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Wine, Warhol and You (MOOjuice is a fantastic popular culture magazine run out of Chicago. I met the staff in 1996 at the Underground Press Conference and became such a fan that I begged them to let me write something for them. They sent me on assignment to one of the Art Institute of Chicago's "After Hours" events, to see if I could get picked up. The horrific results follow.) "Now, once again, explain why we're here exactly." "To get hit on!" It was a cold evening in January and Mary* (all names changed to protect the innocent) and I were checking in our coats at the Art Institute of Chicago. I was on assignment -- a sacred mission, a duty I was glad to perform for the sake of my readers. I had asked Mary to join me for moral support, and for good reason -- I was on assignment to try to get picked up at the art museum.
This all started with a little article in the
So, when the ads first started appearing for this "After Hours at the Art Institute," I called my friend Bob*, a student at said Institute, and a general insider on all things "after hours," to get an appraisal.
"Are you kidding me?" he said. "I've got friends who work in the museum, and they were telling me that the 'after hours' thing is a giant meat market."
"Meat market?" I murmur.
"Yeah, it's like some giant singles bar. The only reason everyone's there is to get drunk and flirt and go home with someone. It's like... well, it's like a frat bar, Jason, is
what it's like."
Well, I can see when duty calls. I could've let some cub reporter take this assignment, some green kid straight out of college, but I knew sometimes that yours truly has to look danger in the face and own up to a little responsibility of the magazine. And if that meant that I was going to have to march down there and document whether an average joe can get picked up at a supposed 'fine art function'... well, that's the price of journalistic integrity, I suppose.
After Mary haggled with the coat check girl about her purse and was finally given a plastic bag for her to carry her essentials inside the museum with, we were on our way.
"Two visitors, please," I told the ticket fellow. The young man, very possibly one of Bob's aforementioned friends, gave me a look that said, "You should really know better," and grudgingly handed us our tickets. After running straight to the bar to spend seven bucks on a beer and wine, we surveyed the scene.
"There sure are a lot of people here," Mary said. She was right -- there were hundreds of people milling about in the Great Hall. And another thing -- they were all rich and beautiful and dressed up like they just got off work. I started getting nervous. Very nervous. We ran down and got more drinks.
I was looking for women. Mary, a self-proclaimed "experimental bisexual," was looking for men or women. "What should I do?" she asked me.
"Oh... project an image of allure and sexual tension. Act like you're not getting any."
"But I'm not getting any."
"Well... there ya go."
We turned the corner from the photography exhibit, and from behind I saw a woman who was very... uh, pleasurable to look at. I prayed that she would hit on me and tried to throw that mental projection into her head, when she turned around and I realized that it was Julie*, a woman I used to work with. On my fourth day on the job and her fifth day, we attended a company function and got really drunk and ended up sharing a cab and making out all the way back to her apartment. It would be redundant to say that it didn't work out. She was there with Linda*, another ex-coworker, the one who got really drunk at the company Christmas party and jumped up on stage and started dancing like a woman possessed. Oh my.
"Jason! What are you doing here?"
"Oh, uh... I'm doing an article on this for a magazine."
"Really?" Julie was more impressed than she really should have been.
"Yeah," I said, deciding to pry some information out of them. "The whole article's about how this place is a meat market. Tell me, have any guys tried to pick you up?"
Julie and Linda looked at each other. "Well... no. But we've only been here about two minutes so far."
"Well, keep an eye out, and let me know what happens," I said, grabbing my third beer and starting to walk away. As I was leaving, Linda shouted, "Hey, Jason! Did you know Chicago Social Register is here doing an article too?"
Well, well, well. My old arch-nemesis, the Chicago Social Register.
Actually, I didn't know anything about the Chicago Social Register, besides that it's printed in full color and has a LOT of fuckin' money behind it and goes around taking pictures of debutantes every time they make a public appearance. But that's not the point. When MOOjuice decides to cover something, MOO juice gets exclusive coverage of the event. I don't need no mamma's boys with their Italian loafers and unstructured jackets muscling in on my scoop. I decided to keep my eyes out for them.
"I wish there was some way to spot the lesbians," Mary said as we were walking around, the two of us still unattached and unsuccessful as flirtees.
"What, like a secret handshake?"
"Yeah. Like all the lesbians have to wear clunky glasses, and then when we saw each other, we could wiggle our glasses at each other." I had to admit, it would solve a lot of problems.
"Look -- there's that guy again," Mary said. "We've seen him like five times now."
"Yeah. He's working the room harder than we are." It was a black man in his thirties, old enough to hang with the middle-agers but young enough to hang with the students. He was wearing this bright red suit... thing, with black checkers all over it, and a matching white checkered vest. It gave the effect of a suit expensive enough to hang out with the Winnetka people, yet hip enough to converse with the Wicker Park crowd. He even had that Harry Belafonte kind of blackness, just accessible enough to not scare away all the suburbanites in the room. This guy had everything going for him. If he didn't walk out of here with someone on his arm, then there's just no justice in the world.
Speaking of which... I had no idea how long we had been there, but it was long enough to have drank four beers and start feeling a little loopy, and still no one had attempted to hit on us.
"Maybe there's something wrong with us..." I started, when a relatively good-looking, middle-aged woman came walking over to us. Hmm... not the type of person I thought would hit on me, but maybe she's looking for a kept boy. She's come to the right guy.
"Excuse me," she said in a smiling, sort-of-drank-a-little-too-much kind of way. "Where did you get that bag?" pointing at Mary.
"Oh, uh... at the coat check."
"I'm just asking 'cause I work for a plastic bag company and one of our accounts is the Art Institute but we don't make that bag for them and I'm trying to figure out where they got it." With that, the woman was gone. Mary and I looked at each other and ran to the bar.
"Jason! Jason!" I heard behind me. Finally -- it was Bob. Good ol' Bob, who we were just 'going to meet inside' before we knew how many godamn people were going to show up.
"Bob! Thank God!"
"I can't believe all these people are here! This is crazy!" he exclaimed, taking his coat off and getting in line with us at the bar.
"So, have you got hit on yet?" I asked him.
"Jason -- look at me," he said. I gave his student artist look the once-over, and realized his point -- he looked more like a guy who had just crashed the party and was one step away from getting kicked out instead of a guy who already owned a membership to the Art Institute. Bob convinced me to switch from beer to bourbon and Cokes, and we were on our way again.
Upstairs in the Grand Hall, we ran into Julie and Linda again. "So, how's it going?" I asked.
"Oh, God, Jason, you're right. We can't get away from these guys," said Linda.
Julie added, "I was in the back room looking at all the armor and this guy comes up and says, 'You know, this is my favorite part of the museum.' And I was just like, 'Um, okay...' and ran to the bathroom. It was the lamest pick-up line anyone has ever tried to use on me in my life."
"Ah-hah!"
"You know, you just missed the Chicago Social Register guy. We were just talking to him like five minutes ago."
"Oh, really?" I was sufficiently drunk enough now to envision myself clocking the reporter a good one, getting thrown out of the museum, screaming the whole time, "I'm a reporter from MOO juice magazine! You can't get away with this! I'm a reporter from MOO juice magazine!" and getting a whole bunch of free publicity for the zine. Now, if I could only find my future victim...
"Come on," Bob said, "let's go look at some of the artwork."
"Okay," I slurred, "lemme just getta 'nother drink first..."
Looking at art while drunk can actually be quite a fun time, if done correctly. You see, you lose your inhibitions, so you suddenly have no problem shouting in the middle of the gallery, "Phew! Man, does this piece suck!" And then when your friend tries to justify the piece, you can just keep yelling, "No, no, no it just sucks! It simply sucks! I can't believe the Art Institute would pay good money to hang a piece of shit like this!"
I imagined at the time that women would flock to me for this, seeing my obviously fierce convictions for my obviously well-educated beliefs in fine-art topics. They would see that I'm a man to know -- a mover and a shaker, if you will. I mean, never mind the fact that Bob and Mary and I were the only single people in the back, actually looking at the art. If someone happened to stumble into our room, I'm sure this is what they would think.
Eventually, as I'm sure you've guessed, we made our way back to the Great Hall and the bar. The toes of the Greek statues were starting to get buried in plastic cups and wadded-up napkins and the whole thing really was starting to resemble the atmosphere of a kegger. Upstairs we ran into Nicole*, the editor of one of Chicago's student newspapers, and her friend Maria*. They did not look surprised in the least to see me.
"Well, well, well, Jason Pettus. How are you?" they said in their sly, urban voices.
"I'm... drunk. How are you?"
"Oh, fine, fine. What are you doing here?"
"I'm doing an article on this for a magazine, about how the place is a big meat market."
"Oh, did you know the Chicago Social Register is here too?"
"Yes! I know! Thank you!"
"Here, Jason, calm down. We stole a tray of appetizers. Have one of these egg things." Sure enough, there was a silver tray on their table, full of little egg-things (which were delicious, incidentally).
"Now, let me ask you, have you been hit on a lot tonight?" I said.
"Oh God!" Nicole snorted.
"It's been ridiculous," Maria added.
"We've had to beat them off with a stick," Nicole said.
"Just ridiculous," Maria added.
I sighed. "Now, see, everyone I know here is getting hit on except Mary and I, who came here expressly to get hit on for the article! I don't know what's wrong."
"Have you two been walking around together?"
"Yeah..."
"Well duh, Jason. Everyone here thinks you're a couple!"
"Oh..." I hadn't thought of that.
"You hadn't thought of that, had you?"
"Shut up." By the way, did I mention that Nicole really, really intimidates me? She's like Lee Miller in the 1940's, chain smoking and cursing like a sailor and wearing pants and looking absolutely beautiful while she's photographing concentration camp victims and taking baths in Hitler's bathtub. Okay, maybe you don't get my analogy. But she's really intimidating.
"I gotta go."
"Bye, Jason," they said in unison. Man, those two really creep me out.
By the time I got back downstairs, Bob was ready to go. "But look, Jason, there's an extra bottle of wine right by the front door. When I get my backpack I'll steal the wine and we'll go back to my place and get fucked up." Hey, it's Thursday -- what do I got to lose?
Mary and I waited outside and waited for Bob. Eventually he came out, empty-handed. "What happened?" we asked.
"Dude... I got busted!" And laughing, we made our way to the nearest pool table and did end up getting much more drunk as the evening wore on, and I'm not positive, but I think I did end up having someone hit on me -- at a frat bar, no less.
So, my dear reader, that's the sad but true story of how your humble narrator went to the meat market and didn't get hit on once. In the hopes of teaching you my mistakes, here are the things that you will want to do if you ever go to the Art Institute of Chicago's "After Hours" night, all things that I did not do:
1) Dress like you just got out of a hard day of corporate takeovers;
2) Bring lots and lots and lots and lots of cash;
3) Cultivate just enough of an appreciation for art that you can deliver a stupid pick-up line ("Yeah, that Monet was... um, cool, you know") but not enough that you end up scaring 'em off ("Personally, I think the color-field painters were full of shit. Give me Shermantic post-modern iconography any day...")
4) Don't walk around with your friends (unless you're a woman, I suppose);
5) Once you get drunk and finally get into a conversation with someone, try to steer yourselves back to the Jackson Pollack paintings in the far southeast corner of the museum (if you don't know where this is, do a little homework before you start drinking). No one ever goes back there, and damn, is Pollack great artwork to make out to.
Copyright 1997, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved.
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