I’ve been to a variety of holiday parties this year, some good and some tedious, but none can compare to the Christmas parties my friend Audrey hosted.
When I met Audrey she was in her mid-60’s and I was in college. We worked together at a mall department store and, for reasons unknown, she decided to take me under her wing.
Audrey inhabited a different world than mine. Unlike my mom and her lady friends, Audrey was a college graduate: She went to Vassar and had what I thought was a glittering social life: She knew Kitty Carlisle and had lunch with the mayor of Fort Lauderdale and talked about her dear friend “Janet” who, I discovered years later, was the mother of Jackie Kennedy.
Audrey and her husband Henry lived in a rambling house on the Intracoastal with her elderly mother; they were so obviously wealthy that once I asked her why she was working part time in a department store. “Never question someone’s finances,” she chided me gently, adding, “or their choice of a spouse.” But when she saw how embarrassed I was she softened. “I’d go crazy if I stayed at home all day,” she confided. “This job occupies me until cocktail time.”
That’s when I learned that Audrey, Henry and Mother started drinking gin martinis precisely at 5:00 and by 7:30 they were all so hammered they were slurring their words and lighting the wrong end of their filtered cigarettes. Audrey and Henry were childless by choice. “I went to Vassar,” she told me, “I was not raised to be a brood mare.” Audrey believed that having children was “vulgar, ” a term she also used to describe flashy houses, fancy cars, showy jewelry, big dogs and vodka. “Vodka is for peasants,” she told me when I told her that I preferred vodka to gin. “Would the Queen Mother drink vodka? I think not. Why, she’d just as soon guzzle an ‘Old Milwaukee.’”
Audrey and Henry hosted a huge Christmas party every year and for as long as we worked together she included me on their guest list. “Dearheart, of course you will come,” she told me the first year we worked together, “and bring some interesting friends.” In Audrey’s world, calling someone “interesting” was the highest honor she could bestow, and the thought of hosting a party inhabited by dull people was something to be actively feared. I thought my friends would not want to come to her parties with me because the age difference would be a deal breaker, but Audrey was dismissive.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Tell them it’s an open bar and they’ll come,” she told me, and she was right. In those days the legal drinking age in Florida was 18 and Audrey had no qualms serving cocktails to college students. “Imagine expecting someone to wait until they’re 21 to drink,” she would say with wonder. “Why, if you’re old enough to drive then you’re old enough to drink.”
Audrey loved to meet new people but had no tolerance for boors. “Imagine telling complete strangers how you made your money, or how many square feet your home is,” she told me once after being cornered by some new neighbors. “Those two are just as common as sod,” she said. She lowered her voice. “They’re realtors you know,” she said, as if that explained everything.
By her own admission Audrey was a dreadful cook: “Vile,” she told me, “bordering on dangerous,” but she truly believed that good cooks are bad hosts. “All they do is obsess over the food and pout if you don’t compliment them every two minutes,” said Audrey, to whom alcohol was the fuel that powered all social events. Consequently she was not one to obsess over the menu for her parties; one year I asked her what she was serving and she looked at me like I was crazy. “No one goes to a cocktail party for the food,” she said; “You want your guests to remember the interesting people and the witty conversation.” Audrey’s cocktail party menu was simple: a jar of olives, several bowls of salted nuts and enough alcohol to float the Queen Mary. I was a regular at Audrey’s Christmas parties until 1983; I had just graduated college and quit my job at the mall because I was starting a new job in January. As I said good bye she took my hands and air-kissed both my cheeks. “I hope you have a wonderful future,” she told me, slurring. “One filled with adventure and interesting people.” She gave me a wicked grin. “ And plenty of gin.”