by Jane Borden
“So you’re just gonna walk away,” I said.
“Jane, calm down.”
I felt the blood rising to my face. I stood up from my barstool, stuck my finger in his face, and said, “Fine: You know what, Jake? Fuck you! Is that what you wanted? Does that make you happy?”
It did. His lips curved into a most sinister smile. And even though he wasn’t a stranger, we both knew he’d won.
The skies didn’t open up; there was no ticker-tape parade. I felt no different. Actually, I felt a little nauseated, but I think that was the Italian food. I also felt a little ashamed. And then I hiccuped.
Jake stood. He reached for his jacket with one arm, threw his other over my shoulder, and said, “Come on, Bernie, let’s discover Atlantis.”
Long after we’d left the bar, I suspect his smile remained.
to my office. But I can’t receive packages at home. “You still don’t live in a doorman building?” she asked incredulously. “Is that safe?!” This question—along with any relating to my lack of security, wedding ring, or blond highlights—is followed by the cry “Hoahhh!” a dramatic half moan designed to convey that she is concerned and, mostly, that she thinks I should be too.
However, before eliciting a noise of such volume, she pulls the phone slightly away from her mouth in consideration of the listener’s ears. Because even in fits of hysteria, my aunt, a Virginian by birth and North Carolinian by address, is a lady. And that, as it turned out, is exactly why I received a package. During a recent trip home, she’d spied certain aberrations in the polished behavior I was taught as a child. She’d noticed what I hadn’t: Since moving to New York my decorum has atrophied. I’m a lapsing Southern Belle. This package was her way of pulling me back on to the wagon.
“Oh. My. God.” I said, staring into the box lying open on my keyboard. “It’s a manners book.” This nugget of information pulled two or three of my coworkers from their desks.
“No way,” Adam squealed, grabbing the thin, hot-pink hard cover and reading its title, “How to Be a Lady: A Contemporary Guide to Common Courtesy.” That nugget attracted a few more neighbors.
“It gets better,” I said to my growing audience. “Parts have been highlighted in pink.”
child, I learned a specific code of wisdom widely recognized as “etiquette.” Some of its edicts are intuitive and commonplace. For example, it’s impolite to chew with your mouth open. The courteous nature of this is unarguable. No one should witness the marriage of ham biscuit and collard greens in midmastication. No one should have to answer the question, “Do you like ‘see food’?”
Other directives are more abstruse. Once, while helping my mother refill the candelabra on our dining room table, I watched, puzzled, as she lit each candlestick several hours before dinner.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“Sweetie, you never display a candle with a fresh wick,” she responded. “Now help me blow these out.”
“What’s wrong with a fresh wick?” I prodded.
“It’s tacky.”
“Why?”
“It just is.”
“But why?!” Her impenetrable logic had reduced me to the five-year-old who responds to every answer with another question. There had to be a reason! Unless you take the Moses story literally, rules don’t fall out of the sky. They have origins. Maybe, in feudal times, I wondered, a host preburned candles as a way of proving to his guests that the wax wouldn’t emit a poisonous gas. Or maybe, at some point in history, kerosene lamps became a hallmark of the lower class so if one had real wax candles, he wanted his guests to know it. Or maybe one time Jackie O lit hers by mistake and told the Vanity Fair reporter, “I totally meant to do that.”
I asked again and again until my mother finally said, sternly and exasperatedly, “I don’t know, Jane … it’s just what you do.” And that, of course, is the most accurate explanation I could have received. To truly understand etiquette is to take it without question—because the real answer is itself impolite and therefore verboten by the same code being questioned. That circular truth is this: One follows the rules of mannered society in order to prove she knows them.
Although there are general guidebooks, such as the one I received in the mail, information regarding the more obscure end of the etiquette canon is exclusive to oral history. The extent of your knowledge is a résumé of how well you were reared, which reflects directly on your parents’ worth. Each time my sisters and I left our home, we were on display and accordingly assessed. Every meal, shopping trip, church outing, and car pool was a recital. Growing up, I was watched as if by a hawk, except without the eventual relief of being eaten.
Once, while I was setting the kitchen table—a full spate of silverware at each place, even if we were only having stew—my mother answered the phone.
“Hello, Pam!”
I knew instantly that Mrs. Andrews had called to report on our chance encounter that afternoon at the Hop-In convenience store. Like a perfect soldier, I’d walked her out to her Mercedes, carried her purchases, opened her door, and capped off the exchange with, “See you Sunday in church!”
“What beautiful manners she has!” I heard Mrs. Andrews’s voice crackling through the receiver. “You’ve done a wonderful job.” Mom beamed. I didn’t tell her that I was really just occupying the woman’s attention so my friend Kristen could buy us cigarettes.
Regardless of the motivations behind the actions, I’d followed the code. And, like I said, the code matters most. In the big city, though, people follow a different set of rules, which is to say, they don’t. New Yorkers are nice, mind you; the rude stereotype is largely false. But we don’t do anything for the sole purpose of doing it. Although we live within a few miles of both the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, most of us have visited neither. In other words, we don’t even do things with well-established purposes. Pointless endeavors never had a fighting chance.
This neglect of niceties can be disconcerting to visitors. It was for my friend Wortley. She lives in Wilson, a small eastern North Carolina town, which is actually pronounced “Wiltson” (I think this is where all of the silent t’s go). To give you a little context, Wortley and her husband, her cousin and her cousin’s husband, and her parents all live on the same street. I don’t even know the name of the person in the apartment across the hall.
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.
A lady uses her best china or dinnerware to serve her guests.
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.
A lady always sets the table before her guests arrive.
Again, this assumes you have a table. Next.
If something breaks, a lady is not disturbed and does not allow her guests to feel any guilt over the matter.
I agree wholeheartedly. As my father used to say, “No use crying over spilled milk.” Still, my mettle in this department has never truly been tested, as my dinnerware is literally valueless. When I say “literally” I don’t mean “figuratively.” I mean it was all free. My plates, bowls, and cutlery are a mishmash of dishes left behind by the dozen or so roommates who’ve moved in and out of my life over the years. My drinking glasses are either promotional items I swiped from work, which bear a variety of liquor company and hotel emblems, or they are Pom tea containers, the mason jars of my generation. As my mom says, “My name is Jimmy; I’ll take what you gimme.”
So, no, it doesn’t bother me to throw shards of any of these things in the bin, as they were all, at one point in their histories, trash already. Besides, if something breaks at one of my parties, I’m usually the one who did it. Because I’ve usually imbibed the most. Hosting is stressful. Any lady will tell you that.
If a lady must excuse herself from the dinner table, she simply says, “Excuse me.” No further explanation is necessary.
Tell that to my friend Will Hines. While we were out at a bar one night, I gave delicacy a chance; I pushed my chair away from the table and said only, “Excuse me.”
Will, in a knee-jerk reaction to the information vacuum, looked up and asked, “Where are you going?”
Great, now I had the full attention of the table and two decisions: (1) share my scatological pursuit far more openly than if I’d simply said, from the beginning, “I’m going to the bathroom,” or (2) say nothing and walk away, which will naturally lead my friends to assume I’m either a dine-and-dasher, a member of the CIA, or a superhero—because any of those explanations is more logical than the notion that I had to relieve myself, considering that, had that been the case, I surely would have said so at the start.
