The Authors Guild Dinner or How on Earth Did I Snooker My Way Into This One?

Because it keeps happening, folks.  I can’t explain it.  I can’t even object to it because it’s so weird.  There are people in this world, foolish kind people, who will invite me to fancy shindigs.  And the fanciest and silliest of these are the galas.

Anyone who goes to galas with any regularity will probably tell you how boring they are.  Just a bunch of people in tuxes, the same wine, the same h’orderves, blah blah blah.  Don’t you believe a word of it.  Galas are great!  They give you free food!  They give you free wine!  They usually take place somewhere with lovely architecture and lots of gold leaf.  How is this ever dull?

This last Monday I was invited to The Authors Guild Dinner, benefiting The Authors Guild Foundation and The Authors League Fund.  I say “benefiting” because it is written here on my program and not because I could be mistaken for anyone who was in the least bit beneficent.  However, they don’t name these things Mooch Fests quite yet, so a "benefit" it remains.  It was held at The Metropolitan Club, not too far from Columbus Circle, just off of Central Park.

Here is the degree to which I am not the right person to invite to these things.  Earlier in the day I had a series of errands to run around Manhattan including exercising and collecting my pants from a friend (long story).  My outfit consisted of skirt and blouse and I had this vague vague very vague sense that my errands might take so long that I would have to perhaps go to the gala in the outfit I was wearing.  I’ve done that sort of thing before.  No big whoop.  At least I thought I’d done that before.  As the day slowly wore on little doubts began to nibble at my ankles.  Had I done it before?  Couldn’t something potentially embarrassing happen if I happened to miscalculate and end up the workaholic shrub at the ball?  Ah, sweet fears.  How you’ve saved me countless times from myself.  As it happened I had time to drop by my home, locate a summery dress with minimal amount of stains (a little yellow on the hem?  Puh-leeze.  Who even notices that kind of thing?)  And away I went!

Take a gander at the Authors Guild co-chairs and things start to fall in place.  In fact, they begin to sound a little intimidating.  Judy Blume, Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, Garrison Keillor, Mary Pop Osborne, James Stevenson, R.L. Stine . . . shall I go on?  Amusingly enough I didn’t really think about the fact that I was mingling amongst authors.  I knew to keep an eye out for Lesley M.M. Blume because it was her lovely publicist Bruce Mason who got me invited in the first place.  Bruce even got a great big half-a-page thank you in the program from the Guild “for his devoted service for this evening’s 17th annual benefit gala.”  By “devoted service” I’m sure they meant inviting me.  Ta!

Dinner was lovely, though I’ve scant memory of the food.  I do happen to remember the dessert.  At one point during the dinner I tried to find the bathroom, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, and popped into a sea of desserts.  Desserts as far as the eye could see.  It was all I could do not to dive on top of the nearest table and start swimming.  Individually they each looked like this:

My table consisted of many fine people, some of whom happened to be young.  There was a fellow who turned his financial blog into a book.  That sort of thing.  Everyone was very nice and I was able to discuss New York Public Library at length, which is a good go-to subject in these cases.  I like working in a profession where there’s always something new to say.  I will give Mr. Schwartzman this much; he has provided me with ample dinner conversation good for years to come.

But there were speakers to attend to as well.  Ah, the speakers.  You know, I’ve sat in audiences before, many of them with people under the age of 21, and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a noisy crew than these Authors Guild and Authors League type people.  My goodness they like to talk!  Now admittedly the first speaker was a Sidney Offit, President of the Authors Guild Foundation, and his microphone started to slowly fade away over the course of the speech.  Paul Aiken, the Executive Director of the Authors Guild, who proceeded to tell us about the life of writer Ellis Parker Butler and his smash hit short story Pigs is Pigs which originally published in 1905.  It is the story of a man being charged for the delivery of pigs, when in fact he receives guinea pigs instead.  While this charge is being sorted, the guinea pigs breed and hilarity ensues.  Apparently this was the Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County of its day.  Why did Mr. Aiken bring it up?  I’m not really sure.  But he was determined to give us the full history and the full history we received! 

About this time I started paging through my program to see what else there was to look at.  I saw that the past Authors Guild President between 1993-1997 was Mary Pope Osborne and from 1985-1987 it was Madeleine L’Engle.  I saw that the current Authors League Fund President was Pat Cummings.  Pat Cummings, eh?

Around this point it occurred to me that my Fresh Direct order would be due upon my doorstop at 10:00.  In New York City, particularly Manhattan, grocery stores are tiny affairs with body-wide aisles and a selection that could be matched, nay beaten, in any reasonably sized supermarket west of the Hudson River.  As a result, many of the residents like myself prefer to order their groceries online.  Now on this particular evening I’d specified that I would prefer my order between the hours of 10 and 11:30 p.m.  Fresh Direct, however, likes to deliver early, if they can.  I don’t live in a sketchy neighborhood, but by the way they leap from their trucks, run into my hallways, and scamper away you’d think there were armed thugs waiting around every corner.  The guild event had begun at 6:30, but there was one more man I had to see before I left early.  One more person worth hearing.  Fresh Direct would just have to wait because that man was Roy Blount Jr., President of the Authors Guild.

Insert fuzzy picture of Roy Blount Jr. speaking here:

However, it was 9:30 and I was sixty-some blocks south of my home.  If Fresh Direct doesn’t find you at the time they arrive then they run away and foot you with the “restocking” bill, which is unpleasant and leaves me without my potato chips.  And if it comes down to hearing the end of Roy Blount Jr.’s speech and eating potato chips, potato chips win.  So after knocking my chair completely backwards (no one noticed, so enthralled were they) and ducking out in that bent over position that indicates either a hasty retreat or severe back pain, I double timed it out the mighty fashionable doors homeward.  And JUST as I turned the corner onto my block, I saw it.  The wise and almighty Fresh Direct truck pulling forward and then backing up slowly, slowly… slow enough that I could run in the door and pretend I’d been a good and obedient customer all evening long.