Before you start reading this, you should start humming (or singing if you're so inclined) that song that goes "One of these things is not like the other". Do you know the song I'm talking about? From Sesame Street?
Yesterday around lunchtime, Jimmy called me to ask if I wanted to go to this fancy breast cancer fundraiser last night. The US Ambassador's wife has started an NGO to raise breast cancer awareness here. Part of their initiative is to raise money to buy mammogram machines for out-of-the-way places in Brazil where poor women have no way to be checked for breast cancer. And so last night's fundraiser was to raise those funds. The Ambassador had bought several tables at this event and for some reason, there was a table that hadn't been filled, so the call went out to various consulate people to fill it.
My first inclination was to say no. It was one of those days where I didn't even wash my hair when I took a shower yesterday morning. A fundraiser at the Hyatt meant dress-up clothes and a late night and high heels and a babysitter, none of which seemed terribly interesting to somebody who hadn't even washed her hair that day.
Jimmy said to think about it and so I did. And what I thought is that I probably wouldn't get many chances to go to a high-fallutin' breast cancer fundraiser at the Sao Paulo Hyatt next year in South Carolina, so we should go. I called the woman who cleans our apartment twice a week who is the best thing I've discovered in Sao Paulo and asked if she was available to babysit. She said she could so one of the big dilemmas was off the table.
Then I moved on to what to wear. As you may have noticed, my style is vintage Gap, not Hyatt fundraiser couture. I have a little black dress, but I decided it's kind of sad when you show up for every event in the same little black dress, so I ditched that idea. I called my resident fashion expert and dear friend Gisele, who gave me ideas of what was acceptable, and I decided on black pants and this sparkly black sweater.
As an aside, this was supposed to be a gala event (which would have precluded my attendance as I'm fresh out of gala gowns), but with the financial crisis, the organizers decided a gala would be tacky so they made it less formal.
As another aside, until last year, the last eye shadow I bought was probably in the 8th grade when blue eye shadow was all the rage. On one of our trips home last year, I saw these great little compacts that are like paint-by-number kits for eyes. I decided to buy one for the dressier occasions in my life when I actually might have to wear more makeup than chapstick. Let me just tell you that's some of the best $4 I've ever spent. Because we've gotten to go to more dress-up things in the last year in Sao Paulo than we've been to in probably the 10 years of marriage before that, this little eye shadow set has come in handy. There's a diagram on the back for the makeup-challenged people like me that tells you exactly where to put each of the four colors. The next things in my makeup arsenal that I need to work on are blush and mascara. I'm probably risking eye infection every time I use this antiquated, dried-up tube of mascara and I lost the blush brush years ago and now put on blush with wadded-up toilet paper.
Okay, on to the event.
So we drove up to the Hyatt in our minivan with one headlight burned out. It was sort of like when the Beverly Hillbillies first got to Beverly Hills. We were surrounded by Mercedes and Volvos and BMWs. Nary a minivan in sight and certainly all the other cars had working headlights. But I didn't trip getting out of the car and my eye shadow was in place, so it was all good.
We entered the reception area to wait in the line to be checked in and there were personal bodyguards everywhere. I, of course, knew who none of these people were, but the richest man in Brazil was pointed out to me as was a woman who had Mick Jagger's love child. Roving waiters served lots of good appetizers and so I was happy.
Drinks were from 8-9pm and then we entered the ballroom for dinner and it was beautiful. I have no idea how much each seat cost, but I'm fairly certain it was probably more than our family's annual grocery budget. There were candles and flowers and printed programs and menu cards. N-I-C-E.
I studied the menu card to see what was in store. We were to start with this salmon dish that I didn't really like - weird consistency and I'm all about consistency. Then we moved on to beef with potatoes and vegetables. Then for dessert was this dinner plate full of small 2-bite desserts. It was my kind of dessert plate.
We also all studied the raffle prizes, which included such things as a trips to Paris, Buenos Aires, and Mendoza; 2 business class airlines tickets; a Gucci pocketbook, a Mercedes Benz smart car, etc. Just a few things any fundraiser-going person can use. At the freebies table, we weren't sure how you got raffle tickets, but we assumed since we didn't pay for our seats, we wouldn't be entered because surely your hefty check for entrance at least got you a raffle ticket, right? Wrong. Those cost an additional R$1000 per ticket. Young women walked around all night with credit card machines to let you buy as many raffle tickets as you wanted.
Now we were at table 40, aka the freebies table, so we were in the back corner by the cameramen and the sound crew. These young women soon caught on to the fact that we were the charity case and they left us alone and didn't try to sell us any more tickets.
The embarrassment came when the emcees for the evening (some man who I'm sure is famous and Ana Maria Braga, who, if you live in Brazil or have ever lived here, has that morning talk show with the parrot puppet) started walking around among the tables with microphones, trailed by cameramen (the video was fed to two huge screens at the front of the ballroom) to hit people up to buy raffle tickets. They were schmoozing with the rich people at the big tables for a long time and quite frankly I never thought they'd come over to our table in the dark corner. But they kept making their way across the room. And before I knew it, the man was standing behind Jimmy (who was across the table from me), tapping him on the shoulder, asking in the microphone for all the world to hear if he'd bought his raffle ticket yet. (Maybe he remembered seeing him in Rolling Stone and thought he was of the moneyed set??) Jimmy had no idea he was coming because he was engaged in conversation and was caught off-guard and could only muster a noncommittal "uhhh." And the man said "if you say "uhhh", that means you haven't bought your ticket yet." So he left the credit card girl to take care of Jimmy, who promptly sent her away.
So I didn't win the Gucci bag or the trip to Paris, but we each got a little goodie bag on the way out. We scored some MAC lipstick, chocolates and Clinique products. As the song says, we clearly were the things that weren't like the others, but I'm pretty sure I'm happier being thrilled with free lipstick than I would be if I felt the pressure to buy R$1000 raffle tickets just to look good in that crowd. Now I'm off to start trying out my new Clinique products...
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