One of the great hazards of my husband’s job is that I am forced to attend various cocktail parties around the Corporate Area so that I might scribble a few lines about the cultural mating habits of the people around. The rich are always members of the smaller bouquets. You can see by their body language (the impatient fidget, and glance at the too-expensive watch) that they are yearning for somebody to remember they are alive. The hostess of the night flits here and there like a flirtatious butterfly dabbling in various conversations. She sometimes acts like a hunting dog, guiding the ’socially inept’ into conversations with groups who couldn’t care less. But if you appear to be drowning in the high seas of intellectual conservation, just give an eye signal, and she will come hightailing in on your look, to guide you off to some other dangerous plateau. There are various characters in this group. The women are quite interesting.
You have the bulimic  who work out so much that they have tendons in their necks like the ladies on the LPGA tours (Ladies professional Golf Association); and sallow menopausal women even with one kilo of makeup on their faces.

And then, there are the gorgeous ’corporate wives’ who look like water color portraits. They smile so fiercely and brilliantly, it’s scary. They never seem to stop smiling, you can just imagine all the muscles at work in their jaws, and they secretly pray that their facial muscles don’t just cramp up on them. The funniest guys there are the oldies who ’close-mark’ the bar, gulping down huge amounts of alcohol that would paralyze an elephant baby.  When these men die, they will be so well cured,  no need for embalming, Then….there is the hollow cocktail party laugh, you know the one I mean, the ’ha-ha-ha-ha’, he he he  which sounds exactly like how it is written, but never how genuine laughter ever is in real life.

The laughs mix in with the ebb and flow of conversation like a mad symphony: metallic hee hee, staccato ha-ha, whine, buzz, giggle, hum, whine…… I wonder how I am still sane.