NATURAIXY nobody works in an office just to have Continental lunches with the girls, snooze it up on the office floor occasionally or sneak off to foreign films. What about the lunches girls have with boys?
They’re the greatestl Think about it. Lunching with men is a chance to have dates in the daytime on the pretext of business . . . and to have a whack at men who might not think of asking you—or be able to ask you—to dinner. Looking at it realistically, business lunch dates with men are sex at high noon!
Lunch-date men range from just plain office pals (with whom you pay your own check) to clients and prospects with whom you lean forward and they lean back or you lean back and they lean forward (depending on who’s selling and who’s buying), to chaps with whom love is building, boiling or running out.
These are the plain and fancy things business lunch dates with men have going for them.
1. A man who might not have the nerve to ask you to dinner—or be certain he wanted to spend an entire evening with you—will check you out at lunch. So let him. You’ll very likely make it to the next plateau.
2. One little girl can have lunch with six big men and keep them all to herself for two full hours. Just try taking that many to a cocktail party—if you could find them. They’d be sniped at and made off with within seconds.
3. A married girl can bewitch-away at a handsome gendeman over eggs benedict and Rob Roys without wagging a single tongue.
4. A married man who isn’t allowed out after dark can go where the Bunnies are, where the Gaslight girls flicker and bring his own girl along for added zest.
5. Although you may already be a man’s right hand and helper superior, you can get closer to him on a personal level at lunch (and cement your job, the friendship or whatever you want to cement). I remember fondly the day I outfitted my boss in woolies and a tent for a camping expedition (with the fellows, not with me). A friend of mine had the pleasure of outfitting her boss and his car for the Mexican road races and then going to Tijuana to watch them perform.
6. A girl may be taken to a posh and exciting restaurant she never gets to see on an evening date.
7. Regardless of the positions you and your companion occupy back at the office, at lunch a girl is a sexy equal. Democracy fairly gleams.
8. A boys-and-girls-together camaraderie, not often experienced after a girl leaves college, can prevail at lunch. At the Hollywood ad agency where I worked, everybody would pile out to Scandia on the Sunset Strip to celebrate after we’d sold a campaign to a client. At other lunches after we didn’t sell anything we remarshaled our strength with Margaritas and chocolate cake at the Cock ‘n’ Bull. (Who needs an entree when you’re depressed?) One day the Swinging Faction of our agency and the S.F. of another agency took over the dining room, the bar, the Mariachi singers, the waiters and the hat-check girl in a restaurant in Olvera Street (Los Angeles’ old Spanish section) and danced and sang and drank beer for five hours. You can get away with that if you’ve put in several nineteen-hour days—which this group had—and are due for some unwinding.
The boys-and-girls lunch needn’t have a cast of thousands. Two girl friends of mine kidnaped the head of their company one day, took him to the Beverly Hills Hotel, had a drink in the Polo Lounge and discussed whisking him upstairs to a room. “Girls, now girls, I won’t go through with this,” he said, but he didn’t run away. The girls never planned to go through with it; they were simply flattering a sweet older man.
Perhaps you’re going to say these things couldn’t possibly go on in your office. Well they go on in some offices which make a profit and have low turnover and maybe your firm ought to shape up!
9. Unlike a night date, at lunch there’s none of that embarrassment of here you are, here I am, you Tarzan, me Jane, what are we going to do about it? At lunch you have friendly, comfortable business things to discuss ... first.
10. Lunch can be overpoweringly sexy. A date on the town will never have that high-tension current of excitement that zings through the business lunch between an attractive man and a responsive woman. On a date, body contact is all part of the game and you can talk about anything—so, of course, that takes some of the fun out of it. (When is anything ever as much fun when you’re free to have it or do it?) At a business lunch any personal talk becomes precious out of all proportion to its content and the random body contacts are like being hit with a cow-prodder. Hands brush when cigarettes are lit, eyes meet over the rims of cocktail glasses, knees touch but are quickly withdrawn. It’s all exciting . . . and puzzling. Was it an accident? Was it an invitation? Did he or didn’t he do it on purpose?
Lunch dates with men are not so formally arranged as night dates, so it’s easier to make them happen. You can have almost as much to say about them as he does, which makes it nice.
While you’re working on a project together, what could be more natural—and sensible—than to continue the discussion through lunch? It may be you who says, “Shall we go have a sandwich and come back in thirty minutes?” Once out of the building, you may be able to “expand” the sandwich to a cozy-bar lunch.
Even without the excuse of a shared work project, if you’re on his level or close to it, there’s nothing unfeminine about strolling by a man’s office close to noon and saying, “Do you have a lunch date?” It won’t even seem as though you’d picked him, but only that you’re rounding up someone to have lunch with. Everybody does it. (Never mind that you’ve checked his calendar and found this was the only day with nothing marked.) If it turns out to be the time he’d saved to play handball and have a steam bath, hell at least remember you asked him and next time he may ask you.
Remember, all this happens to girls who work hard enough to be a man’s near-equal. If you’re not, he may make you walk back from your lunch date separately.
Men clients are a cinch to cinch for lunch. Call them up and ask them. Publicity girls must plant items with columnists. Women who sell may invite prospects. Girls who research must get material. Often your company will pay for the lunch. If they won’t, you can pretend to your guest that they did and pay yourself. The investment may be worth it.
If the man you want to lunch with isn’t your client or legitimate “invitee” but is somebody your company does business with, you can still ask. One girl who worked for a New York publishing firm called up an attractive producer when she was in Hollywood on vacation and said she had some literary properties she thought he might be interested in. Lily wasn’t actually in charge of selling movie rights, but she had seen her boss handle that sort of thing dozens of times. The introductory lunch was on her. All the other lunches—including some in the evening—were on him.
What if you aren’t a junior executivess or an “equal” but still like to lunch with men? It’s entirely possible you’ll be asked anyway if it’s a folksy company. Some firms, however, discourage “fraternization.” You may have to be bolder—in a non-detectable ladylike way. One secretary I know uses this technique. She has her eye on a particular man and plops down in the reception room of their company just before he comes by to go to lunch. When he arrives at the elevator, she puts down the New Yorker she’s been reading as though she’d just finished the article and saunters to the elevator. As they ride down together, Mary says, “Do you know any good new place to eat around here? I’m so bored with Maury’s and the Spanish Omelette.” He says, practically on cue, “Well, there’s Mama’s Castle—I thought I might run over there. Do you want to come?” Bull’s-eye!
A man doesn’t always make the right reply, of course. He may already have a date. He may actually not want to have lunch with you. The thing is, you have to make it possible for him to ask you. You mustn’t scurry off like the white mouse or try to go through the floor when you’re in the presence of a lunch “possible.” You must act as though it would be quite all right with you if he asked you . . . give off “expectancy” rather than fright waves. A touch of insouciance (go look that up!) in your attitude when you’re leaving the building with an attractive man will help. Hardly anybody likes to eat alone.
One secretary I know who works in an office which doesn’t allow girls to lunch with men beat the system this way. She always remained free to join her boss for his stay-in-the-office luncheons whenever his work load was too heavy to go out. First, she would offer to get something sent in for him. He always suggested she get a sandwich for herself, too, if she was staying. Gradually she moved into his office to have her hamburger with him. All that camaraderie finally allowed for the transition to bootieg à deux lunch-dating out of the office.
If you know your boss, or another deserving man in the office, well enough and know ahead of time he’s going to be staying in, you might bring him a tempting little luncheon from home. (Aha! I’ve got you cooking again!) The luncheon I have in mind doesn’t contain any Mother Brown’s tuna salad or wheat-germ fortified meat loaf, however. It could run into a httle money also, but we’ll assume he is a very deserving—and attractive—man. Here’s the menu:
Forget about the brown paper bag and acquire instead a portable styrene-foam refrigerator ($1.39 to $1.98 at a drug or department store).
Inside it, place the following from your kitchen cupboards:
Tray of ice cubes (put in tray and all)
Bottle of cold champagne
Two tall stemmed glasses (as elegant as possible)
Two paper plates
Two forks, one knife to spread with, and these goodies:
1. Liver pâté. (This comes in a little tin and could be transferred to a pretty container.)
2. A cube of cheese—Castello, Liederkranz, Roquefort.
3. Crackers to spread the pâté and cheese on.
4. Celery Victor (in a long icebox dish). Recipe: Boil celery hearts in consomme, drain and marinate in French dressing. Add salt, pepper, capers and pimento strips.
5. Jar of Babcock peaches. Get Babcock if at all possible for this special lunch. They’re the Cadillac of the peach world.
6. A halved papaya and lime wedge or other status fruit, such as mango, cherimoya or figs. Wrap in Saran.
7. Two candy bars to be eaten around four o’clock.
Is there such a smart popular girl in the whole world of working girls or any other world as you?
Conference Call. Perhaps you are the fortunate only-girl at a business conference. If you’re an “equal” and they break for lunch, naturally the men will take you with them. If you are the secretary taking notes when the lunch break comes, don’t give up the ship, however. If you look nice and don’t scuttle off too quickly, they may ask you to come along. Use your antennae. As a baby stenographer among men much older and stodgier, you probably wouldn’t want to go and probably wouldn’t have a good time if you went. In your twenties, however, you’re likely to be poised enough to handle this group even if you’re the only girl. Some of the loudest, most super-charged meeting-attenders in the world become absolute kittens when a girl is brought along to lunch. They even have the items on the menu read aloud in order to avoid putting on their spectacles.
Once at the luncheon I’d plan just to be pretty and sweet and happy and content but not scintillating. To scintillate isn’t necessary. They’d rather have you be a girl than try to come on like Jacques Barzun.
Getting Proselytized. If anyone should call you from another company to ask if you’re interested in a job, Lunchland is a wonderful place to talk things over. The situation is sexy in a symbolic way. They want you. They’re sounding out your responsiveness to their desires. You’re cool—like a girl listening to any other proposition—and you may be just a bit hard to get. This pursuing is almost sure to happen to a good girl who does her office homework regardless of whether she’s pretty.
Chowder and Marching. Perhaps you’ll be the buzz-bomb who gets a choice, hand-picked (don’t ask the whole office, for heaven’s sake) group started visiting a different foreign or unique restaurant once a month. Keep the plans under-organized and relaxed. No desirable man wants to be mixed up with a Brownie troop movement. Just say casually the day before to the lucky man for whom you’ve secredy dreamed up the whole excursion, “Don’t forget, Fred, tomorrow we’re all going to Ah Fong West.” Fred will either go or he won’t go. Tying threads around his fingers or locking him up won’t help unless he’s really interested. No matter what, you get “A” for trying.
Private Club. Three girls and a man I know have formed their own little luncheon society. One Monday a month, the girls take turns entertaining the luncheon group at home. (This is in New York where it’s easy to cab about.) Gary, who is the pet, is married and isn’t required to entertain. He usually brings the booze. Other men have tried to get into the society, but old Gary says he’ll resign if membership is extended and they humor him. I’ve tapped one of the four members for her chowder and marching menu. Here it is:
Nettie’s Heavenly Shrimp and
Crabmeat Casserole
Mixed Green Salad Brown and Serve Rolls
with Butter
Frosty Lemon Pie
Coffee
Iced Champagne
Prepare the casserole the night before and pop it in the oven for half an hour the minute you and the group arrive. The lemon pie is made the night before also, and the greens are tossed and chilling in a cellophane bag waiting for dressing. Make the coffee and brown the rolls. Lunch is on! If you serve only champagne as a beverage, which is heavenly, you’ll need at least half a bottle per person. Otherwise, serve regular cocktails and have champagne with dessert.
| 3 cups cooked shrimp | Topping | |
| 1 can crab meat | ½ cup grated mild cheese | |
| 2 cups diced celery—dollop of butter | ½ cup corn flakes dab of melted butter 1 teaspoon minced onion ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 cup diced almonds 1 cup mayonnaise |
Sauté the celery and onion in the dollop of butter in a frying pan. Cut each shrimp in half. Drain and squeeze the crabmeat well. Add these plus salt, lemon juice, almonds, and mayonnaise to skillet (fire turned off). Then put them all in a buttered casserole. Sprinkle the cheese and cornflakes, mixed with the melted buttter on top. Hide away, covered, in refrigerator to be cooked next noon. At lunchtime, pop it into a 450 degree oven for half an hour. Should be bubbling when served.
| 3 egg yolks | ½ teaspoon grated lemon rind | |
| ⅛ teaspoon salt | 3 egg whites | |
| ½ cup sugar | 1 cup cream, whipped | |
| ¼ cup fresh lemon juice | ¾ cup crushed vanilla wafers |
Beat yolks, salt and sugar in top of double boiler. Stir in lemon juice and grated rind; cook over hot water until mixture thickens and coats spoon. Remove from fire and chill. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold in whipped cream and cooked mixture. Line icebox tray with crushed wafers and pour mixture in. Top with remaining crumbs and freeze until firm. Serve in finger-length slices.
Saturday Maneuver. Having to come to the office to work on Saturday can have its rewards. When everybody’s in pants and sports shirts, adventure-luncheons are easily organized. Some of the best I remember were in a small sukiyaki cubbyhole on the east side of Los Angeles. Company presidents and lesser lights bought armloads of roses from the flower vendors and gave them to the girls. There was much talk of getting on a plane and going right over to Waikiki. Something tells me the atmosphere would have been different on Serious Monday. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been any luncheon.
That Certain Auto. One girl I know—in fact I know her rather well—found that having a jazzy new sports car got her more lunch dates than she knew what to do with. She would no sooner get shifted down four gears and bring Bismarck II (her spanking new 190 SL) to a complete halt on the company parking lot than swarms of young men would come over and suggest a lunchtime spin. Sometimes they would suggest the spin without Bismarck’s mistress, but she always said no, wherever Bismarck went she went too, and that settled the matter.
I wasn’t the only one who made hay with horsepower. A super-executive visiting his Los Angeles office suggested to one of the girls that he and she drive out to Disneyland one lunch hour. He wasn’t really asking favors, but bestowing an honor. Any girl in the office would have swooned at the chance. Janice explained that Disneyland was a good twenty-four miles out the Santa Ana Freeway and most people spent at least a day there. “Oh . . . well, then,” he said, “how about lunch anyway?” They lunched and went to Disneyland the following weekend. He confessed after many subsequent dates that he’d picked the girl with the most intriguing car—a glamorous Sting Ray—and had no idea things would turn out so romantically.
No, of course you don’t drive Benzes and Sting Rays the instant you’re out of business college, but they’re another of the lovely sexy fringe benefits that can accrue to a girl who grinds away at her job.
Once you’re seated side by side or across from him and sipping your first apéritif, what can help you enchant this dreamboat?
If he’s an abstainer, you don’t need necessarily not to have a drink. Do what pleases you. If he’s a drinker and you’re not, you can at least have sherry. Unless someone is an alcoholic and really mustn’t drink, I can’t imagine not toying with a glass of beer to put a companion at ease.
How do you look? If it’s a sudden date, obviously you didn’t wear your prettiest dress to work. (But then you always look chic, no?) The most exquisite make-up job you can manage—if you’ve had even twenty minutes warning—can help. We’ve already mentioned the transformation that a face can undergo.
What do you talk about? There’s a master plan on flirting and charming a little later in the book, but let’s talk for a moment about charm at lunch.
The man comes to your lunch date in a certain mood. Specific things have happened to him that morning. He made a sale, he’s floating. They canceled the order, he’s sinking. His boss ate him out, he’s suicidal. They picked up his option—he’s manic! He never comes to you just no way at all even if he only comes with his mouth full of novocaine straight from the dentist.
My friend Ruth, who didn’t invent the system but is awfully good at it, says you must listen with all your pores open during those first few minutes to see if you can glean what shape he’s in. He may not actually tell you what’s happened to him the first instant, but you must be prepared to go along with his mood. Any wife can detect a husband-mood practically from the way he opens the door. She learns not to be happy if he’s miserable and to break out the champagne if he closed a deal even if she’s just picked herself up from falling down a flight of stairs.
If, after you sit around with your pores open, he refuses to tell you anything at all about his mood or himself, then you proceed with conversation as usual. Perhaps he’ll open up later.
Ruth says, “Most girls are so desperate to please, so anxious to show how vivacious and smart and sexy they are, they press their own mood on top of a man like a flat iron and practically send him screaming from the luncheon.”
If he has turned his mood on like a good boy—which may be simply that he needs you to talk and amuse him because he’s feeling dumb and silent—he will gradually get his mood normalized and then you can turn on your mood. It’s no fun having things completely one-sided, but start with him.
A man may have brought you to lunch to pump—so let him pump away! I hope you have something interesting to tell him! Some of the most fascinating women in the world are the good gossips. . . not the mean, vicious ones, but well-informed ladies who serve up all the fascinating bits of news deliciously on toast.
You’ll know what information you can share, of course, and you must be very careful. Men are often bigger blabbermouths than girls. You may find the state secret you confided only to him ricocheting off the walls of the men’s room—and this could wind up hitting you where your job lives. One man I know was on his way out the day after he labeled the new head of his company “Daddy Warbucks” (whom he most certainly did resemble). A girl I know got into a lot of trouble by referring to her boss as “Baby Dumpling” (which he certainly was) and was saved only by Baby’s being called back into the service the next month.
A man in trouble may ask you at lunchtime for interpretations and emanations. One executive I know started lunch-dating the boss’s secretary because she was the pipeline to Little Caesar’s plans and moods. He married the girl later—some people think to keep her away from other would-be snoopers, but I imagine he also loved her.
You may be asked for your ideas and creative thoughts over lunch. Come up with some even if they’re terrible. Your no-carat suggestions will at least encourage your interrogator to think his own stuff isn’t so bad.
Never underestimate what a smart secretary or stenographer can contribute in the way of ideas, however. One girl I know lunch-dated a How-to-Succeed-in-Business type who became so absolutely addicted to her brainstorms he married her. This would be a romantic, happy ending, except that Scheherazade is now stuck out in Scarsdale. She still feeds her boy ideas with which to wow his colleagues at work the next day, but there are no lovely men for a girl to have lunch with in Scarsdale!
Does anybody ever do anything really romantic at lunch? Well, yes, they’ve been known to. In New York there’s a lovely medieval-castle land of restaurant with a darling little moat and drawbridge, Elizabethan madrigals piped into every room and the whole place black as an eclipse in a basement. When your eyes get accustomed to the gloom in the main room, you notice a little alcove room in which couples are draped over each other like tents. They may not be hungry—I imagine they all have had sandwiches at their desks or something—but they do seem happy. So is the wine steward—he does a wild luncheon business.
That’s just one example of something romantic people do at lunch. There are others. I might have been inclined to let you use your imagination about them if some rather special Lunchland material hadn’t fallen into my hands. Next chapter please.