My partner and I hate cocktail parties but when we were recently invited to one we really had no choice but to go since our best friends were hosting it. The effort to make meaningless small talk at these affairs is too exhausting to contemplate, but thankfully platitudes, cliches and bromides come as naturally to me as breathing air. I regard this ability as a gift especially since most people are so busy talking about themselves they don’t notice what I have to say anyway. My partner does not have this gift so when we go to cocktail parties he simply does not speak.
On the way to the party he proposed a plan. “Let’s see if you can go the entire night speaking only in platitudes,” he said; I was dubious but he was inspired. “We’ll be like Penn and Teller,” he said. “How about if you only speak in cliches and I won’t talk at all.” This was patently unfair: “You don’t talk anyway,” I pointed out.
“True,” he said, “but I usually feel bad about making you do all the work.” He paused before adding, “If you can do this I’ll take you to dinner at Café Vico afterwards.” Café Vico has the best Italian food in Fort Lauderdale so of course I agreed.
Thanks to the open bar there was a distinct feeling of well being in the crowd when we arrived and greeted our host. I started simply: “Drinking like a fish, huh?” I asked, and I was off.
We first saw Roger who explained he had not seen us because he had been working a lot of overtime. “I can use the money, though,” said Roger and I said, “Make hay while the sun shines.”
Kim was despondent that her fourth marriage had broken up. “I had such high hopes for this one!” she confided. I put on my sad face and said, “Dreadful are the hopes of man,” while my partner shook his head morosely.
Our neighbor Ilene greeted us and explained she was alone because she had recently dumped her boyfriend because he gave her crabs. This was too good to be true: “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas,” I said.
Bill was at the open bar, drinking heavily because he had still not sold his house. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said. “I was so proud of that place and now I hate it.” “Pride goeth before a fall,” I intoned darkly. My partner shot me his “WTF?” look and even I thought I was a tad cold so, abashed, I added hastily, “But the darkest hour is just before dawn.”
I took to my new conversational role like a duck takes to water and the next two hours flew by. “April showers bring May flowers,” I said when Hank complained about the weather, and I comforted Mark, who was afraid he was going to be laid off, by reminding him that “It ain’t over til the fat lady sings.” I reminded an accountant that “The devil is in the details” and sternly warned Justin, who had just proposed to a girl he barely knew, “Marry in haste, repent in leisure.
I was about to tell Gloria, who had had more plastic surgery that “Pretty is as pretty does,” when she told us that her son was, regrettably, “turning into” her ex-husband. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I suggested as my partner nodded. Gloria paused. “Does he ever talk?” she asked, gesturing to my partner. “Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt,” I paraphrased as my partner glared at me.
“Words to live by,” said Gloria. “You should give it a try.”