Gunn's Golden Rules

Be a Good Guest or Stay Home

(I Won’t Judge You—I Hate Parties)

THESE DAYS, I DON’T have much free time, and when I do, I want to close the door and sit in the dark. If I have a friend over, I usually just brew a pot of coffee, and if I’m feeling very festive, then we’ll have sherry and I’ll throw some Toll House cookies on a baking sheet.

Don’t make fun, foodies! Breaking those things apart requires strength. The last time I made them I had a horrible time separating the dough, so even though I didn’t whip anything up from Gourmet,I had a feeling of real accomplishment when they came out of the oven. My guest and I both enjoyed them tremendously.

But I definitely have made the party rounds, and I’ll tell you about a few illustrative occasions.

One evening I went to a very memorable dinner party. It was held at a grand New York City apartment. The place was beautiful, elegantly furnished, and full of contemporary art. I was quite impressed.

When I arrived, they were serving cocktails, and I was having a nice time. But the cocktail hour just went on and on … and on. There was nothing to snack on, so people were starting to get rather tipsy. I didn’t drink very much, but I was starting to think: Is there a nut or pretzel around here? If I don’t eat something, I’m going to have trouble seeing straight.

I assumed they weren’t seating people for dinner because not everyone was there yet. If I hear I’m supposed to arrive at seven thirty for dinner, I think dinner will probably be served around eight, so the window to arrive is between seven thirty and eight, and preferably on the early side of that. If you arrive at 7:59, you are really pushing it. I arrived at this dinner at around seven thirty-five or seven forty. But people were dribbling in until nine p.m. The martinis were really flowing, and everyone was getting completely smashed.

Now, I grew up in a family of excessive drinkers. There wasn’t a single holiday gathering when some item of furniture didn’t break. One year it was an uncle putting his foot through a coffee table. I was a kid, so I didn’t totally comprehend what was happening. But I remember the dinner being cleared and everyone smoking and someone saying, “Does anyone want an after-dinner drink?” and everyone saying, “Yes, a martini!”

Now that I’m an adult, I know that a martini is not an after-dinner drink. It’s a getting-the-party-started drink. As it turned out, even though my family members had been drinking since five p.m., after dinner they really got started!

Anyway, back to this memorable dinner party: after a good two hours of drinking in a way that would do my family proud, we finally sat down to dinner and were each presented with a steamed artichoke with butter dipping sauce. Also, of course, plenty of wine.

Then the artichoke went away, and I thought, Lovely first course.Then this teeny container of sorbet came out a few minutes later. I thought it was a palate cleanser, but no, the sorbet was dessert. Meal over.

I thought: Are these hosts so bombed that they forgot there’s a chicken in the oven?But I didn’t smell anything cooking. Some of the guests were making eye contact with one another as if to ask: Is this really it?But nothing was said, and the party ended not long after dinner. I think we all hit McDonald’s on the way home.

The next day, I sent a note. I don’t lie, but I can be diplomatic and disguise things in politeness. I told the truth and said it was “an unforgettable party.”

I received an e-mail back that said, “We so enjoyed having you there and thanks so much for coming!”

What I really expected to hear back was, “Thank you. We were so embarrassed when we later realized we forgot to serve the roast.” There was never any acknowledgment about the mysteriously sparse meal. I’m constantly thinking there must be an answer to the sphinx. You wouldn’t sit down at a table formally set with silverware with no food to serve, would you?

I actually was thinking about that modest dinner at a lunch I attended at the White House on July 24, 2009. I was even seated at Mrs. Obama’s table, which was a tremendous thrill for me. She is such a fashion icon and has amazing presence. (At the lunch, she was wearing Michael Kors. I just love how she supports American designers.)

The first course that came out was a tiny salad. The main course was crab cakes the size of silver dollars with cannellini beans and grilled summer squash from the White House garden. A lovely woman sitting next to me made some comment to a table companion about how teeny the portions were, and Mrs. Obama overheard and chose to address it.

“When we arrived at the White House,” she said, “I could not believe how wasteful we were in what we served people and how much we threw away. I’d rather have people leave lunch and go get an ice-cream cone than to throw away so much food.”

Indeed, everyone ate everything. Not an ounce of food went to waste. And I really liked her attitude. First of all, how classy was it that she frankly and warmly addressed an overheard complaint? Mrs. Obama made the guests feel comfortable and taken care of. No one starved. We’re so used to these huge portions, but they’re not necessary. It wasn’t a ton of food, and indeed I did grab a little snack that afternoon, but the food was very tasty, the company was excellent, and unlike my artichoke friends’ meal, the lunch consisted of three courses!

PERHAPS YOU REMEMBER HOW at the Obamas’ first State Dinner there were two crashers, a couple who wanted to be a part of the Real Housewives of Washington, D.C.I won’t mention their names because they’ve gotten enough newsprint already. As you’ll probably recall, they managed to wheedle their way into this exclusive party in spite of not being on the guest list (though they claim a misunderstanding). They even got close to President Obama and Vice President Biden.

Well, I was truly shocked by this on all levels.

Speaking as one who merely went to lunch at the White House, I simply can’t fathom how anyone could get in without being invited. When I went, the layers of security were intense.

Several weeks before the lunch, I had to fill out a questionnaire, giving my Social Security number and my date and place of birth. I even had to call my mother and find out the name of the hospital where I was born. (It was the since closed Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, D.C., for those of you who like those sorts of details.)

At the check-in when I reached the White House, one of my fellow guests arrived with a surprise date. (The audacity!)

The staff was lovely to the uninvited guest and said, “We are so sorry we are not able to have you attend, but we have a sitting room where you may wait for your friend, and we’d be happy to bring you a plate.”

There were many more checkpoints between the door and the event. The final obstacle was the first lady’s chief of staff, Susan Sher, who waited at the top of the stairs with the guest list.

It was probably the tenth time I saw the list. Luckily, I was still on it, and she recognized me and greeted me warmly. It was only then that I relaxed. It was such an elaborate process, I was nervous that they weren’t going to let me in!

And yet somehow these horrid party crashers were able to waltz right into the first State Dinner of the administration. What kind of message are these reality-show hoodlums sending to our young people? “You feel like going to the White House? Dress up and head on over there!”

Where is the penalty for that kind of brazenness? What kind of culture do we live in where someone can say, “I want it, so I’m going to have it now—circumstances be damned”?

People like this want the cheaper version of fame: celebrity. They want to be famous, but not for having done anything. That’s the opposite of what I think our young people need to be taught, which is: It’s wonderful to aspire to things. Aspire to be invited to the White House. Maybe one day you will be. To accomplish such a feat, it’s very important to practice good qualities of character.

Shortly after the crasher scandal, I was interviewed by a blogger who sees these crashers as national heroes.

“It’s what we all should be doing,” she said.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” I responded.

“I’m not joking,” she replied. “I’m altogether serious.”

“This is egregious behavior,” I asserted. “It’s the White House and the president. It’s a State Dinner. One doesn’t crash the White House. One doesn’t crash a wedding. One doesn’t crash anything that’s invitation only.”

“It shouldn’t be exclusive,” she said.

“What?” I said with incredulity. “They’re private events!” I wondered if she thought Andrew Jackson’s 1829 inauguration, at which the public showed up at the White House ball and trashed the place, was a good model. “Are you just trying to get a rise out of me?” I asked.

She assured me that she was not.

“What do you say to your children?” I inquired, fearing the answer.

“I tell them: ‘You go wherever you want to go! You do whatever you want to do!’”

I said I thought that underscored a dangerous sense of entitlement. Young people need guidelines. What are they going to do? Just arrive at orientation at Harvard and say they want to go there and so they will, even though they haven’t been accepted and haven’t paid tuition?

“What’s your feeling about domestic violence?” I asked. “Is anyone entitled to act out in any way?” (I was being interviewed about Liz Claiborne Inc.’s support of domestic violence prevention programs before we’d veered off to talk about the crashers.)

“Having been on the receiving end of domestic violence, I don’t feel that way,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “you have experience that tells you otherwise. Maybe if you were the host of an invitation-only dinner party and people whom you weren’t expecting showed up and you had no place to seat them, you would realize that’s wrong.”

I still believe that to be true, even if people like those terrible White House party crashers are constantly providing a counterexample in which trashy behavior is rewarded. To cheer myself up, I try to remember the difference between short-term and long-term success. Living a really good life and making a real mark on society is a marathon, not a sprint.

NOW, BACK TO REGULAR old parties. I confess to you, and I’m somewhat ashamed of this: I don’t particularly like entertaining. I know I should, but I just don’t.

I love cooking. I cook for myself every day. I like the ceremony of it. It takes me into a different zone. I make a lot of pasta and meat loaf (ground chicken or turkey and only occasionally ground beef). Rather than buying in bulk, I just grocery shop every day. I know my rate of consumption, and that way I can just pick up some produce and whip something up. I haven’t bought red meat in a long time. I’d like to say it’s because I’m so ecologically conscious, but the truth is, I can’t make a good steak.

But cooking for a crowd of five or ten or, heaven forbid, twenty?

No, thank you. I don’t like feeling like a slave to the care and feeding of my guests. Whenever I’ve had parties, I’m in the kitchen mixing drinks for the entire evening, and I never actually get to enjoy and converse with anyone. Maybe that’s why the only people I see with any regularity are my friends the Banus, who drink only champagne. It makes hosting so easy. All I have to do is say, “Want some more?” and pour away.

Honestly—and maybe some of you can relate to this—I just can’t stand the pressure of being responsible for hosting a memorable (and not in a bad way) evening. Martha Stewart, bless her heart, intimidates me. That level of entertaining is so over my head: What do you mean, you didn’t dig up your own potatoes for this dish? You didn’t make the doilies? The plates didn’t just come out of a kiln?

I love Martha, but it gets ridiculous.

And yet, I have learned a few things in my many years of party attendance.

Bad weather is good for parties. You get only those people who really want to be there.

Entertaining shouldn’t be about showing off. It’s all about making people feel comfortable and setting a stage for everyone to have a good time, make new friends, and have stimulating conversations. You want to leave a party thinking: If I hadn’t gone to that, I never would have met this wonderful person, or had that delicious meal, or felt that sense of camaraderie with the people I met at the dessert table.You don’t want anyone looking at the clock, thinking, When can I leave?

NOW, WHERE ARE MY single ladies and men? It’s hard, isn’t it, when you don’t have someone to take to a party full of couples? At office parties and certain events, there is pressure to bring someone. People are constantly trying to hook me up with dates, but I’d just as soon go alone.

Even my own mother (to whom I’ve never officially come out) says, “What about your old age? Don’t you want to be with someone?”

Lately, I’ve started to say, sincerely, “Maybe not.”

The truth is, I don’t have time to be a good partner. Relationships take commitment, and all my energy goes into my work. I wouldn’t want to let someone I cared about into my life and then never be home, or always be distracted. To be a good partner, I would have to give something up. What would it be?

There are a lot of perfectly happy single people in this city. It just matters who you are and what you want. And I would never want to be one of those serial monogamists who have a different partner every year and are always wondering why it never works out. Generally speaking, there’s a reason why people can’t sustain a long-term relationship. They think, It can’t be my fault,when the odds are pretty good that they’re doing something at least subconsciously that tells the world they’re not ready to settle down. At least I knowI don’t want to settle down!

That’s why parties where people are expected to bring a date even if they are single can be so stressful.

It’s not quite as bad, though, as parties where people bring dates who aren’texpected. That’s one of the most egregious social sins anyone can commit. It’s hugely presumptuous.

I’ve been at fairly small dinner parties to which someone’s unexpectedly brought someone with an excuse like, “My sister was in town.”

The host is typically accommodating but secretly seething.

Someone I know had people who showed up to her wedding who had not RSVP’d. She didn’t have food for them or a place for them to sit, so she said, simply, “You should have told us you were coming,” and sent them away. Good for her!

Fortunately, bad behavior by others can sometimes work to your advantage. At events with tables for ten someone sometimes shows up with an unexpected guest, and suddenly there are too few place settings. Usually, this is about the time I’m dreaming of being back home in front of the TV, so I will graciously say, “Please, take my seat! I will just disappear.”

“No, please don’t!” my tablemates will insist. “Stay!”

“No,” I say gallantly, “things happen for a reason. I am happy to sacrifice for the good of the table.” Meanwhile, I’m thinking, I wonder if I can get home beforeHouse Hunters International starts? (I watch a lot of HGTV.)

The only trick is: Don’t look back. Keep going. Pray there’s no coat check. Don’t stop for a taxi. Get around the corner and then hail one.

Honestly, it’s fun to get dressed up, but I prefer simpler affairs. I like it when I go to parties and there’s a pitcher of something sitting out for people who don’t know exactly what they want right away. And I like when you can just go get your second drink yourself. It frees up the host and lends an air of informality to things. Similarly, it’s good to make dishes in advance so you can just heat them up.

I also like having at least one person around who is widely disliked among your crowd of lovely people. You never know who’s going to get along with whom, but you do know people need someoneto gossip about later, and you don’t want it to be you.

My niece and I were just talking about Thanksgiving, and she was saying there was someone she wasn’t particularly looking forward to seeing.

“But if she weren’t coming,” I told my niece, “maybe you’d be picking on me!” It’s always good to have someone in that pariah category, because they let the rest of us off the hook.

Maybe I’ll start entertaining more since I just moved into a more party-friendly apartment. For the first time in my adulthood, I have a dining room table. It’s beautiful, and I love having it. But no one’s ever sat at it. Maybe this will be the year I actually start enjoying party giving … Or maybe I’ll continue to put my gorgeous dining room table to a slightly less social use: doing crossword puzzles in my pajamas.

ALAS, UNLESS YOU ARE made of stronger stuff than I am, there is no avoiding the holiday-party circuit. From what I can tell, the holiday season is just an excuse for bad behavior. Party season is like a military gauntlet, with cocktails being flung at you instead of clubs.

I knew I had entered into a real state of Grinchdom when I was chatting with the maintenance man who was putting up a tree in the lobby of a company I was doing some work for and heard myself say: “This tree looks like a metaphor for this company: anemic, ratty, and artificial.”

Well, we bonded over our ambivalence about both our employer and the sorry state of the old plastic tree, and that was a nice moment of holiday cheer—our laughter around the tree. But, in general, I have trouble getting into the spirit.

I travel by train on the holidays. Leaving New York for Delaware one year, there was a power outage on the tracks. It was like the evacuation of postrevolutionary Russia. When power was finally restored and the first train left the station, there was a cheer at Penn Station. Then they put four Acela trains together, and everyone was sitting on suitcases. We were just lucky to get out of there. My niece and I had been talking about how we were going to have a Merry Skype-mas, whereby we would all sit around our computers and talk with one another over the Internet rather than gathering under the same roof.

Well, once we arrived at our destination, it was one thing right after the other. My mother had a high blood pressure attack. She had to go to the emergency room and stay in the hospital for three days. That night, my nephew, Mac, took his parents’ car to a party. At four a.m., the police were pounding on the door. The car was found in a ditch. Mac was in his room, covered with blood and mud.

My sister called me at a quarter to six in the morning from the emergency room to report on Mac’s condition. I drove to the ER in Mother’s car and picked them up. They didn’t volunteer details, and I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to have to tell my mother. I could honestly say that I knew nothing. Better that she should hear all about it from my sister.

Unfortunately, at a quarter to ten, my drama-queen niece called and told me the whole story before I could tell her I didn’t want to know. So then when my mother asked what had happened, I had to fill her in. I could have faked ignorance, but as you know, I am pretty much incapable of telling a lie. Alas!

Wallace told me on the way back that she’d started out feeling sorry for Mac, then she felt sad for the family, and then she just felt mad. I said, “You should feel mad. Anger is good.”

At the same time, it wasn’t such a bad holiday season over all. Nobody died!

EVEN BEFORE THE HOSPITAL visits and car crashes, family get-togethers have been fraught. One year, my sister-in-law (she’s my sister’s husband’s sister, if you like the details of convoluted relationships) used Thanksgiving dinner as an opportunity to fight with her brother about who would host their mother for Christmas.

“You led me to believe that she spent three days with you, but I happen to know she was only with you for a few hours,” my sister-in-law said accusatorily.

“What?” my brother-in-law said. “We had her for three days.”

“That’s not the information I have,” his sister said.

It’s not as if this can’t be verified one way or the other, and is Thanksgiving dinner really the time to do it?

When she behaves that way, she acts like she and the person she’s speaking to are the only people in the room. I hate it when couples do that.

Quite a few years ago, when my niece and nephew were very young, old family friends joined us for our family Thanksgiving dinner. Owing to Wallace and Mac’s young age, there were knock-knock jokes and probably some references to farting and other bodily noises.

One of the invited guests turned to her husband and stage-whispered, “Bob, would you please do something to ratchet up this conversation! I’m about to fall asleep from boredom.”

I started to stew.

My sister was talking to my niece and nephew about whatever preteens are interested in, and meanwhile this lady is huffing and puffing dramatically.

Well, someone asked my sister something, and I said, “Wait! Before you answer, make sure you properly ratchet upthe quality of your answer, because heaven forbid that our guest should be bored to such a degree that she falls into her plate of food!” With that, I threw down my napkin and stormed away from the table and upstairs to Mother’s guest room.

The stage whisper is highly problematic. It’s trying to do what you want to do without taking accountability. My grandmother was a master of it, and now my mother has taken up the torch. You criticize someone in the room without saying something to their face. It’s rude. Think they can’t hear you? They can. They’re being polite enough to pretendthat they can’t.

There are four topics that should be completely avoided at all social events, and they are: religion, politics, finances, and sex. These things are, quite frankly, nobody’s business. There is, however, an exception in New York: money is totally fair game.

I think that’s because it’s a very expensive city, and unless you find some luck, it’s very hard to get by. On my teacher’s salary, I did get a little panicky at times. Thank goodness that for the sixteen years I spent in the West Village, my landlords never once raised my rent. I paid $1,200 a month for that entire time. (Trust me: That was an absurd bargain for what I got, especially considering my neighbor was Sarah Jessica Parker, whom I adore.) I loved that apartment for the first thirteen of the sixteen years, until the disrepair spread to the point where it seemed dangerous. I thought the windows were going to fall out.

Anyway, before I even dreamed I would ever have the means to buy an apartment, Nina Garcia was complaining about the renovation of her new place. She was talking about how much it cost to redo the bathroom. I thought she said $17,000 and was aghast.

“No,” she said, “Seventy thousand dollars.”

I nearly fainted.

When I first moved to the city, I spent the first five years dumbstruck by questions about how much I’d paid for things. It’s something you would never ask in Washington. You’d be considered a heathen, raised by wolves in a trailer park. And now I ask it! How much is this apartment?

Recently I was going down the hallway to my elevator. Standing there were two women. One was a Realtor, and the other was a client. I talked about my apartment and what it was like when I’d moved in and what I’d done to it. I was this closeto asking, “How much is the apartment you’re considering?” But I restrained myself. (Also, I remembered I could just go look it up on the real estate agent’s Web site.)

Compulsively dropping the names of fabulous people you know is another New York social sport. As part of another charity auction, I was lunching with Liz Smith and the winning bidder. Liz brought with her a friend, the former head of an ad agency. The two of them did nothing but name-drop. That stuff rolls off me, but I felt bad for the winning woman and her daughter, who could never compete. They may have enjoyed the show, but I was worried they felt left out.

Now that I at last have a roomy apartment of my very own, I should really think about having guests more often. This is the first time I’ve ever had a bed bigger than a single. I’ve actually moved on up to a double bed, and I feel very decadent about it. And yet, I confess to you that I am such a hermit, it’s hard for me to open my house up to other people. I consider my home a retreat and enjoy my monastic life. I’m a bit OCD about my environment. In New York you’re up against people all day long, and when you get home you really need to recharge.

When I do have guests, it usually goes fine, but I have to remember to do a thorough home orientation when the houseguest arrives. I imagine that Martha Stewart would say that if your house were set up properly, your guest wouldn’t need an orientation. You need to look at your house through a stranger’s eyes.

My niece, Wallace, was staying with me recently and deprogrammed my TV by trying to watch cable. Mysteriously, you have to be on “Component 1” rather than “TV.” If only she’d asked. Anyway, I was sorry that she hadn’t gotten a chance to watch her shows and also that the TV had to be reset.

But Wallace is a really good houseguest. I’ve also had some bad ones. A colleague of mine would send her husband and two kids up to their country place during the summer, and since she didn’t want to go home to the suburbs during the summer by herself, for two summers she camped with me every week—Monday through Thursday—for three months.

I was living paycheck to paycheck and buying groceries for two. I would get home earlier than she would and would cook and leave her food. She would get home, collapse into a chair, and say, “Meat loaf again?” She never even bought a bottle of wine.

She was assuming a great deal about my love life. Wouldn’t it be possible that I would want to have a guest over? She was right that I didn’t have anyone in that category, but I could have.

I sat her down and explained that I couldn’t sustain these shenanigans another year. I implied that it was putting some restrictions on my own freedom. She came up with a compromise, whereby she would stay at my place for two nights and someone else’s for two nights. I was too nice back then, and I said okay. But I’m strong enough now that I wouldn’t welcome an open-ended stay anymore. My privacy is too important to me.

I’ve learned to keep my big mouth shut when someone says, “I’m coming to town for the weekend and looking for a place to stay!” or “I’d love to visit New York, but I can’t afford a hotel!” Now I stay quiet or say something along the lines of, “Oh, too bad! Guess you’ll have to stay home and save up!”

My mother’s retirement place has separate guest rooms with baths. When I’m visiting, she always says, “Would you like to stay in one of the guest rooms rather than in my apartment?” I happen to know she’s looking for affirmation that I would rather room with her. So I say, “Of course I’d rather stay with you, Mother,” when in fact the thought of getting up and having coffee alone in the morning before the day of family time starts is pretty enticing.

I know a lot of people go through this same thing with their families, where every question is loaded. The appropriate answer to every question is: “What do you mean by that?” Everything has a subtext.

To be a good houseguest, you should be as independent as possible. You should buy groceries or take your hosts out for dinner. Pick up after yourself. Pretend to have a good time even if you’re not. Say, “I’d like to make a dinner reservation tonight. What’s your favorite restaurant?” Try not to break anything. Be quiet.

I read something interesting in Martha Stewart Living:If you have a guest room, sleep in it to see what worldly needs your guest may have that aren’t accommodated. But there are limits to how far I go. I don’t have a television in my own bedroom, so I won’t put one in the guest room. Besides, everyone can watch TV on the computer now. There’s no need for guests from Denmark to use your landline to make a $60 phone call. They can Skype.

The only place I was ever a regular guest was in Hong Kong, with Suzy Moser and Chris Berrisford. Suzy and I were doing some work together for Parsons, so it was actually more convenient for her to have me close by. The house was a huge penthouse with wings, so we almost never crossed paths. I would go twice a year for two nights. I always brought Suzy and Chris a gift and took them out for dinner. I believe we all looked forward to the visits. But it’s something else if the hosts don’t have a mansion and the guests don’t limit stays to two days.

I can hear people saying, “But what if I’m on a budget?”

Then don’t go!

I was talking about this book with my family and mentioned to my niece that she should show the book to her friend, who has done some pretty appalling things, in my opinion. My niece grew hysterical, literally, with the thought that her friend might be in the book.

Finally, I said, “If you think sheis essential to this book, then this book is in trouble. Besides, why do you feel the need to defend her? How do you defend the fact that you filled the apartment with furniture from your family, and when you were away, she took half the living room furniture for her bedroom? Or that she borrowed your car and then crashed it? This is inappropriate behavior. Sorry, Wallace, she is now in the book!”

But I have the same hyperniceness Wallace has. When I lived in a studio in D.C., I would give my guests the foldout couch I usually slept on and I would sleep on the floor in the sleeping bag I kept in the closet. I didn’t want my guest to be uncomfortable. If I’m going to be a host, I’m going to be a good host. And my new mantra is: If I can’t handle it, I will just say so.

A friend from out of town e-mailed me recently and said he wanted to see my new apartment. I knew he was fishing for a place to stay, and after the initial flush of panic passed, I realized that I would actually like to see him and that I should invite him to stay. After all, I can’t continue the rest of my life in fear of houseguests. I have to get myself unstuck.

Maybe the moral is that if you’re the traveler and you don’t have the financial resources to take care of yourself and to honor the host, then don’t make the trip. But if you’re the potential host, you should be honest about what you can and can’t do, and then be as hospitable as possible—and no more.