Guest Post: Hiding An Erection During Fashion Week

One of my absolutely favorite activities in the world is watching stand up comedy. At least once a month I drag B to the DC Improv, and it’s always a great time. (Sidebar: If you weren’t already planning on seeing Keavin Nealon in January, GET ON IT, FOOL!!! I’ll be there with my prettiest shoes on (both birthday presents from B.)

One of my good friends, Dave Siegel, is actually a stand up comedian himself, and a kickass one at that. After meeting the very, very beautiful Padma Lakshmi…

at Fashion Week party a couple months ago, he sent me the following (completely true) story about his encounter with her. Seeing as Top Chef is starting up again tonight!!! (and you all know of my love for Top Chef) I don’t think there’s a better time to share it with you.

Here’s a little ditty from Dave to describe his, ahem, style, from a past email. Also, please keep in mind that he is quite Jewish himself.

“I’m sure you heard about what dirty Jews are doing in Gaza! Did you know that every time the Jews try to expand their empire, a Scientologist dies!

John Travolta’s son supposedly had autism but Scientologists don’t recognize mental disorders. Now, they say exposure to mercury while in the womb can cause autism. I don’t know about that but I looked up the dates of when John Travolta’s son was born and it was right in between when his dad was filming ‘Look Whose Talking Too’ and ‘Look Whose Talking Now.’ And I’m gonna guess that prenatal exposure to those can definitely cause autism.”

-Dave Siegel

Love it. Absolutely love it. And now, without further ado, Dave’s lucky (or maybe not so lucky) encounter with the lovely, the elegant, the enigmatic Padma Lashki…

Hiding An Erection During Fashion Week

by Dave Siegel

Fashion week recently passed in New York City once again. Usually this event has no bearing on my life what-so-ever. However, this time, my friend Korey invited me to the release party for the latest line of his boss, Issac Mizrahi. My first question of Korey; “Who is Issac Mizrahi?” He gave me a patronizingly gay “lol,” as this was conversation took place via instant messenger and then went on to tell me that Mizrahi was his boss and a famous New York City fashion designer. My next question, what does a “release party” entail? Korey described it. It sounded horrible, but the idea of an open bar on a Tuesday afternoon following the ‘runway part’ definitely tickled my curiosity.

It actually turned out not to be so bad. Just picture 15 minutes of mad and hard looking anorexic aliens walking down a runway wearing clothes with of all things… am insect theme. What??? So then Mr. Mizrahi prances out as only a gay New York City fashion designer can, waves to the crowd, and it’s over. That’s it.

Seemingly, it is all just an excuse to drink on a weekday because everyone then migrated into another room for a cocktail hour which I have to admit, was great. To a tee, everyone at this party was dressed as if they put a lot of thought into what they wear every single day of their lives, which automatically makes for great people watching. I stood with my friend Andi (also a friend of Korey’s) and we pretty much just drank and judged the judgers of others. In the fashion industry, it is basically socially acceptable upon meeting someone to do a complete judgmental head-to-toe-back-to-head scanning of their ensemble before saying, ‘nice to meet you.’ As disgusting as it sounds, at least they embraced it.

So then Korey leads me to a circle of people to meet his boss Issac, where the only thing I can foresee happening is Mr. Mizrahi knowing that I am the biggest phony in the room (and that is saying a lot in this room) after I politely tell him how much I enjoyed his latest line consisting of such highlights as the Wasp Winged Champagne Dinner Dress and the Jimeny Cricket Tailed Cocktail Cloak. Really? Really! However… I was saved. Coincidentally, in the circle of people where Issac Mizrahi was standing, among the other three or so, stood Padma Lakshm, co-host of ‘Top Chef’.

I couldn’t tell you who else was standing there, purely because of how beautiful and distracting this woman is. She’s the kind of attractive that seems inhuman and generally unfair to other women. The only other thing I was trying to concentrate on, at this point, as making my stares as unobvious as possible.

Stare-fest was broken up by Korey who began to introduce me to Issac and the poor woman standing next to Padma. Korey then introduced me to Padma, god bless his soul, who extended her hand out to me. I took it and said ‘hi,’ because I’m smooth like that. Padma smiled, which actually made her even hotter which seems unfathomable and said ‘hello’ back. And then THIS happened, I shit you not; Padma says “Do you want to smoke a cigar with me?” My heart dropped kind of like it does when you humiliate yourself. Now, I know this sounds bizarre and believe me I have run it through my mind a thousand times since. But seriously, who does that with someone they LITERALLY met ten seconds prior. The only thing I can come up with is that here is a woman that is so confident that conventional rules and social graces don’t apply to her. But back to the moment at hand; The truth is, I wasn’t thinking any of this stuff at the time. It was all happening way too fast. For the record, cigars make me kind of sick to see and smell or let alone smoke. My response to Padma; “Yeah.”

Here is a list of activities I also would have said also yes to Padma, had she asked me to join her for;

1. Performing circumcisions
2. Killing homeless people
3. Seeing a movie with Kate Hudson in it

Padma then turned around, exposing her bare back, which was accentuated by the unbelievable navy blue dress she was wearing, to lead me BY HAND to a room where smoking a cigar was presumably tolerated. The walk latest about 15 seconds, but that’s an eternity to try to mentally grasp what was happening to me. Now… I tell you the following with no hyperbole, creative license or exaggeration; I was pretty sure at this point that Padma wanted to fuck me. That thought SINCERELY went through my very delusional and very small mind. But that was all it took.. that and the combination of the soft skin of Padma’s hand touching mine because I began to feel the material from my pants lift itself off of my thighs. It only took about three or four steps from ‘Do you want to have a cigar with me?’ for this to happen. That’s when my dilemma ensued. Sure enough, I was getting a 1:30 in the afternoon public erection. The last time this happened was probably sometime during my tenure at Woodmere Middle School, 1989-1992.

Now, at this point, I have no idea how long the walk to whatever smoker friendly room we are going to is going to last, but I know I have to act fast and staring at contours in Padma’s perfectly sculpted brown back is not helping the current shuttle launching situation my pants. Had she stopped short to let someone pass in front of her or to say hello to some she knew, she was clearly going to get stabbed in the butt cheek by my manhood.

The laymen would say to quickly shove a hand down there and lift it up into the waist band of my slack executing the ready-to-be-fired catapult move. This was definitely an option. However, you have to realize that I conscious of the fact that people at this party are currently looking at me fore I am the strange guy currently being led by the hand by Padma. So the ‘tuck in’ was out. Another option would be to sit somewhere. But how do I pull that off when Padma is doing the leading. Remember, this is all taking place over the course of about 10-20 seconds.

We finally get to our destination, which was a separate room with a convertible ceiling, exposing the Midtown West New York sky. Padma turned to me, “Here we are.”

She then paused and with a confused crinkled eyebrow she said, “Are you ok?” She must have seen it on my face! She knew something was up and was probably immediately regretting her decision to embrace a stranger.

“Sorry, I just have such a boner.”

Yup! That’s it. I shit you not, I said that sentence. Not only did I say the word “BONER” to Padma… and don’t get me wrong, that would have been enough to kill any imaginary mood that was being set in my mind. But I also decided to express that I was currently experiencing massivus erectimus in her presence.

To be fair, she didn’t laugh. She simply gave me something of which she had been the only person at the party to have NOT given me up until that point; the complete head-to-toe-back-to-head scanning. She saw it. She had to. And without saying a word, she retreated into the masses, leaving me with Padma wood.

Oh, Dave. Love it. Absolutely love it. I’d probably do something similar if I ever got the chance to meet my Chefetish (JordanBaker, I think I stole that from you) Tom Colicchio.

If you think Dave’s as funny as I do, check out his short film, Broke Hack Mountain, and others…

Dave will also be performing at the DC Improv with Eddie Gosling from February 11-15th. You won’t be disappointed!