Lola's Salon

LOLA'S SALON

(excerpted from The New Yorker 'Around the Town' item 'Ethel's Cafe Updated' November 3, 2002 issue)


You're in New York and it's nighttime and it's raining so goddamned hard and noisy that the city seems like it's soundless and your cabby's fat nose is tight up against the cold windshield and he's making like he can actually
see anything through two inches of water so he's not bothering you with
conversation and it's all so weirdly peaceful that you wonder if this is
that quiet space just before a delivery truck washes through a red light and
takes you out but it's ok because you're going to die warm and if you're like me and you start
thinking about dying warm then probably the next thing your going to start thinking about is making love with Lola.

Anyway, let me tell you about Lola's salon. 427 Waverly, just off Washington Square
Park. One of those ritzy brownstones. Shove a tip at your cabby through
his window and get up the stone stairs and out of the goddamned rain and
there's no buzzer so don't bother looking for one. If you don't have a
walking stick then bash the door with that fancy brass knocker that Lola
probably sweet talked from some Austrian count who didn't get anything in
return except the smell of her up real close and the idea that he was the
sexiest man in town and that's not a bad deal in my book. But I'll give you a tip,
bub, when you knock on that door, do it like you are proud of who you are,
because anything less and Withers is going to take his time getting to you. Withers is a butler with standards. Let's say you do it right and
you get in quick and you grab a fat Cuban from the tray inside the
entranceway, or, if you're of Lola's persuasion...no, can that description,
not many are...if you're the soft curvy gender, then you might want to slip into
the powder room and spruce up and check with Lola's maid Fifi to make sure
everything is twisted around straight. You'll like Fifi, she's got an eye.
The men like Fifi too, but it's different.

So now you've got your Cuban that tastes like it was rolled by Fidel's
personal staff or your hair and your tits are looking as good as Fifi's
surprising Brooklyn artistry can achieve and you head in to see who's at Lola's
tonight. And here's where the good stuff starts because I've got this
theory that Lola's salon is like a sort of gravity well for cool people. I
mean, you're here, aren't you? You walk into the drawing room and you are
as likely to bump into someone playing Rhapsody in Blue on Lola's grand as a
crowd of folks smoking good dope and standing lined up in a loud and
serious hand-eye coordination contest aiming hors d'oeuvres at a pinned up
photo of George Bush. Maybe you shake a few hands. Maybe you're the
perceptive sort - that sort is common here - and you pick up right away on a
certain sensual energy that's as rich and comfortable as the deep dark red
carpet you're standing on and you wonder if you've got the courage to flirt
as much as you know is likely to happen here whether you're part of it or
not. But the buzz of voices coming from Lola's huge living will draw you
sooner or later. You walk in and one look tells you that these chairs and
sofas are so comfortable that you'd probably lift your own sweet ailing grandmother out
of one and plunk her down onto the floor so you could take her place. Maybe
you'd have a second thought about that, and you'd put her near the fireplace
so her bones would stay warm and she wouldn't fight you to the death to get
the chair back. But you don't put her too close to the fireplace because
it's the size of a Chelsea bachelor suite. And the room is filled with just
the sort of people all rooms ought to be filled with but aren't. Over by
the drapes that cover the ten foot window looking out on the park, one
fellow, he's a theology boy from NYU with elbow patches on his sweater and a taste for the sort of mushrooms that John Ashcroft has nightmares about and he has green eyes that women are going to tumble into and he's making a compelling case that Satan smuggled himself
into the New World by hiding in the underwear of Catholics. You like the
fellow right off. On the sofa in front of you, a ladyfriend of Lola's from
the west coast is telling another lady with long long legs who's here from Boston that she'd had
some business dealings with Dick Clark and her opinion of him was that 'his
mother should have eaten him while his bones were still soft'. And you
wonder if she's married, because you've just fallen in love.

And that's a typical night at Lola's. So, come on in. You haven't even met Lola yet. And besides, who the
hell wants to be outside on a night like this?