This summer, a case of mistaken identity earned me a seat at a formal dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The invitation — to an intimate evening with the museum’s president — was addressed to a good friend of mine. It certainly seemed like an extravagant perk, but his $100 membership renewal was coming due. Maybe times were tough, he reasoned, and the museum was rolling out the red carpet to keep even its smallest contributors. He replied that he would be delighted to attend. But there was another name on the invitation, one he didn’t recognize. Could he bring someone else — his friend Jon Methven — instead? Of course he could; the Met sent a confirmation on official museum letterhead.
Only later did we put two and two together, and realize that the other person on the invitation was a famous billionaire, whose partner happened to have the exact same name as my friend.
Ethically, it was a gray area. The Met thought we were moguls, contemplating investing our fortunes into new wings. My friend may have been a member, but I had never set foot in the museum before. And yet, the pleasure of our company had been requested. We were guilty only of not correcting the museum’s mistake, an alibi we intended to cling to if museum security dragged us screaming from the building.
The night of the event, we put on our best suits and hoped it did not come to that.
“Do I look like a billionaire?” I asked my wife.
“Well … you look a little like a millionaire,” she said.
The way we saw it there were three possible outcomes to the night:
One, we could show up at the door and the authorities would be waiting, Met security having figured out the mistake in advance and issuing us a stiff talking-to about how fraud was handled in the art world.
Two, the intended guest and his billionaire partner could also have gotten an invitation, and they would show up first. My friend’s name would be crossed off the list by the time we arrived, and we would have to explain our awkward selves. All four of us could not stay; a duel might ensue, and public support would not be in our corner.
Three, we could make it through the cocktail hour undetected. Even if someone recognized that a mistake had been made, we figured they couldn’t throw us out at that point, not in front of all the other guests.
We arrived at the museum feeling a bit paranoid and were told it would be just a few moments until someone escorted us to the roof. Wasn’t that what they always told fleeing criminals at the airline check-in? “It’ll be just a few moments,” while the cops are surrounding the building and barricading escape routes and the helicopters are jockeying for the best camera angle. But true to their word, an escort arrived and showed us to the elevator. We were in.
The plan was to mingle. At any time, if someone had pointed me at a sculpture or painting and asked for my impression, I probably would have run whimpering from the building. But I had to fake it: the quicker we latched on to a group of art aficionados, the quicker we would be considered family.
I stumbled a few times, killing one conversation by admitting I didn’t know who Ellsworth Kelly was (answer: a famous minimalist artist seated a few tables over, next to the singer/songwriter Judy Collins, whose novels, I later announced, I “loved,” having mixed her up with Jackie Collins, the romance writer, whom I’d never read anyway). One couple, possibly sensing I did not fit in, inquired how I found myself at such an event. I fumbled my lines and sort of waved a hand in the direction of the other guests, as if to say, “oh you know, how do any of us find ourselves anywhere?”
And after a bit too much wine, I confessed the whole sordid caper to a woman at my table, mostly because she seemed too nice to deceive.
In the end, it wasn’t the evening I’d expected. The guests weren’t stuffy or proper, but pleasant and passionate about the museum. The museum’s president, who I’m pretty sure had met the intended invitees before and knew we were impostors as soon as she saw us, welcomed us nonetheless and encouraged us to wander the museum after dinner. The chef who performed artistry on the beet salad is destined for culinary greatness. And a security guard, who doubled as an art historian, patiently explained an exhibit as he guided us to the exit. Most of all, walking through the empty museum at night, all those priceless sculptures and paintings looking down on us as we passed, was one of those beautiful moments you want to hang on a wall forever.
So if you’re ever mistaken for a billionaire and invited to the Met for dinner, I highly recommend accepting. And if, someday, I earn enough money, even though no one asked for it, I’m going to build that museum a new wing.
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