The Night We Whored Mensa (with respects to Mr. Allen)

"She was every dame you saw waiting in line at the Elgin or the Thalia, or penciling the words 'Yes, very true' into the margin of some book on Kant. Only somewhere along the line she had made a wrong turn."

It was a warm and sultry night.

My chasity belt was pinching, so I called up my wingman, Carlotta, to go out. Carlotta is one very smart cookie, and she was already on her way out, to a Mensa meeting. Mensa, as their website, explains, "provides a forum for intellectual exchange among members.”

“M.A., come with me. This is a lecture, and members can bring friends.”

It sounded interesting. I, of course, had had dealings with a similar group, RANSACK, years ago. They were a decent-looking lot. It boded well.

Carlotta and I meet up at a nondescript office building on Lexington Avenue. She has only recently become a member of the elite group, and so we don't know what to expect at this outing.

We are just recently out of college ourselves, with sleek bodies, sleek hair, and sleek minds: "I think Melville reaffirmed the virtues of innocence in a naive yet sophisticated sense - don't you agree?" "A platonic comprehension of Christianity--why didn't I see it before?" We could easily go all night.

Carlotta pops into the meeting room first, to check out the scene.

It’s early, so there aren’t many people there yet.

“If any men do come, they’re ours,” Carlotta reports, the women in the room being of the dowdy persuasion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Lipstick in place, in we go. It was a conference room of some sort, with long parallel tables and cafeteria chairs.

10 demerits for no ambiance.

There was a snack table in the back of the room, with low-grade snacks: pretzels, potato chips, Dixie cups and soda.

50 demerits for no martinis.

We get our Dixie cups and take places toward the middle of the room. (Maybe a tad overcompensating on our part.)

Men did start arriving—-it was egghead cliché on parade, and not even of the Professor from Gilligan’s Island type. Polyester, a preponderance of plaid shirts, a lot of brown, pocket protectors. Not there’s anything wrong with that.

Carlotta and I should have bolted, but we thought, no, our minds can be enriched, even if there is no eye-candy.

And then a man sat down next to me just as the lecture was starting. I turned to him and smiled, to be polite, and the level of non-interaction from him was a little scary.

I started to try to listen to the speaker—-the lecture was about some newly found branch of semiology.

And then it started. This strange slurrrrrrrrrpp-crunch, crunch, crunch sound. Slurrrrrrrrrpp-crunch, crunch, crunch. Slurrrrrrrrrpp-crunch, crunch, crunch.

I look to my left, and Non-interaction Guy is holding his Dixie plate right up to his chin, and shoveling potato chips into his mouth.

It was the funniest sight I had ever seen, but it seemed inappropriate to laugh, the room being so quiet and all, and I not even a Mensa member.

So I tried to concentrate on the speaker, and not listen to Carlotta laughing under her breath on the other side of me.

Snorting Guy then moved on to the pretzels on his plate. Thank God, that was a relatively contained, normal action.

My mind drifts. I start thinking about Caribbean islands, about the broken blind in my living room I’ve been meaning to fix, about a coat at Saks I ///// Slurrrrrrrrrpp-crunch, crunch, crunch.

It was too much. I laughed out loud, and I was shhushhed by several people in the row in front of me! Unbelievable. It only made the scene funnier.

I wanted to retort, “Oh, come on—-he’s making more noise than I am”—-but I was laughing too hard by then to get the words out.

Carlotta was starting to lose it next to me, Snorting Guy showed no signs of abating, and so we made our break, the click, click, click of our stilettos punctuating our exit.

Back on Lexington Avenue, I pull out my annotated Dante’s Inferno to see if we can salvage the night by finding that floating card game. Ah, hope springs eternal in the young.