“Urban Haute Bourgeoisie”

02Mar08

My colleague was telling another colleague about “Metropolitan,” Whit Stillman’s 1990 true film about the upper crust independent school scene in New York City, in which I grew up but in which I was the protagonist in real life, the proverbial red-headed boy in a sea of tow-headed trustafarians, the one whose modest background remained largely hidden – the one who never told his friends that we bought our toothpaste from Korvette’s department store and whose primary and secondary education Mommy’s rich daddy bought for me and my brother and that my own dad probably put up a public fight over but secretly acquiesced gladly to because he was all for Korvette brand toothpaste – and which I attempted to hide by intricately weaving myself into the drug/drinking/promiscuous party lifestyle.  I gained access only through my success in this endeavor.

On Saturday nights, we could be often found at Pedro’s (listed in the once widely-circulated and obsessively adhered to Preppie Handbook), literally a 25-foot square room that accommodated what seemed to be hundreds of yuppies and high school kids with fake IDs, all drinking Spaten from 16-ounce steins or putting back “tidal waves,” a concoction of vodka, Southern Comfort, orange juice, grenadine and Rose’s lime juice.

My high school classmate Michael, whose middle name Ashley became his nom de guerre during college, could basically open his throat and pour a stein of Spaten down in less than two seconds.  We timed him.  Seriously.  It was inhuman.  He didn’t have an esophagus; he had a PVC tube running down to his stomach.

One night during college, when I went to Pedro’s during Christmas break with my friends, I returned home sometime between midnight and 5:00 a.m. – can’t be more specific than that – and I saw a homeless guy sitting on the front step of a locked residential building about a block away from my house at 96th and Madison.  It was maybe 20 degrees out, if you were under a streetlight.  I had pity, and I took off my scarf and wrapped it around his neck.  He looked up with as much gratitude as I had rationality.  I thought this act of mine atoned for the previous eight hours at Pedro’s.

Of course, it didn’t.

Only one act could.

And that act wasn’t up to me.  And I wasn’t up to it.

photo:  leroys

Filed under: Christianity, Jesus, Upper East Side, faith   |  1 Comment