Last Night: PEN Gala, Hole

Last evening, Marisa Meltzer and Doree Shafrir went to the 2010 PEN Literary Gala at the American Museum of Natural History and then made their way to Terminal 5 to see a performance by the rock group Hole.

Doree: I feel like last night was sort of a quintessential weird New York night. I had so much fun.

Marisa: Me too. I was sick all weekend And then I was like, “Oh, I’ll just go out and have one glass of wine. Maybe two!” And then I ended up having like six and getting home at 3 AM.

Doree: And next thing you know you’re at a party in the West Village you can’t talk about.

Doree: I was totally having a Lucky magazine day-to-night clothing crisis.

Marisa: We both had real sartorial challenges. Should we discuss our outfits?

Doree: You looked hot!

Marisa: Okay, so I had on a Maria Cornejo dress and tights (NOTE: not slutty ones, unfortunately) and old Mayle wedges.

Doree: No, I was wearing the slutty tights last night (NOTE: not Parisian, unfortunately).

Marisa: They were super-slutty.

Doree: Straight from the lingerie section at H&M.; They were also too big and kept bunching up. But no matter! I was also wearing this dress with zippers on it that I randomly purchased in Philly.

Marisa: I love that dress so much. Everyone loves that dress.

Doree: It’s a great dress. I wore it to your book party!

Marisa: I know, I was going to say that and then I didn’t want to be all, “Oh, my BOOK PARTY la la la la la.”

Doree: We were both somewhat alarmed to discover, upon arrival at the Museum of Natural History, that the PEN gala is, in fact, black tie. Which, I realized later, is something I knew deep in the back of my mind because I remember Leon Neyfakh freaking out that he didn’t have a suit when he had to cover it.

Marisa: Leon doesn’t have a suit?

Doree: He didn’t like 2 years ago.

Marisa: Leon, buy a suit!

Doree: I think he has one now.

Marisa: Relief.

Doree: Completely. So everyone was super fancy.

Marisa: Why didn’t we get the black tie memo?

Doree: They had some publicist issues.

Marisa: I mean, I think we looked cute but I could have used a “P.S., Many people will be wearing tuxedos and in fact one woman will have on a feather boa” e-mail.

Doree: “And one woman will be wearing sequin pants and a non-matching sequin top and a head wrap.”

Marisa: You got a little feisty with the publicist for a sec.

Doree: Well, it didn’t help that the press publicist had abandoned the front desk to go enjoy the party, and the other one wouldn’t let us in? I was annoyed, she kept saying she saw him downstairs?

Marisa: That woman! She was like 90 and wearing sequined pajamas and a turban.

Doree: And I was like, “Why don’t you use your little walkie talkie headpiece thingie and get him up here so we can go stalk Salman Rushdie?” I had to regulate.

Marisa: So attendees: There was that guy in the jaunty vest. Also the token woman in sari who is at every literary gala. (“Every”=”two we’ve gone to in a week,” obvs.)

Doree: Though Jhumpa Lahiri was not in a sari, I don’t think?

Marisa: Katie Roiphe was in black patent pumps. You know what? They were kind of a hot look for a gala.

Doree: Agreed.

Marisa: So high.

Doree: SO high.

Marisa: Then there was the woman who was literally wearing a wedding dress.

Doree: It was also sort of inappropriately low-backed.

Marisa: Like, “Sweetie, you can’t wear a white bias cut floor-length gown in public and not be taking marital vows.”

Doree: If I squinted I think I could have seen her butt crack.

Marisa: And I am all for recycling

Doree: No, I am fully with you

Doree: Wasn’t there a velvet tux situation?

Marisa: Oh, yes. Do you think those people all owned their tuxes?

Doree: I think if you’re wearing a velvet tux you probably own it.

Marisa: Do guys own tuxes? Or have I watched Metropolitan too many times?

Doree: I mean, can you rent a velvet tux? Seems unlikely.

Marisa: The hors d’oeuvres looked decent. Thessaly was eating some kind of pizzaish flatbread. Not that we ate any.

Doree: The bar was well stocked but the cocktail hour was too short.

Marisa: There was a scarcity, I strongly agree.

Doree: Though I guess most people were going to dinner.

Marisa: The cocktail hour should have been two hours.

Doree: Agreed. They had trouble moving everyone to dinner.

Marisa: I mean, there was serious people watching opportunity.

Doree: We should really be party planners.

Marisa: How did we feel about the space? I like that space, the Planetarium.

Doree: Well, yes.

Marisa: I like that it’s round.

Doree: Though, I didn’t really feel like I was at the Natural History Museum.

Marisa: Wait, is it round?

Doree: It was round-ish.

Marisa: Or was everybody standing in a circle?

Doree: There was a big circle in the middle. Who else was there?

Marisa: Salman! And a young lady. Also Susan Orlean, per her Twitter.

Doree: Yes. David Remnick.

Marisa: Margaret Atwood, supposedly.

Doree: Stephanie LaCava of Vogue.

Marisa: Patti Smith performed at dinner but was so not there for cocktails.

Doree: Oh, totally not there.

Marisa: Various people who noted that they read our LRB thing.

Doree: Oh yes. The woman who I thought looked like Traci Lords is apparently named Amelia Michelle-Black.

Marisa: Who is she?

Doree: She has suspiciously few Google results.

Marisa: I refuse to Google. I just want to imagine.

Doree: I think that’s a fake name.

Marisa: Good call.

Doree: Paul Auster and his hot wife Siri Hustvedt were there and Irina told the story of how he’s the only one who’s flat out turned her down for a quote.

Marisa: Oh right. I kind of respected him for that.

Doree: Patrick McMullan thinks that Sebastian “Younger” and Paul “Oster” were there.

Marisa: Somehow my first instinct is to defend the poor party photographers. But I have no idea why.

Doree: Haha, fair. There’s something about publishing galas that are always funny to me.

Marisa: And then, just like that, they were called to dinner and we were forced to leave.

Doree: So we had some time to kill, and being on the UWS we had no idea where to go.

Marisa: You used your Yelp app!

Doree: I did. And we found a bar called the Dead Poets Society.

Marisa: The Upper West Side is SO weird. Like, people live there.

Doree: Or the Dead Poet? What was it called?

Marisa: It was The Dead Poet. Because, remember, if you shared your birthday with a poet you drank for free?

Doree: Or just a regular old writer. Like, Harper Lee was on the list for April. So in fact it was sort of fitting that we went there after the PEN party.

Marisa: Full disclosure: We ate chicken tenders! And they were delicious!

Doree: Well, I will agree with you that they were fried.

Marisa: Also I think you said it best when you said it was the kind of bar where you could pick up a reg.

Doree: Oh yes, I did say that. The bar was filled with dudes.

Marisa: And people on weird first dates

Doree: The girl behind us was talking about how privileged she felt to have gone to the best schools in the country.

Marisa: She was totally onto my eavesdropping. I wasn’t being very subtle

Doree: Haha.

Marisa: Then, in kind of a When in Rome moment, we went and got Tasti-D-Lite, or whatever it was called. The generic version.

Doree: And wondered why there are always pay-as-you-go internet-access-computers at these establishments. Who uses them? Who is paying like $3 for 5 minutes of Internet at 79th and Amsterdam?

Marisa: Truly, a question for our times.

Doree: Truly.

Marisa: What flavor did you get? I got “brownies.”

Doree: I got a mix of brownies and french vanilla, with mini chocolate chips on top, in a waffle cone. It was an intense situation.

Marisa: So, then, Hole.

Doree: The crowd was not what I was expecting. Though to be fair… what WAS I expecting? Hundreds of people who looked like us, I guess.

Marisa: there were a lot of guys there. Also Debbie Harry. And Chloe Sevigny. And Adam Green.

Doree: And that group of girls standing next to us, one of whom was wearing a tiara.

Marisa: Left over from her bachelorette, obvs. Actually? I do own a tiara. But it’s from the 90s. I think I wore it to my 22nd birthday.

Marisa: I bought a Hole logo necklace. Because, as Kara said, I love merch. And then the band came on.

Doree: Courtney looked amazing.

Marisa: Her hair is looking very Bazaar 1997 all over again. The pageboy. Her outfit, as Emily noted, was very Stevie Nicks. Black with bell sleeves.

Doree: The second outfit I thought was even more Stevie. And her gesturing!

Marisa: I believe Emily said, “All she needs is a top hat and some doves.” So, the songs: Bits of Pretty on the Inside. A delight.

Doree: Totally. I had had “Jennifer’s Body” in my head all day, but she didn’t play it.

Marisa: But she played “Violet” and I was so entertained. I mean, that’s what you go for, right?

Doree: YES

Marisa: I wanted more between song banter, a la SXSW.

Doree: She played “Malibu” and also “Pacific Coast Highway,” which is from her new album.

Marisa: But not “Olympia,” sadly.

Doree: NOT “OLYMPIA!” WTF was that about?

Marisa: I guess I’m okay with that. I LIVED it. “Miss World.” “Doll Parts.”

Doree: Yeah, she did play some classics. Which I appreciated.

Marisa: But it was SO short.

Doree: SO short. Like, almost insultingly short.

Marisa: Like, the whole show including encore was 45 minutes, tops?

Doree: Yes. Barely.

Marisa: And I like things short.

Doree: I mean, the old lady in me appreciated that they started on time. But they didn’t need to end before 11.

Marisa: Exactly. It did leave us enough time to go to the Ace for a drink, which was nice.

Doree: That was nice. I enjoy the Ace. Jon met us there and we learned about his 3 levels of unbuttoning his shirt, which Elizabeth promptly Tweeted about.

Marisa: “Work, summer, and party.” Perhaps we should end on that note. I want that to be the theme of my life: work, summer, and party.

Doree: Right now the theme of my life is work, work, work and I am fucking tired.