One Thing You've Got to Hand the Federal Government

One thing you’ve got to hand the federal government — and I was surprised by this as you’re about to be — is that they really know how to throw a party. And who among us temporary employees of the Census Bureau, we doorbell-ringin’, personal-information-solicitin’ enumerators, would have guessed that there’d even be a party this soon after we went into The Field, and countless months before the job is done? But there, in our respective emailboxes, the invitation was, saying You’ve worked hard for two weeks. Now it’s time to chill! There was to be food and music and a fully hosted bar, and a fleet of Department of the Interior limousines on hand to transport safely home anyone who spent too much time around the latter.

And the entertainment! As we were arriving and ordering our first cocktails to lubricate ourselves socially, a steel drum band that would have been welcome on even the swankiest cruise ship was playing Bob Marley’s greatest hits. After a short break, Huey Lewis & The News did a short set that was much enjoyed by all, followed — and I was as surprised by this as you’re going to be — by none other than Pink Floyd, with whom special guest Jay-Z sat in during “We Don’t Need No Education,” or whatever that old disco hit of theirs is called.

During the first break — during which a sumptuous buffet, more about which in a moment — was laid out, I chatted with one of the steel drummers, who was intrigued to learn that I’m something of a musician myself. I was surprised by his reaction to my comment about the greatness of the Marley oeuvre, though I didn’t use that exact word because I didn’t want him to think I was French or putting on airs. He said he, like most Caribbean musicians, wished poor Bob had never been born, because his songs were all anyone ever requested. He said he hadn’t minded playing “One Love,” for instance, the first million times, but that playing it in the 21st century almost made him wish he’d taken his parents’ advice and moved to London to become a bus driver or scam artist.

I hadn’t seen a comparable buffet since my days as a music journalist. There were lobster and prime rib, mountains of fresh oysters and jumbo shrimp, buckets of caviar and truffles, endless mounds of fresh fruit. To one side of the stage on which the entertainers entertained, there was a sushi station. On the other, two beaming latinos in toques were making omelettes to order.

In between the Huey Lewis and Pink Floyd sets, none other than Muhammad Ali appeared. If you wanted, you could spar a round or two, and then have your photograph taken with him. But a lot of my fellow male enumerators were a lot more interested — and I hope I’m not going to get any married men in hot water by saying this — in the remarkable array of prostitutes that had been recruited for the event. In the case of those for us heterosexual guys, we’re talking 8s and 9s, graceful young beauties with real breasts and few pockmarks, rather than the immoderately implanted sluts the country’s frightful indebtedness might have led one to expect. You could far more easily picture these women getting $2000 for an evening’s cavorting with traveling CEOs than standing on street corners in circulation-impairingly tight fuchsia hot pants.

A woman enumerator with whom I became friendly during training assured me — I’m obviously no judge of this sort of thing — that their male equivalents were no less attractive and classy. Indeed, she was sure she recognized the one she took up to one of the rooms in the Fishkill Holiday Inn, where the wingding was held, from a Hugo Bass ad in Vanity Fair.

You should have seen how some of the dowdiest and most hopeless among us were transformed by the whores’ flirting. We seemed to become 15 pounds lighter in the wink of an eye, crowsfeet-less, whiter of tooth, straighter both of tooth and back. Props and kudos a-plenty, then, to the Department for recognizing that everyone needs to be made to feel attractive every now and again. I shall myself return to The Field as soon as I’m over my hangover — foolish me, believing that Dom Perignon would be less apt to induce such discomfort than $6.99/bottle pinot grigio with which I ordinarily content myself! — feeling 10 years younger.