Famous People #13: Media paychecks and Lime-a-Ritas party
Kaitlyn: 9 AM, 75 degrees, sun lookin’ like a friendly little tea light even though it’s actually got nefarious plans for the middle third of your back. My god! I once tried to decide on the best opening lyric of any pop song, and for three minutes I thought it was “Hey, what’s up hello,” but was wrong. It’s “Simmer down.”
What am I saying? I’m saying I skipped the gym in favor of a Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee. I’m saying I got embroiled in a confusing logistics group text and bought a Lime-a-Rita tallboy and a Mang-o-Rita tallboy at the local Gala Fresh. Hummus. Green grapes. Four-pack of canned wine “beverage,” which we hid under tote bags and dirty socks not because we were afraid of getting caught with alcohol, but because they were embarrassing. They had tiny green straws and branding that was clearly supposed to do something for me, a 24-year-old white woman in the income bracket of idiots. I’m saying Central Park!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Simmer down!
Lizzie: Going to Central Park on a nice day is always a real test of will, as the crowds will undoubtedly force a flashback to that time you almost had a heat stroke while trying to avoid the zoo-goers wielding popsicles the size of your thigh. But the first warm day of spring is also a day of honor, and if you have a tenacious and well-organized friend like Ashley, you’ll know that backing out is impossible.
Having somehow made it to this year of my life without a picnic blanket or a well-stocked refrigerator, I ended up traveling lightly: a bottle of water and eight Solo cups, never used.
Kaitlyn: It’s true, we had no choice and Lizzie brought almost nothing except tiny sunglasses that made her look like Gigi Hadid or a cut-out from one of the mood boards that Kanye makes for Kim K. As in: amazing! I dressed like a moron — stained denim skirt from 2012, no bra, no sunscreen. I rode the C train alone and stared at myself in the window and thought “How old are you? Fourteen?” Ever since Lizzie and I stopped spending nine hours together every day, it’s been hard to dress myself or plan for the weather or identify my facial features in reflective surfaces, and I am not saying that to be dramatic. I am saying it because I do not understand boundaries.
Lizzie: When I got to Columbus Circle, I had to call Matt and say “Where the fuck is the Whole Foods?” because I know he spends a lot of time at the Columbus Circle Whole Foods. Turns out it’s in the basement of a building lovingly called “The Shops at Columbus Circle.”
I took the elevator down just as Ashley and Loren were taking the elevator up. I got down to the basement and took the elevator up. Then I took the elevator back down… just kidding! I followed Loren and Ashley outside, where we waited for Kaitlyn and Claire.
Kaitlyn: Well, I was six minutes late, but Claire went to the wrong Whole Foods entirely, interpreting a text that read “the Columbus Circle Whole Foods” to mean “the Whole Foods at 97th street.” She’s an artist; what can we tell you? She arrived in a linen jumpsuit, carrying thousands of sheets of paper, and while we stood in the street she fed us mochi ice cream — the first time I had heard of, seen, or tasted that food item. It was also the first we had seen Claire since Halloween, when she notoriously fed me an unwrapped McDonald’s cheeseburger out of her jean jacket pocket.
Here we go: To be fed mochi ice cream in the street, outside a terrible mall at which there is an Amazon bookstore, when it is 75 degrees and the sun is a friendly tea light and your dear acquaintance has materialized out of thin air — uh, it’s like being saved from the brink of death. It’s like waking up from a stress dream and your teeth have not fallen out after all.
Then we went to the park, which was like, fine.
Lizzie: Sheep’s Meadow looks like every other part of Central Park to me, and there are no sheep in it. There was, however, an Australian Shepherd next to us, whose owners were pre-planning the photos for their New York Times Vows column (we assumed!). They were beautiful and clean, with a beautiful and clean dog.
Kaitlyn: I have to say, there was a really stressful time that didn’t even seem real, during which the NYT Vows couple was approached by a man who looked like a slightly handsomer version of the man in the couple, and he was holding the leash of a dog that was slightly more alt and funny-bodied and charismatic and precious than the NYT Vows couple’s dog and I was like…where did he come from? Is he trying to wedge himself into this romance and create a more dramatic NYT Vows column? More dramatic than the one where the bride’s dad was a murderer and her husband seemingly loved playing in possum blood? For what? So that some people can be surprised about it on Twitter for like 40 minutes some Sunday??
But I was really the only one drinking more than she could handle, and so everyone else sort of stopped indulging my fears at a certain point.
Lizzie: If you read these newsletters for a voyeuristic look into what five to six 20-something women might talk about during a picnic, you’re in luck: We talked about waxing our pubes, just like Hollywood has led you to believe! But we also talked about our bad and not-so-bad jobs in digital media, and the jobs we want to have, and the jobs we never want again. We talked about boys and Vanderpump Rules and probably Jack Qwant. I don’t really remember the specifics because I drank half a Mang-o-Rita, which is as probably as close to poison as you can get while still drinking a beloved bright orange beverage made by Belgian-Brazilian transnational corporation Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Kaitlyn: It’s true! Claire dumped her Mang-o-Rita into my cup and I ate a melted granola bar, idly prodding her for gossip until she — very slowly and carefully — stated that a mutual acquaintance is probably not illiterate but “…seems... dim.” I can’t remember if I laughed, I was too busy admiring the skill and craft. Ashley wanted to hear more, so Claire took another long, slow breath, as if she were about to hatch a plan to escape the Titanic, blinked twice and said, “I do not use the term ‘social climber’ lightly.” Loren did her really good, head-back “ha!” where it sounds like she’s cracking open a walnut in the back of her jaw.
If it’s not obvious already, I was practically baked alive in affection for all of the women blowing their Vox Media paychecks on malt beverages. And also I was baked alive in sun, which burnt my back very badly.
Lizzie: This story ends, as most stories do, with everyone involved frantically trying to find a bathroom about 30 minutes too late. I traipsed through 37 miles of park just to find a bathroom that already had a line of 890 people waiting to use it, so I traipsed 40 more miles back to the storied Shops at Columbus Circle and waited in a slightly shorter line there.
Kaitlyn: Lizzie got her steps in!
PARTY REVIEW METRICS:
Did anyone bring a dog?
Yes, and all for weird reasons.
Did anyone get engaged?
A man with a dog may have gotten unengaged. We also begged Loren to get married because we are bored and would appreciate a reason to wear fancy skirts.
Did we hear any good secrets?
Every good secret was about one semi-famous blogger or another, all of whom likely have Google Alerts for their own names. So, sorry! While we are happy to make fun of New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica for not dancing at the outdoor Kacey Musgraves concert in the summer of 2016 and, more broadly, for posting screenshots of his own tweets on Instagram, that is the limit for us. We can’t burn every bridge, or we may find ourselves without a Lime-a-Rita budget in the future. Also, we don’t remember.
Did anyone get famous?
Of course Lizzie’s tiny sunglasses confused a few people into asking for her autograph, but ultimately we decided we’d rather be left alone to nibble on brown guacamole and compliment each other’s resolve and emotional maturity. We turned her fans away with — very warm! — closed-mouth smiles and — very polite! — curt nods.
PARTY SCORE:
Lizzie: 10,000 bathrooms.
Kaitlyn: I don’t know how to convert that to a useful metric, but it just occurred to me that the “Mang” in “Mang-o-Rita” doesn’t make any sense at all. Mang-n-Ificent!