I’m cookin’ up something good… Delicious and intimate.

(My American Royalty continued…)

Land of the free, home of the brave—there is no aristocracy, you say. Oh, really? Tell that to the maitre d’, the bouncer, the seasoned bartender at “Bemelman’s.” A new world lays itself at your feet when you date a Groton and Princeton grad that just happens to be directly related to the ex Commander-in-Chief.

Merc Bar. A finger of Jack and Coke left in his tumbler and I stroll in the door. Turn left, turn right. This is a set-up, you see—a blind date scenario that would make our Baby-Boomer parents proud. He’s searching the crowd; I see him searching. Even though I know next to nothing about the boy—except that he is President ______’s great, great grandson and President ______’s second cousin once removed—he’s easy to spot. Like a good British aristocrat, my date has a slightly inbred visage (flat face, broad nasal bridge, bug eyes) and a grating guffaw. The chortle is a nervous tick of sorts that is emitted at random and inappropriate moments—like after saying, “Nice to meet you.” He’s short—vertically challenged enough for his line of vision to be breast high. Lucky man.

Fact: I’m bigger and blonder and just plain more than any of these northern things he’s used to dating (or screwing after the Met’s Costume Ball). Indeed, the boy has two mighty POTUS’s in his family and at that moment I still fee like a Brigitte Nielsen running the show. Lord, was this New York society? I imagine all the Upper East Side girls clamoring for his prestigious last name, praying at Café St. Bart’s over lunch that he would be their ticket to a permanent listing on the Social Register. “No more Jimmy Choo’s! No more Christian Louboutin’s!” they solemnly vow. “For him, I swear to don ballet flats from here to eternity!” The lithe ladies also tuck away all sexual desire as they resign themselves to focus on his back pocket (wallet) instead of his front fly (errrmm, never went there).

Me? All I want is a dirty martini and an even dirtier conversation about the gilded faces that fill the pages of “Vogue” and the “Times.” He orders another drink and I set in, ready to refine my journalism skills…