Piero Nanin, The Lady and Her Cicisbeo, 1840

I went to a party in New York City last Saturday night. It was a super fancy party, with amazing food, fabulously-dressed guests, and an incredible band. But around midnight or so, after the party had been in full swing for several hours, I noticed some new people on the dance floor. They were both men and women, dressed in outlandish clothes (the women in demi-cup bras, men with hair bleached white and gelled into six inch vertical spikes, lots of makeup on both genders), and they were dancing up a storm. I realized they were professional party guests, rented out for the evening by the party planner, and their job was to keep the party hopping. I snapped a picture of one of them—it’s blurry, because I shot it from the hip, pretending to take a picture of my husband. (Note: the guy on the right is not my husband.):

I’d heard about these rent-a-guests. My daughter told me she’d seen “professional dancers” at a bar mitvah she’d gone to, but those were a PG version. This was my first time seeing them in action.

They reminded me of the cicisbeo in eighteenth and nineteenth century Italian cities—Florence, Rome, Genoa, and especially Venice. A cicisbeo was a paid male companion to a married noblewoman, who would escort her to parties, events, and even church.

Sometimes he acted as her lover, but not always. I think mostly he was supposed to provide amusing companionship, to hold her fan or her lapdog, and above all, to look good. Husbands were evidently completely fine with the arrangement and in fact encouraged it, freeing them up to pursue their own amusements.