The opening of the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Met was full of semi-elderly men in well-cut suits and well-preserved women wearing furs, in spite of the balmy weather. Art openings are my all-time favorite venues for ogling people, as they provide a compelling mixture of stuffy socialites, wealthy wannabes, preening pimps, and on occasion, actual artists.

People rarely look at the art, and I don’t blame them, since the canapés are usually delicious and the 70-year-old women in glass platform heels are mesmeric. I fall prey to exceedingly gauche behavior that involves as many glasses of champagne as possible and staring at the old woman dressed in a black python tutu that has been stretched almost as many times as her face has been lifted.

I became a serious creeper and felt increasingly like a cougar as the night progressed. There were two tall dreamy boys who looked to be fresh out of St. Paul’s. They had been impeccably dressed by their matriarchal Upper East Side mother, who hovered over them the whole evening. She hampered my advances toward her floppy haired, Gucci-loafered older son, but in the end, I bonded with some Italian men who were, in theory, more mature.

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