked his phone roughly every 30 seconds. Continuing clockwise were Blanche's best friend, a pretty, yet unnecassarily rotund white woman in I would have estimated in her late 20's. I had met her last night too, and felt terrible about forgetting her name for the second time now. She snuggled uncomfortably with her boyfriend, a man who looked a little younger, chain-smoked, and seemed to shop at the same haberdashery as the other three gentlemen, with a baseball cap that appeared to large for his head, a red t-shirt to his knees, and sneakers that seemed to have some sort of "glitter" finish.

Two others rounded out my companions, next to Mr. Patron were "Maria" a pretty Mexican-American girl I would say was about thirty and her friend "Giggly" a sweet, bubly chuberic-looking 200 lb. Mexican-American girl who seemed to be the only talker in the group. Maria was about 4'11 but one would not have noticed it as she wore the highest, must uncomfortable-looking pair of shoes I had ever seen, and pushed her ample breasts up to right under her chin.
Most of the conversation involved "Whatshername?" talking in hushed tones to her boyfriend, Maria, and Giggly chirping about various times they had been "fuuuuuuucked up", and on what type type of liquor, and Patron and Hi-Tek razzing each other with liberal use of "the N-word" flying back and forth. I attempted to strike up a conversation with Mundo, inquiring about the all-star game. He pulled it up expertly on his smart-phone and robotically read off the nightly stat line for most of the competitors. I couldn't tell whom he wanted to win. He still looked sad.
The Patron and the joint kept criss-crossing, and I kept deferring my opportunity whereas a few of the others probably started wondering if I was "some sort of narc." I've was accused of that a few times in my younger days. Maybe it is not partaking much, maybe I just look like one. Note to Self: must ask at next gathering of young, counterculture types.
After about a half hour, Hi-Tek grabbed one of the birthday party balloons and hit a perfect smash at Mr. Patron's head . Balloons don't move too fast, and his buddy, aided by the 6 feet between them, was able to react and deflect it. He then proceeded to loudly let the room know what a great feat of athleticism it was, for a few minutes, and stroked his own ponytail approvingly. This gave Mr. Patron a brilliant idea:

"Yo, let's play a game," he said. "We'll hit the balloon around to each other and whoever lets it hit the floor gots to take a shot!" He said. I was terrified: Not of losing but of drinking from a bottle of backwash-Patron which was now about 1/3 full. Somebody else pulled out a bottle of unopened vodka, which no-one else seemed to be interested in. This motivated Hi-Tek say, "yo, I don't drink no vodka unless it's mixed with sump'm." I then happily volunteered to play, if I could take shots of vodka instead of Patron. "I just don't like tequila," I explained lamely in my most non-narc voice," it gives me hangovers like fuck the next day."

I must admit, I had no idea how much fun "Balloon Patron" would turn out to be. The guys, mostly attempted a series of "no look smashes" trying to psyche each other out, whereas the girls simply did their best to keep it in play, defensively, there were a few quasi-diving digs, and a few slowballs with the attempt to graze it lightly it off another competitory's foot, to get it to fall, harmlessly to the floor.

Truth must admit, he was the first to be subjected with a drink, as a hot-shot from Mr. Patron caused me to try to get fancy and hit a spinner just out of Hi-Tek's reach, with my left hand. the show went well-wide, and I was the last to touch the balloon. I tried to reason that it was his responsibility to reach out for it, but to no avail. Hi-Tek then said "shit, give me that Paton, I WANT to take a shot anyway."

The game continued, drinking and smashing, as what sounded like "Rick Ross' greatest hits" reverberated off every wall in the room, in the background. We had two interruptions, Blanche's daughter came running in at one point laughing hysterically trying to avoid being mugged in the face with a black, Costco cupcake. This lead all of the women to engage in a five-minute cupcake-mugging orgy which stopped the game just as I was beginning to perfect my techniques. Giggle then sat back down on the couch and said something incomprehensible, which she explained by adding, "oh, never mind, I think I'm just horny." The second interruption occurred when, Whatsername's boyfriend, responded to a good serve from Maria, by intentionally popping the balloon with his cigarette. In the third period, the game evolved to two balloons, then three, and we finally had six in the air at one time. As Mr. Patron said "man this shit too confusin' with too many balloons," and we went back to two.

I left not long after, but I think my Drinks with Proles helped me to realize that Mr. Murray is right, and wrong at the same time. I truly had fun playing Balloon Patron, and the felt like nice people. If bored I could hang out with those folks again, but probably wouldn't go out of my way, and even then probably not long enough to where they would stop wondering if I were a narc. I feel that he has something in saying that there is a difference between the different classes of Americans, and these misunderstandings are going to drive a permanent wedge between Americans, if they have not done so already.

I don't think Proles, in large part, have any great interest in doing Patrician stuff either, at one point in the night, I asked Mundo, in the midst of our all-star game conversation if he thought that Jeremy Lin's play was an aberration, only I did not use that term. I got the feeling he did not know who Jeremy Lin was, or care.

Blanche offered to walk me outside and gave me a perfunctory hug-n-kiss with genuine warmth in her eyes and said "You're going to call me right?" I said "Sure", meaning "Honey, probably not," as I dis-embraced to get into my car. Blanche wasn't an unattractive woman, but at this point if I was going to have sex with a prole she'd have to be really, really sexy, sexier than a woman that I was going to sleep with that I had something in common with, and she wasn't all that.

I guess, even in purely physical affairs, class distinction matters.

4 comments:

anonymous said...

and the salads came in plastic containers and were slightly sweet when if homemade they were supposed to be savory. And WHAT no jello shots!?!?
Personally I never heard of a jello shot until I was well over 40...
nor I had ever been to a suburban neighborhood "party" until then.
I have been to many choclate layer parties however, but they're country folk who still do the real deal, roast pigs and home cook side dishes for days in advance.. not urbanite chocolates who get all their party food at WalMart or Costco.
Another thing those country parties have people who still have some talent and there will be live music, singing and dancing, not a bunch of simpletons batting a balloon around trying to come up with excuses to drink themselves out their pathetically boring reality.
And in reality a "woman" like Blanche who is bold enough (or should I say unlady like enough) to follow YOU out and give you her number, has most likely been passed around the crowd(s) at least
as many times as the patron.
But hey you went out looking for that! Somebody easy and anonymous....

Truth said...

"But hey you went out looking for that! Somebody easy and anonymous...."

No, I went out testing the waters TO SEE if someone was easy and anonymous. My decision would have been made subsequently; totally different.

anonymous said...

lol,"TO SEE", easy and anonymous is out there everyday bro!
Especially if you go out looking for it just before close of the big box bar/dance club. All the night's leftovers are waiting to find a home to make them feel like less of a loser and mix with that with nights drinks.
And what makes you think you're not a prole yourself, just because you didn't screw an overweight flabby assed, tattooed leftover who celebrates her daughter's prom by throwing a party for herself. LOL, hilarious! You called her up the next day bro, so that puts your entire "testing the waters TO SEE if someone was easy and anonymous" chalked up to be utter BS!

Anonymous said...

You're a fucking idiot.