BlackBook Magazine

Fear and loafing in the United Nations’ Delegates Lounge.

At 7 p.m. we were virtually sailing though a watery but grandpa-perfect $6 Stolichnaya and soda, securely situated in the United Nations’ Delegates Lounge. It’s down the hall from the General Assembly, just off the aptly named Hall of Flags. The place is a remnant, a temple of jet-age treachery and cigarettes. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t accessible to the unescorted civilian. But guests of members are welcome to don a fez, a monocle, a set of official-looking epaulets, and come.

“Most people never get to see the Great Wall of China bath towel,” says the U.S. Mission’s rakish Deputy Spokesman to the United Nations, Ben Chang, a.k.a. DJ Hong Kong Hefner. He gestures absently toward the most gargantuan needlepoint we’ve ever seen (which may not be saying much, we realize), running the expanse of the south wall. In fact, such things hang all over the U.N.’s interiors.

Guernica, Picasso’s tribute to bullfighting and condemnation of the Luftwaffe, is draped in the Security Council’s press area, a hyper-violent macramé. There are sculptures and other things donated by member countries, or, uncomfortably, by aspiring non-members. Some of these are nice; the nicest probably cost people hands. But now and then one is inclined to remember the oblivion of youth, when touring these gift displays in the hallways—the painted rocks and macaroni, cardboard, and glue business generously accepted by parents on their birthdays.

Chang, who is our “in,” folds his dark blue trench coat over a low, brown vinyl-and-chrome armchair and motions us toward the bar. Cold War Scandinavian furniture is ubiquitous throughout—and now in our minds synonymous with—the U.N. The space is vast, bright, and sparse. Fake plants in teak troughs shelter the conversation islands—two couches, two chairs, with glass tables in the middle, which are still good places for ashtrays, the United Nations maintains, in spite of the “No Smoking” signs everywhere. But the signs are perfunctory. They are only in English, and obscured by cigarette smoke.

The building is not technically in New York City. It is international territory, part of the rest of the world, which absolutely does not have time for nonsense about not smoking and drinking, simultaneously and always. And no, you may not smoke “weed” there.

On the “snack” balcony the embodiments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Iran, France, Cuba, and so on, between sessions of closing barn doors after the horses are out, wait in line for coffee and moon pies, shuffling their feet and trying not to look at each other. Not right now, though, which is unfortunate, because we would take the opportunity to go up there and sort out all the fuss. We’re in a good mind to do it too, we think, knowing better than to pay for moon pies, let alone wait in line for them.

Below is the bar area, separated from the main space by a teak room divider (more teak, always). Around foreign airport-style café tables, a few of the straggling British press corps repose in a crowd of empty Bud bottles. Two Turkish diplomats hash out… something or other, over snifters of Crown Royal and a paper plate of broken potato chips, the plats principaux for international negotiations, it turns out. The Russian blockade of Berlin probably was ended over the same menu.

The Salvadoran bartender, either new or temporary, struggles with old limes. He’s got one type of everything, but here it’s not about what “kind” of vodka, it’s about having some. The fate of the world, after all, might depend on it. Best to keep things simple.

Floor-to-ceiling windows look out across the flesh-eating East River to the neon Pepsi Cola sign at Hunter’s Point. In the foreground is a lump of flotsam mucked up from a subway tunnel project, called U Thant Island, after the Burmese Secretary General, 1961-71. Buddhist U.N. employees erected a Tinkertoy “peace” phallus there, affixed with some kind of keepsake box, and the whole thing is covered in cormorant shit. It is double-breasted cormorant shit, to be fair.

Later, standing behind the rostrum at the head of the United Nations’ General Assembly chamber, we look out on roughly 200 empty, faded beige office chairs that represent the participating countries of the world, well after hours. It’s a spot more suited to presidents and kings, earlier in the day. Our eyesight is poor because it’s getting late, so we can’t see too far past our glass of vodka, which we have set down to our left—from our perspective, exactly parting Luxembourg and Lithuania.

With an over-poured vodka-cranberry, Ingrid, a model from Vienna, stretches out in the chair belonging to Austria, inadvertently connecting Austria to Australia by an ankle quite a bit more than two letters. We don’t deny thinking: Model U.N. In the back, near where the chaps from Iraq sit not voting because they’re behind in their dues, a uniformed janitor manning a gleaming military-grade vacuum cleaner looks on warily.

By the way, everything is bugged, and last call is at 8 p.m., which comes very quickly, as you know.

Photography By Ben Chang