My mom's gallery opening was tonight, and I was pretty proud of her. I had to be, considering the way she's been hyping her show for the last two or three months now, and how it's been years since she got her pottery — or her "artistic clay pieces" — in any sort of exhibition. I went to the opening last night after work, partly to support her and partly to placate her since she's pissed at me for not getting her an anniversary card even though this conversation about a week beforehand:

Me: I'm gonna give you a card for your anniversary.

Mom: I don't want a card.

Me: Okay, then I won't give you a card.

So some mixed messages there.

I've never been to a gallery opening before because, honestly, staring at art gets old real fast and I didn't really know what to wear. I wore a black, black shirt thinking it would make me look either Bohemian or dandruffy or possibly ridiculous. I had no idea. I also had trouble deciding whether my iPod mug-me earphones would make me look hip or conceited. Turns out that what my mom was calling a "gallery" could more accurately be described as the "lobby of a hostel for starving artists, the ex-homeless, and recovering mental patients," so really all I had to do was splatter paint on my jeans and I would've totally fit in. Mom was evidently HIGH coming up with an artistic outfit: she was the fifty-year-old white woman wearing a red silk kimono and I wish my camera-phone took better pictures so you could laugh at her like I did. Mom was offended, which is bullshit because she's not a vampire and mirrors exist.

I totally underestimated how interminably boring this gallery thing would be. For a musical diversion, the curator hired these stoned dudes who lived in the building to randomly bang a drum and puff away into a trumpet and call it "fusion jazz," which made my brain want to leap out of my head and strangle the musicians. And how long does it take to look at something hanging on a wall? Three seconds? Five seconds if it's really interesting? Maybe ten if you're thinking of buying it? So I don't know why the hell I had to spend two whole hours there. I think Mom was supposed to be schmoozing with New York's art literati, who were either not present or blend into an indigent crowd really, really well. I spent a little time by Mom's pottery, looking like I was really into it in the hopes that other people would wander over and want to buy a piece, but that didn't happen. Otherwise, I pretty much just found a bench and sat down with the homeless folks.