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version seven. http://demongin.org |
An Old Killer Bee Once Hummed Me a Tune
I work the door for a private party...with hilarious political consequences.
Saturday, 2004-12-04 | Classic Gin, New Haven, Politics, Social Studies
I honestly couldn't make this shit up.
Tonight the GPSCY hosted two events. One was the ODEO Ball--a mixer-style event hosted by a student diversity organization (i.e. black folks)--and the other was the Feuerzangenbowle party--a private affair hosted by a certain German expatriate and his post-doc friends (i.e. white folks).
What's more, these two events went on across the hall from one another; in the lounge, 50-something German speaking, sharp-featured people gathered to listen to music sung in German and sip mulled wine, frequently clinking glasses and shouting 'prost'! while across the hall in the ballroom 100-something dark-skinned, nappy-haired people gathered to gyrate and pulse to thumping top 40 music and get their drink on.
Even more hilarous than the fact that my job was to keep errant drunks from the pub and inquisitive black people from the ball out of the lounge where the Germans had set up camp. More hilarious than that is the fact the Germans gradually began to take over the hallway and then the foyer as the night went on; first they needed to set up a table in the hall and then they needed the foyer for chairs.
Ham-fisted cultural allegory isn't merely the province of social satirists anymore: it's Saturday night at New Haven's official, university sponsored grad-student bar.
There was actually a moment where, on my way back from the pub, I overheard the phrases 'honey, you know black people don't even go out until after 11' and 'vell, ve Germans have vays of getting these things done korrektly' uttered within seconds of one another. The crescendo of the night was definitely the part when the Germans broke into an impromptu round of ball-room dancing to an ancient sounding recording of violin and piano while the dull thud and muffled roar of Corybantic ecstasy throbbed and surged through the ancient GPSCY walls.
It was like that nightmare where every channel on digital cable is showing BET's Comic View: 'you know how white people are always like this? well black people are always like... THAT!' Only you can't wake up, and you're the commedians to whom the joke never gets old.
I was, of course, able to will myself to endure six hours of compression in this iron-hard vice of stereotypes; shit, I'm so hard up, for ten bucks an hour I'd even stand in the middle of a reception hall hosting a Bar-Mitzvah, an AA meeting and a Greek wedding on a full moon during sweeps week of an election year in a post-911 world.
