At some point, I realized that Governor Patterson was standing nearby. No sooner had I spotted him then a band of mariachis materialized from out of nowhere and began serenading him; then, gala co-chair Yaz Hernandez presented the governor with a birthday cake (it was, I gathered, the governor’s birthday). Patterson seemed pleased enough with all of this; there probably aren’t a whole lot of places Patterson can go to these days where he’s likely to be sung to and presented with cake.
That spectacle having eventually ended, I tried to eavesdrop on people. This was made difficult by the fact that most of the attendees were speaking in Spanish, a language I’ve mostly forgotten except for a few random words and phrases learned mostly in school; I was only able to determine that nobody was asking anybody else how to get to the shoe store or telling them to sit down and be quiet because Spanish class had begun.
A few stately old WASPs of the sort that could be cast as nothing other than stately old WASPS had they been actors instead of stately old WASPS could be seen here and there, traveling in husband-and-wife couples. When two sets of couples bumped into each other, they would naturally initiate the Protestant Polite Conversation Ballet, with wives pairing off to step a few feet away and discuss charming things that they’d recently put in their homes, and the men remaining at the original meeting spot to hold conversations about books they’ve been reading about Marines or about Marines assaulting Fallujah or about other things that Marines have done in the past or may be expected to be called upon to do in the future. One presumably Scotch fellow showed up in a kilt.
I was eventually hit on by fellow who tried to make enthusiastic small talk about what a splendid event this was. Or perhaps he wasn’t hitting on me at all, but simply just wanted to tell someone how he felt about the event. At any rate, I agreed with him that the event was very splendid. I myself later went through the motions of hitting on a pretty Muscovite emigre, but gave up after deciding that she was too good for me. Or maybe she decided that and I just picked up on it.
All in all a splendid event…
