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| Volume 11, No. 49 |
September 1-7, 2010 |
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| Party Spy
WHAT’S UP’S UNDERCOVER PARTY PROVOCATEUR | | By Lank Dresser | |  I was fortunate enough to be raised here in El Paso, in the mocha blend at the cusp of the frontier. A lot of people look down on us here. Even people here look down on us. We have, some of us, accepted the consensus, that we’re fat and ugly illiterate binge drinkers who sweat a lot. Poor and Mexican isn’t a market-driving demographic, and we are, mostly, poor and Mexican. So we’re neglected. There aren’t any magazines for the poor and Mexican, no MTV reality shows, no sitcoms, at least since George Lopez went off the air.
But at least we’re not white.
Before you go off thinking I’m racist, let me tell you that some of my best friends are white. My parents, God rest their souls, were white. All of my siblings are mostly white, and the guy looking out at me from my mirror on the occasional days that I shave looks an awful lot like a white guy, poor dude.
And when I say white, I really mean pale. Closer to pink, really. Subject to sunburn. Non-indigenous.
Last week I went to a party in Santa Fe. New Mexico, scarcely as populous as the El Paso/Juarez Mexoplex, is 40 percent Hispanic. But those Hispanics weren’t, mostly, invited to this party. The governor was there. He may be New Mexico’s most famous Mexican, but he dances like a white guy, and I think you know what I mean by that.
But of course the governor was there. There are only 70,000 people in Santa Fe. On any given Saturday, I bet you can find the governor at some party somewhere in the 5-0-5. And this party was at some gated community kind of like a country club, with guys that couldn’t make the cut at wannabe police academy working the gate.
The party was a surprise birthday party for a 70-year-old guy. Do you think that’s a good idea, having a surprise party for a 70-year-old guy? The birthday party could have quickly become a wake. Of course, the government has suspended the estate tax for this year, so maybe the party planners were big-picture kinds of guys, with their names in the will.
But to tell the truth, the guy, whom I didn’t and still don’t know, looked great, though perhaps a little scalpel dependent. I prop up my aging façade with moisturizer and low wattage light bulbs, but I can’t afford surgery. He could.
To confirm your suspicions, white America, for the most part, doesn’t know how to party. White America has no drooling drunken uncles, no tipsy spinster aunts, no slick headed teenage romeos, dangling from the extreme edges of the bell curve. All of whom make for a better party.
If this had been a Mexican party, there would have been a bottle of Scotch, and/or Crown, and/or Brandy, on every table, and the band would have had to play louder, because the revelers would be reveling full throttle, and the roar of the laughter would have drowned out the sax, and in the morning, or the afternoon, when everybody woke up, everybody’s stomach would hurt from all the laughing the night before, and nobody would remember, exactly, how the party ended, or if the cops had come once or twice, or how they got home, and what was that girl’s name.
Instead, waiters walked from table to table serving wine, and they were reluctant to leave me the bottle. This party ended at a little before eleven, and the cops only came once, to give the governor a ride home.
The Party Spy appears monthly in What’s Up. If you’re interested in having Lank Dresser show up at your party, and possibly write about it, let us know at:
editor@wupweekly.com or 534-4422 x114.
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