I Totally Meant to Do That (12 page)

Wortley and I went shopping in SoHo. Afterward, I hailed us a cab, requested our destination, reclined in my seat, and launched back into the conversation we’d started on the street.

“Jane!” she said in shock. I was being scolded, but I didn’t know why. She threw her Theory bag on the floor, leaned forward, stuck her sun-freckled nose through the small crack in the partition, and said, “I’m sorry, sir. How are
you
today?”

Point taken.

“I wasn’t being rude,” I heard myself saying a little too defensively. “I was respecting his space. Surely he wants to be left alone.” But my blustering was wasted; Wortley and I had both seen him smile in the rearview mirror. The jig was up. Chastened, I explained that the curt nature of New Yorkers—careful to distance myself from the group—shouldn’t be interpreted as rudeness. It’s a side effect of being so busy; it’s symptomatic of having to deal with the sheer number of other people in the fishbowl.

These excuses hold water, but they aren’t the whole story. There are fundamental reasons why a culture of etiquette will never grow in Gotham. First, manners require social interaction while New Yorkers are bred for anonymity, naturally selected to blend in and go unnoticed. Those who accidentally stand out get mugged. Or, worse, end up on reality-TV prank shows. Neither does one want to be mistaken for the kind of person who
intentionally
stands out, for example, evangelical Christians or, worse, actors on reality-TV prank shows. Otherwise, a New Yorker moves silently through the city like a preoccupied ghost. That’s why we wear black: the better to disappear.

Another reason mannered society won’t thrive in New York is because its dwellers—excluding those in a small subsection to the east of Central Park—share a suspicion of the upper class and, by extension, exclusive societies. It’s a unifying aesthetic. We all fear that, at any given moment, the draft riots will break out again and we’ll be on the wrong side of an angry mob.

Gawker.com could only have been born in New York: While the rest of America worships celebrities, New Yorkers worship those who mock them.

For example, my college roommates, most of whom now live
near one another in the Triangle area of North Carolina, visit each other frequently—at book clubs, the country club. Among them are memberships to garden clubs, bridge clubs, the Junior League, the Terpsichoreans, Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Colonial Dames. I, meanwhile, share groceries with a few others in the office to save money and suddenly am the target of malicious derision. When coworkers pass the kitchen as we chop broccoli, they sneer sarcastically, “Oooohhh, it’s the
lunch club
! I wasn’t invited. I guess I’m not good enough to be part of the
lunch club
—boo hoo hoo!” Other words I’ve been told were used behind my back: “precious,” “exclusive,” “obnoxious,” “stupid,” and “twee.” Raw cabbage and a can of beans are twee? Maybe in a Charles Dickens novel.

The point is, no one in New York wants to be a part of your stupid club.

It didn’t take long for this sentiment to rub off on me. My mom says I’ve turned into a “reverse snob,” which cuts me to the quick—not because she’s wrong, but because, by categorizing me as its opposite, she still defines me on a snob’s terms.

This is not to say that New Yorkers don’t exercise common courtesies. Even the crudest thug will give his subway seat to a pregnant woman. But he didn’t learn to do so from his parents—the rule is printed on a poster on the subway wall. Mayor Bloomberg thought it was rude to blow smoke in the faces of strangers, so he passed legislation banning cigarettes in public places. Up here, the manners we exercise are simply called laws. And the ramifications of the NYPD justice system are far more painful than being cut from the Hawthornes’ Christmas-card list.

But laws, of course, are an extension of “necessity,” a word you will never find in a manners book (unless it’s been grossly misused). Then again, the plush world of my youth embraces a different
understanding of needs: In addition to oxygen, water, food, and shelter, the list also includes decorative soaps shaped like their owner’s dog. Such superfluities are the blessings of a good life. Unfortunately, they don’t travel well. For example, if Aunt Jane finds her food bland, and spies a shaker on the other side of her husband, she will not ask, “Lucius, will you pass the salt?” Instead, she asks, “Lucius, will you have some salt?”

“No thank you,” he responds. “Will you have some salt?”

“Yes, please. Thank you,” she says. And he passes it to her.

That’s the rule: You always offer whatever you want to someone else first. But in order to get it back, the other person has to know the routine. If Aunt Jane moved to New York, she’d become known as that strange lady who offered everyone seasonings. She’d either have to give up salt or carry some in her purse.

People up here don’t understand niceties; anything extraneous is suspected of betraying an ulterior motive. Once, when I called a coworker’s mother “ma’am,” she responded, “Are you buttering me up?” Other responses I’ve heard to “ma’am” include “I’m not that old” and “Do I look like I run a brothel?” Eventually I broke the habit; actually I’ve shattered more than a few. That means when I go home, I have to pull my manners out of storage, slip out of my rented ghost costume, zip on a great big smile, and recalibrate the tenor of my voice to say with gusto, “Hey y’all!”

This is a bit dishonest, but it’s best to keep the ins and outs of my heretical city life a secret. My family has visited me here, but they’ve never been inside my apartment. If they want to believe that I own a single piece of furniture that wasn’t found on the street, let them. If I happen to innocently buttress that fallacy, it’s just because I was reared right. White lies are incredibly polite.

Sometimes, though, while juggling my two sets of social mores, I drop a ball. I forget to place my fork and knife toward ten o’clock
to signify I’m finished eating. I forget to rip off a bite of bread
before
I butter it. I forget that burps aren’t acknowledged with fist bumps. Mix-ups such as these are how I came to receive a gentle reminder in the mail. The hawk eye of my aunt misses nothing.

desk and flipped through the pages of
How to Be a Lady
with greedy laughter. He is not an obsequious person. He’s an overworked, underpaid theater critic who finds his only solace in the free dinners occasionally offered to him at cabaret clubs. A summation of his worldview: after the cater-waiters at an art event noticed Adam stalking them, they launched a campaign of avoidance, rushing past him with trays held high above their heads, to which Adam responded by giving chase and then returning to me with a mouthful of mini crab cakes, saying, “They expect me to have shame.”

He landed on a page at random, pointed to a highlighted passage, and read, in his best Blanche DuBois, “A lady never adjusts her bra or bustline within view of other people.”

Then he paused, shifted his countenance, and said sympathetically, “Oh, Jane, sweetheart—you actually do that a lot.”

What? No I don’t. I mean, the wires are uncomfortable. And no bra ever truly fits. So sure, sometimes I might reposition a boob here or there just to make sure everything’s in order and—oh, crap; I
do
do that a lot. I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that anyone would notice … that I was digging my thumbs into the sides of my breasts and tugging at them?!? Of course they notice! Duh: If I’m not looking at you, you can still see me. Hearing Adam say as much out loud was like finally hearing the answer to that riddle about the guy who killed two hundred people when he turned off a light. Duh: He
works in a lighthouse. Not only does it make perfect sense, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. What next? Are you gonna tell me that I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter isn’t butter?

I had been prepared to dismiss my aunt’s gesture outright. But now it held water. What other nasty habits was I
not
getting away with? How far from the flock had I strayed? I told Adam and the rest in our peanut gallery to buzz off, and then I stashed the book in my messenger bag so I could pore over it later in private.

How to Be a Lady
is a loosely organized collection of one- to two-line maxims: “A lady does this,” “A lady does not do that.” The words “should” or “might” do not appear. The author, Ms. Candace Simpson-Giles, offers edicts, not suggestions. Her text is law. It
was
brought down from Mount Sinai, probably in a tasteful leather valise.

The directions and admonishments follow, one after another, in a long mechanical list. So many rules and regulations! So much to remember! Does Ms. Simpson-Giles really follow all of these? How could she get anything done if constantly preoccupied by the way to do it? I imagine her spinning one way and the other in sensible slacks until her hard drive overrides and she puts the mop in the oven and cleans the floor with a green-bean casserole.

Rules. Pshaw! I’ve always had a problem with authority. During a recent Thanksgiving dinner, Mom and I got into a disagreement regarding whether or not she’d told me which trivet on the table was for the succotash. Then she turned to the crowded dining room and announced with a smile, “I swear, Jane would argue with Jesus!” Well, sure, if he chastised me for forgetting where to put the loaves and fishes when he’d in fact never told me, then yes, I would.

But right now I’ll just argue with Ms. Simpson-Giles. Herewith,
an open debate regarding certain excerpts of text my aunt decided should match their book’s hot-pink jacket.

To define a set of plates as “best” presupposes I own more than one set, which presupposes I have somewhere to store them. I have one set of plates. Because, like most people in New York, I only have two kitchen cabinets. And one of them is where I keep my bong.