And then there’s nothing more repugnant than a fundraiser for a Museum, especially if it’s a formal night like tonight, a tails with a tie and an evening-dress everything down to the pearls affair, out with the jewelrybox, out of the safedeposit box, then the bowtie you tie by hand not the clipon, God forbid, how there’s nothing optional, never is. Mothballs roll their ways down the slick marble stairs, bouncy chuckles, they tripup the salaried slaves in attendance. Take pity, this is the first night they’ve dressed up in a while, have permitted themselves the luxury of…to become the lover of their own sin, an embrace black and cuffed, its enjoyment — how to explain it? please, provide us their thinking. How lately, they’ve reached this permanent stasis, nunc stans and all that, the fat reunited with his brother happy again, in the middle of the metropolitan desert — the goy showing up bearing gifts in the form of simple household solutions, such as variously blinking and beeping organizational helpers, it’s said. Call it another Enlightenment, call it a selfemancipation, a realization, an actualization — call it what you will, you’re already late.
Aleph is for the Alist unfurling up the stairs, each entried step a dark scrawl of angular socialites and their squat, loopy machers being checked off by the door…reformed representations of oldtime Division Street fabricants here with their brotherly cousins, a host of warehouse winners grew up in Midwood now officed in the Army Terminal, Brooklyn, sitting on a pile of home furnishings both used and likenew, the repentant scion of Bowery pushcart poets and their whorish, redheaded Pomeranian landladies I’m talking sixfloor walkup ugly, with socialist leanings escorted by their daughters become correctly cold Yorkville obgyns, explain that — their own daughters, married into the Battery’s recharged investment bankers, corporate moguls in from a Siburbia beyond Connecticut and with kinder of their own lately heiresses doing the dos, jetting the charity circuit, balancing balls — selfmade menschs in every racket and trade that can be legally listed, so far I’ve written over five grand in new business and I don’t even read, can’t even spell; them and the women who made them, they slowly slacken their pace to meet the press just assembled in a row on both sides up the stairs, always upward, Uppermost and then what, you expect a brass ring, take your coat…journalists pent behind cordons like pedigreed livestock who talk, who ask too many questions, too many of the wrong ones, at least, squawky without answer: who are you, who do you think you aren’t…they’ve come in hordes, to barren the buffet, to drink the fountains dry and then the mooned pool, skinnydip, eclipsing in their spectacle what’s hung high from lunettes — entering under a raft of tautblown, entablatured banners proclaiming an exhibition, an eternal exhibition, it’s said, of the way it was, sentiment, nostalgia, Ostalgie if you must from that language itself an exhibit (besides which, we’re kitsched in the East after all—82nd & Fifth), a Museum of an Extinct Race, of a not quite Unconditional Surrender…gevalt, it’s okay, only richtig, go ahead and admit it, of their old lives just skinshed in this very pilgrimage Uptown, up from the overhauled system, the redone 6 Train if they’ll take it, anything green…or trekked on over from the West Side across the darkling Park upon the wings of the crosstown bus, M86 be its name blessed forever and ever — pulled up in their commissions and liveries, not as guests anymore but as hosts, not as visitors of late but at home, masters of ceremony and the attention attendant, making their last adjustments after stepping to sidewalk’s sopping carpet, a remnant of a God’s tongue gotten for a good price right off the floor, off the rack (one woman mortified at how her husband’s schlock satin pants they have too many pleats and break only down by the heel, that and his shirt it’s pleated, too, or maybe just wrinkled, showing a full two inches of cuff, is how crazy, how far we’ve come), them tugging, pinching pulling, a flush wind, hair askew, blown big and unstyled, these gusts of dress exposing scandal, toupees with their yarmulkes still pinned go flying like demons through air. A sweep of light stains the night, swirling carbon arc searches…all turn their heads to the judgment descending, a buzz, a whirr, the noise of skykashering knives: Shade lands on the roof ’s helipad; nothing can begin without him, he’s a sponsor of the evening, the guest of honor and the honored host both, as reelected Head of the Sanhedrin, turned out for the occasion in a slimmingly fitted white tux, frilly lapels baby blue, a matching blue & white kippah atop, alternating colors seamed to its quadrants; it’s trimmed so heavily in platitudinal platinum, it’s amazing he can still keep his head high.
Are we expected to justify — tell me, to whom? They’re here because B’s tongue’s finally finished licking its rounds, has only just returned to the city, to be unveiled tonight and enshrined, on permanent exhibition and in its original, restored reliquary of I promise, it’s gold, housed under a lone spotlight, in a furthest gallery yet to be opened…beyond the doors, which are huge, castiron monstrosities, like mouths, as if the breasts to a giant’s coat, Gog, Magog, Goliath, the noted developer Barry Silberfels depicted towering over his wife nèe Phyllis Stein and their twin kinder Stephen and Steven — the doors, stylized with carvings, imaged commandments, their symbolism obscure only to the blind or the braindead, don’t do this, do do this, Thou shalts and not and please, just don’t ask: in a wild wind they’re flung open to the street, the collection aired to the darkness, the stairs that lead up then into the marbling heart, to the flight of guests arriving at yet another destination never their final — ascension, verticality, that’s called mobility, babe; past the staircase’s landing, halving the flights, guarded by two templar lions chained tightly to rails, their paws splayed without claw, they’re rolling twinned globes, being ridden by agents, barebacked undercover as angels twirling swords on temporary fire…past them, fleeing from the flash and the ask, they’re still pouring in: curators and docents and amateur experts, the critics with their papers and pens in their defamation suits, slurry ties, arm-in-arm money-lenders with their lent, philanthropists two-by-two, alongside their beneficiaries even betterdressed, beaming, these schemers and scammers charitably deducting their rentals tonight; more guests billed as either surprise or special or both, personalities you might know from, remember or recognize, roast and toastmasters extraordinaire — this place, it must be making a fortune; they’ll museum the world three times over with what they’re taking in: fivethousand shekels per plate’s being charged, endowments gathering interest forever, sponsorship’s accumulative assurance ad æterna, the Paradise that is the Curator’s Circle, the Purgatory of Sustaining Membership slander, whatever you want to be, we’ll go ahead and give it a name; amazing, tomorrow they’ll be turning donors away. Menschs flood the lobby, make coatcheck, strip rubbers, lose umbrellas then locust the cashbar, ordering vodka with Jaffa OJ for their wives headed straight to the restrooms to face fresheningup: primp and preen with powder the puffs of their noses, redlabel mashke with Coke (O/U, by now even K’s good enough) for themselves. Free Palestein! with every large cup of coffee! A Mazel Tov orgy, boutonnières poking bosoms, the glint and stick of starredflag lapelpins, handshakes, onehanded, twohanded, hugs turning to kiss one for each cheek, two for them both then the lips; let me admire you twirls, looking the new wife or girlfriend onceover, up and down, check the gums, turn around now, bend at the waist; some are talking standing talking then moving to mingle, sidestep network, drop and hint, while others’ve already taken their placecarded seats at tables placed around the periphery then further in toward the stumbleworn inner stairs; their hands in their laps they’re waiting for what, some sort of honorable mention, another award, a keynote unlocking, the idea, justification, the reason, excuse: save it for later; first’s the gala, then the appeal; they riffle their programs — and only then, the unveiling…the Tongue.