The Reluctant Receptionist

i’d planned to be at home last night, since it was my only night to actually eat a leisurely dinner in astoria and then watch some of my own television, which i pay for even though most of the television i watch is at phong’s house between the hours of 10:15 and 11pm. when jeremy asked me, though, if i wanted to go downtown to try and track down our friend aron at the restaurant where he works i couldn’t really say no. i mean i literally couldn’t say no: i’d bailed on very similar plans last weekend and couldn’t be like, “jeremy, i am sorry but i am much too important and busy to follow through on the plans that we made together over a week ago!” it was really just icing on the cake that aron apparently works at some fancy pants restaurant downtown in the bowery hotel called gemma. what’s the definition of gemma? yeah, i thought it was totally gross, too.

according to the new york magazine review of this place, they tried to make it all like the waverly inn (this pretentious restaurant that famously didn’t open to the public for like months and months and months, meaning that it was an invite-only restaurant where only famous people and rich people and famous rich people got to eat.) except that no one was actually trying to go there and even though it was supposedly “closed to the public” no one ever had to wait more than 25 minutes for a table. now you still had to be able to afford the food, which means i could never go there.

we didn’t have to afford anything besides drinks, however, so we went to see him there. we hadn’t seen this guy in seven years (he’s one of our oklahoma friends from, believe it or not, right after high school) and he looks great. older, sure, but we all look older (and in my case way hotter! jaykay.). aron planted us at the bar, but made sure to walk us around the entire perimeter of the restaurant so that a) we could be seen being walked by the manager around the entire restaurant; and b) could crane our necks and roll our eyeballs around and surreptitiously look at joaquin phoenix and eva mendes, who were raucously drinking champagne in a corner table.

so chalk it up: another star sighting. two, in fact, though i had no idea who eva mendes was until i looked her up this morning. the main event of the evening was reconnecting with an old friend, which means that at this point four people i was friends with in high school are now in new york. nice.