So we catch the early train out of DC on Saturday, headingto NYC. Uneventful ride, catch the usual kamikaze taxi ride to the hotel (The Pierre at 61st and Fifth, nothing cheap about us), and check in. We can see the park from our hotel room window so we head out and across the street to check out The Gates. The Gates are cool but the park is absolutely slammed with people. The problem with The Gates is that it's hard to get any perspective on it from ground level. There are some cool vistas but the thing would have been a lot cooler from an ultralight or a hang glider. Still, it was worthwhile.
After a coffee we hook up with my wife's friends from biz school, Marci and Al and Al's son Christophe. Marci is one of these older NYC ladies with big bucks, floor length mink coat, $200 hairdo and a face so surgically tightened she can barely smile. Still, she's nice. Al and Christophe are from Austria, we stayed in Al's country house outside Salzburg last summer. He's fun in a typically Germanic way, loud and rowdy, not exactly well-mannered. Christophe is 21, a quiet kid but nice, it's his first trip to the states.
After another stroll through the park we go back to the hotel to change. We maeet in the lobby at the appointed time and MArci is waiting. We go outside to the limo she has there. First time in a limo that wasn't in a funeral procession. We don't know where we're going, but a short ride brings us to the Four Seasons. Nothing cheap about Marci either, apparently.
Dinner is amazing, I have the best duck ever. After drinks, dinner, some wine and espresso and cognac it's about eleven o'clock and back to the limo.I have no idea where we're going but am content to go along for the ride. Minutes later we pull up in front of a place on 60th called "Scores". Some kinda sports bar, I figure.
We walk in and it's opulent in a Mafia way, all maroon leather and dark wood. There's a huge bouncer and a very attentive host in the lobby and no one else but the coat check girl. We check out coats and walk into the strip bar of all strip bars. I mean, there's at least twenty topless hotties running around, two girls on stage, music blasting, smoke machine going, the whole deal. My head is spinning a bit to say the least. We are escorted to a table and the waitress comes over to take our drink orders. I order a Grey Goose on the rocks and ask how much it is. "$22.00," she says, "but you can have the whole bottle for only $450.00". Um, I'll stick with the one drink, I reply.
As soon as the waitress leaves, a group, a bevy, a flock, a horde of topless hotties descend upon us. And I mean descend. There are tits in my face, tits in my ears, tits on my knees. There is also someone or something rubbing me in the crucial lap area. Now I'm not against that type of thing, but I'm with a 60-year-old lady, a fifty-year-old foreign guy and his son, and MY WIFE. So I need to extricate myself from this situation pronto while appearing to strongly disapprove of it. I manage to shoo them away after a bit, but this one keeps coming back. And she is the class of the bunch. Tall, exotic, a sexy Easter European accent, all the other girls are topless with G-strings but she is in a totally shher silk dress with, obviously, nothing on underneath. And she doesn't want to do a lap dance either. She wants to take me somewhere "quiet, wheere we can talk privately". As enticing as this may be, I am fiorced to demur.
"Look, thanks for the offer, you are beautiful, but I am here with my wife, okay?" She ponders this for a moment and replies huskily, "Maybe she likes to watch?"
About then is when I got the elbow in the ribs.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully if rather scenically. And yesterday morning we went to Marci's "club" for brunch, which turned out to be The Metropolitan Club, one of the fanciest and ritziest places ever. Brunch menu: Eggs Benedict, omelettes to order, popovers, croissants, brioche, bagels, steak, rabbit, lamb chops, prime rib, weiner schnitzle, 3 kinds of oysters, three kinds of smoked salmon, two kinds of caviar, 2 kinds of fish, giant shrimp cocktail, a whole buch of other stuff and an open bar, all free to us. Nothing cheap about Marci.
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