not-for-profit Temping

I promised myself that I wouldn't do it. It makes me crazy. It runs contrary to every fiber of my being. But I did it. I got another office, temp job. I'm working at this mega-huge non-profit organization that takes in millions of dollars from Upper East Siders and uses it to clean up vandalism in Central Park so that property values stay sufficiently high. Like all non-controversial, bigwig non-profits in this city, they love to throw a pretentious, yearly dinner and/or luncheon to provide an arena for ostentatious displays of wealth... and to raise money. This is the 3rd non-profit that I've worked since I moved here and it never ceases to amaze me how much disposable income lives on the Upper East Side. This event is so exclusive, you've gotta know somebody if you want the privilege of spending $500 per ticket or, up to $50,000 per table. They're based on the southeast corner of Central Park so I get to walk across the park every day. There isn't a square centimeter of the park that doesn't feel like it's untouched, but damn, it's beautiful. Daffodils, crocuses and forsythia are in full bloom.

This is the first job that I've hade on the Upper East Side. I am regularly seeing people that might as well be living on Mars for all that I share in common with them. It's a culture of toy dogs and plastic surgery that'd make sense to nobody outside their inner circle. The younger women are long, thin, blond, beautiful and virtually non-sexual. They look like laminated models that are still living in the pages of a fashion magazine. And such anger. It must be the backwash from all the reindeer games that society people play with one another.

Interestingly, I've had very few sightings of the millionaire husbands that mate with these specimens. I would never be so gauche to expect a dual-sighting. Occasionally, I get a glimpse of a potential sighting as some man in an Armani suit strategizes with another over a cell phone. The discussions normally involve somebody making a 'move' in a board meeting somewhere and what the potential fallout might be. It's all very arcane and utterly childish in it's tone. I suspect that most of these husbands work in the Financial District and eat their lunches in those restaurants with dark wood and tinted windows that I could never possibly enter, much less afford. They don't go out at night, unless it's to catch a taxi or elongated car. Much of the Upper East Side looks like an abandoned theme park at night. Entire blocks lie dormant until someone with a dog-ornament emerges with a cellphone surgically-attached to one ear.

I know... I'm being bad. But hey, when you're earning low wages at an organization raising tens of millions of dollars and handing out door prizes of equivalent value to your yearly rent, it can be a little demoralizing.