party politics; In his inaugural column, William Norwich charts the social slings and arrows of an election year.

Byline: William Norwich

I want you to know, gentle readers, I want to promise you, that I took the recent so-called spring social season very seriously. Well, maybe seriously is not the right word. Let's say instead that I responded to it with alacrity. As the gadfly tells the groaning buffet, "I'm back."

I did not go to bed early from April Fools' Day until the morning after the Fourth of July.

This spring there were New York gallery openings for artists like Tom Sachs at Sperone Westwater in Chelsea and Hugo Guinness at John Derian's shop in the East Village. There was a fine, funky dinner for Nicolas Ghesquiere on the terrace of the Hudson Hotel and an attractive curry supper for Elizabeth Lindemann's birthday at the East Side apartment of Tory and Christopher Burch. There were small dinners in trendy restaurants with friends, although I missed dining at Da Silvano that fateful night when Princess Michael of Kent reportedly fired off those famously racist remarks. But the designers Viktor & Rolf were there, New York neophytes, watching the slings and arrows of social life from a ringside perch.

The Dutch designing duo were shocked. "Does this happen every night in New York?" they asked their Manhattan hosts.

Thank goodness, no. Thank goodness, some nights it is all kindness and charity. For example, one fine night in May the Robin Hood Foundation benefit cleared $24 million for poverty-fighting organizations. Bingo, mission accomplished.

Social life is a lot like sporting life. There are leagues and teams, players old and young, east and west, north and south, left or right, and an endless abundance hovering somewhere in between; a game is always afoot somewhere. Who played, who did not, who won, and, always, what they wore. Some people dismiss social life, but social life is inevitable, the gymnastics of the mind made visible, in good times or bad. As the late Igor Cassini, known as the columnist Cholly Knickerbocker, once commented, even if (please no) the world ended and there were only three people left, sooner rather than later two of the people would band together and give a party and not invite the third.