Welcome to Society

Parade of anxiety. Please reach out to me with your thoughts as to how good this is/where it could stand to improve.

The plane touched down in Newark. But everything else stood still. It did not rise up to greet us, rather we touched down to it.

You can always stoop and pick up nothing.

But gravity isn’t nothing. Without it, we couldn’t carry on as normal. If the plane did not fall back down to Earth we could not have carried on as normal. It meant that gravity was in effect. If gravity subverted we couldn’t carry on as normal.

All I had packed for ten days in Munich were suits. I had been invited, somewhat spontaneously, to fill in for a series of roundtable talks at a writer’s conference after one of the writers they initially had slotted dropped out at the last minute—another and much more well-known American who’s been a hot-topic of discussion of late, who was probably burnt out from the numerous other writer’s conferences he’s been headlining over the past year. I was only too happy to oblige the Germans, although they promoted a German woman already on the dock to be moderator in his place, so the position I was to take over was actually a more ancillary one.

“We would like you to participate in an upcoming writers’s conference,” they said to me over email. “The subject of the conference will be living as a working artist.” Although I would have been more interested in participating in a conference on working as a living artist, I was pleased to receive the invitation.

But suits were to be the uniform of the week for me. It’s not exactly the popular uniform of today’s writer. But I still feel a certain amount of pleasure dressing up. You do have to keep in mind, though, that a writer who takes it upon himself to show up wearing a suit, sets up certain expectations for himself, and maybe even betrays certain presumptions. It’s never a great thing to “bomb” at one of these conferences, or come across as a pompous ass, or make any number of silly or thoughtless or asinine remarks—but it’s doubly worse if that ass is wearing a suit.

Well, the event went well enough. It was for a crowd of twenty or so, students mostly. Everyone was talking about their lives as an artist. But I mostly made jokes. They would say something about their lives as an artist, during a panel discussion, and I would say a joke based on what they had just said. This is mostly how I operate during panel discussions I participate in at writers’s conferences like this. I decided beforehand I was going to try and show restraint and let the others hold the floor, to be the humble fill-in I in fact was, but like always, once I started off on one thing I couldn’t help myself.

All in all I think I was remarkably fluid, however—remarkably for me—yet still getting the point across, incisively, even, at times; and from what I recall my jokes went over pretty well, too.

My ideal novel, were I ever allowed to publish it, would be a collection of disjointed piths. I mostly write piths. I suspect, however, that no one would want to publish a collection of my piths, disjointed or otherwise.

Is the juice worth the squeeze? All the writers involved with the conference were put up in a fancy hotel in Munich, and in the mornings, we would all take breakfast together in the restaurant of the hotel or at a nearby café.

Then one morning, I went down, and they were all already there, breakfasting together at their tables in the lobby, and I felt I couldn’t join them. The pith of the orange is what gets removed when you make orange juice. No one wanted my piths. They wanted to drink orange juice.

The plane touched down in Newark and proceeded to taxi around the runway for about an hour. I went through customs and got in line for a cab outside the arrivals terminal. By three (PM) I was inbound to Manhattan and I promptly fell flat into bed by the time I made it home, around five (traffic).

I woke up around midnight, feeling refreshed. As far as my body was concerned, the plane ride had never happened. As far as my body was concerned, I had sat for nine hours and was not suffered to move. And I had alit in Newark as if in Munich, imprisoned, released, and in Munich once more.

I didn’t feel jetlagged, because jetlag is the mind wrestling with the body, forcing it to not fall asleep at five PM, and to just be really tired until eleven PM instead, and I didn’t do that. I can never put it off, never put off that urge once it arises within me—I am powerless when confronted with a yawn.

The reason most people force themselves to stay up and stave off jetlag is because most people have plans, and plans run according to a schedule, and a schedule does not accord itself to how tired you are. But I didn’t have any plans, so I didn’t have to feel jetlagged, I just felt refreshed.

I hadn’t had any dreams in the night.

I felt too lazy to unpack, so after waking up I kept on the same suit I’d fallen asleep in. I usually start my days with a walk—why should today be any different?

I felt at peace with the world, walking along down the lane in my suit that first night. I felt very powerful, imbued with that special aura only non-Americans have. I felt effective. I felt I was doing something exciting—I was in a suit!

Not only was I still on German time, but, when I dropped in to an all-night deli for a sandwich, I still found myself saying danke schoen to the cashier. Yes, even just a short trip, and pleasantries like this were already ingrained in me, perhaps more quickly (and more deeply) than it happens for others. I ate it right outside, standing up, under some scaffolding: breakfast.

I felt like a drink. More than usual I felt like a drink. A vodka gimlet, to be specific. It’s generally frowned upon to get a drink right after breakfast—but not at eleven o’clock at night on a Friday. I stumbled on a bar that looked interesting called Society, on West Thirteenth Street: a real classy joint, with broad glass windows set in a majestic trim overlooking the lounge area, where there were beautiful, old-style cushioned chairs arranged smartly around the grand fireplace girt by heavy velvet curtains, unimaginably heavy, attention paid to every last detail; the sort of place where you can imagine distinguished gentleman eating petite bowls of cashews and smoking cigars, the sort of place you imagine needing to know a member in order to be admitted as a guest, the sort of place that has different types of snifters for different kinds of brandy; what it was doing on West Thirteenth Street, I have no idea. You enter on street level up the steps of a brownstone into a marmoreal antechamber, tastefully decorated, tasteful paintings affixed to the gold-hued silk wallpaper tastefully curated, where there was a hostess’s lectern, likely of solid mahogany, all leading to a brief yet decorous stairwell descending down into the bar proper. I might have even walked by it before without noticing. But seeing it all lit up that night stirred a sort of thrill in me: I like the sort of place where they attend to you with the same vigor with which they attend to polishing the door knobs. The sort of place where you’d be embarrassed to get too drunk. As I made to go in I was pleased to remember that I was still wearing my suit. I even thought I might’ve actually looked the part for the first time in my life.

The hostess, as she greeted me, was so beautiful that I had to concentrate in order to look her square in the eyes, and keep the tone and the cadence of my voice sturdy like it was what the tone and cadence of my voice were usually like, and I wasn’t at all surprised by it.

“Right this way,” she entreated me, and I followed her down the stairs, feeling quite at ease—a privilege of apathy, endowed by a lack of sleep, but also earned by the sweat and tears of ten years living alone in this city.

I took a seat at one of the darker of the low tables, each hemmed in by two well-cushioned equally low easy-chairs, not wanting to make too bold by taking an armchair facing the fireplace. Although I did notice one was open. Almost without my having to order it a pale-though-slightly-noxious-green drink appeared on the tall side-table next to me, served “up” in a martini glass with the garnish tactfully forgone (as I looked around, I noticed it was only the women’s drinks that were garnished). From my position on the heavy cushioning of the chair I had a marvelous opportunity to admire the crown moulding. Above the fireplace hung an incredibly large mirror, across from which—just above the drum table meant to service the two armchairs sat by the fire—hung an opulent chandelier, as if to better admire its own reflection. It was lit with real candles and no doubt furnished with real diamonds, and the mirror was old, old, speckled all over with black. The gimlet was of the old style, made with sweetened lime juice from concentrate rather than fresh lime and sugar, which I prefer. I was quite impressed. The bartender was wearing a bow tie, as was my server, only he with a black jacket and cummerbund; I couldn’t see where they had the dishroom tucked away from where I was sitting, but I imagine they had the busboys done up similarly. I kept making glances up the stairwell to the hostess’s chambers, out of boredom more than anything else, especially attuned, as usual, to the most beautiful woman in the room, whatever room I’m in. I felt pleasantly sleepy and my suit felt comfortable and slack against the figure I cut in it. I didn’t know if it was the drink, or the elegant surroundings.

There was a group of four at a table arranged similarly to mine on the opposite end of the room, two couples partaking in a nightcap. The women wore grandstanding, excessively formal gowns, one of a deep sapphire, solid throughout, and the other a somewhat bawdy red (though the dress was quite tasteful, actually), accented with a black collar at the neckline; both of great pomp, and great circumstance, while their male counterparts each wore charcoal-grey suits that couldn’t quite match up. Even still, they made me in my cheap suit feel self-conscious from across the room. I took measured glances in their direction every so often; I’m not sure if they even noticed me.

Across from the transept they occupied, two men were sitting, obviously men of affairs, obviously important ones. They were in dark suits and forgettable ties, and probably in their mid-sixties, though they could have been as young as the mid-fifties and either second-hand smoke or second-hand stress had aged them prematurely. They slouched forward, each leaning with an elbow on the low table between them, their heads close together, quietly deliberating something. They didn’t interest me.

There was one other woman in the room. She sat at the bar, the second-youngest in the room after me. At the other end of the bar sat a man who was by far the oldest.

I busied myself looking between the four groups—two pairs, two individuals—and, in summary, drank my vodka gimlet. Thinking my thoughts. The old man at the bar was wearing a khaki suit and sat in silence, but I could see him making a sweep of the room with his eyes every so often, too—a man after my own. The woman was chatting with the bartender. A regular by the looks of it. She had the sophisticated air of a divorcée, refined and independent.

The gentleman in the cummerbund returned after some time (and one more vodka gimlet), alerting me with keen diplomacy and aplomb that it was time for last call (though of course the way he phrased it was that the bartender would soon be retiring, yet I was most welcome to enjoy the sitting room until twelve-thirty—after which point I imagine stragglers would be swiftly executed). No one had opted for the seat by the fireplace since I’d come in, likely due to the clemency of the weather, so after draining vodka gimlet number two, and in a flourish of self-indulgent luxury, it was there I had him meet me with a brandy—of Spanish vintage, middle of the range as far as the selection here goes—carried over after a brief interim on a silver (sterling, I wondered?) cocktail tray affixed with a starched linen cloth and complimenting the unseasonable log fire beautifully. I told myself this time I would enjoy it as brandy should be enjoyed: slowly and with careful, discerning sips—but to my dismay I forgot all about this quickly, and when I looked down next my drink was already halfway over. I corrected course, then swiftly forgot again, about three more times, if I had to guess, albeit scaled down to smaller and smaller intervals and with smaller and smaller drams left in the glass (maybe I was too drunk, too, and too soon after waking, to really enjoy a brandy the properly prescribed way), and in this way, I called my evening to a close. I got the check, paid it, and plodded out the door and eventually, all the way home.

Three drinks cost me eighty fucking dollars.

When I got back hope I slept for fifteen or sixteen hours practically uninterrupted. Even a fire could not have compelled me from my bed; I would have opted gladly for the additional rest.

My dreams came laborious and incessant. No doubt about it, these were febrile dreams: of the sort where everyone around you seems to be in a terrible rush, and under the dreadful presumption that it is imperative for you to be samely. They all do their best to pressure, browbeat you into action or, failing that, to shame you for your inaction, with an eye to your eventually, humbly falling in line. And all over the most banal—far from pressing—issues! Luckily, even in dream, I seemed to have been able to resist their cajoles and castigations by means of rational argument. Though whether I knew I was appealing to rational argument was another thing: I simply found myself unable to comprehend the very nature of their imploring, and found myself in turn rather imploring them! It’s one thing to be all abuzz or up-in-arms about something-or-other, but it’s a whole other thing to enforce that someone else be, too, let alone some strange third-party. Leave me out of it! The continual jostlings of the people in my dreams, it was like they were being made in an attempt to wake me from the deep sleep I’ve already said I was keen not to awaken from. Even as I slept and I slept I already knew a new day was beginning, leaving me behind.

By and by I made my way back to Society and up its august steps. I found the scene much as I had left it. The same entryway, the same door (the one that lead to the street) with its inlaid windows of stained glass and the transom, stained glass too. The same hostess was there and she greeted me the same way she had before, and like before I followed her to the same grand marble staircase, leading, beckoning you into the bosom of Society’s lounge, where lay the same silk wallpaper, the same log fire, the whole scene almost startlingly unchanged.

The woman at the bar wasn’t chatting with the bartender tonight. Instead she kept her head down and was quiet, seemingly entranced by the drink set on the counter in front of her, and the bartender was quietly shining glassware with a fine white cloth, the sheen off which I could clearly detect even from the landing as I stepped into the main atrium of the lounge, taking care not to peal too loudly off the marble flooring with my firm-soled shoes.

The other five customers, besides the woman, were just like before, if you’re the type to take comfort in such things. There was the old man at the bar, leaning on his left elbow and sprawling his trunk out facing the room, and making long, slow sweeps with his eyes over the proceedings. The two older couples were present, though perhaps in less formal attire (which isn’t saying much): today it was a (relatively) humble set of suits on the two men, plain black and with ordinary ties, and the two women were wearing still quite elaborate but decidedly less stiff evening gowns, and in more muted colors. The four of them were engaged a spirited four-way crossfire. The two businessmen were hunched over the low drink table and muttering in low voices about important things. Maybe they’re planning a suicide pact—what am I, my brother’s keeper? I stayed out of it.

My same place was waiting for me, just as before. A big, comfortable smile had appeared on my face as I settled myself down into what I had already decided would be my regular chair with daffodilian upholstery.

“The same, sir?” asked the waiter, floating up behind me like a ghost, and very nearly startling me like one too.

I told him I would appreciate that very much.

I wasn’t sure yet how many drinks I would have. I had to take economics into account. Of course, it goes without saying that every evening I went here I’d have to have at least two drinks—a brandy warmer by the fire, prefaced by a drink in the lounge area. Not enjoying a brandy, and taking advantage of the log fireplace, was a non-starter for me. But three drinks or more seemed a little excessive, on the wallet if nothing else.

The good man brought me my gimlet. Good man! It looked like turpentine. You could be dead drunk already and a real gimlet like that’d still wake your eyes up. It sharpens the teeth and ulcerates the stomach. And not just any gimlet. A vodka gimlet—for there was a difference.

I took appreciative sips and imagined my stature as a Society regular. The thought even struck me where I wondered if, when I was to grow as old as the median age present here this evening, I, too, might have the possibility open to me to actually be a regular here, and not just as a lark, but actually—I suppose (considering it now) I would have to somehow make a whole lot of money between that time and now. Maybe I could still strike it rich as a novelist? The probability wasn’t an impossible one. Though could a novelist in this day and age still strike it very rich in general? Or maybe I’d—just like my mom used to say, though by now of course she’s stopped expressing things like this, at least to my face—maybe I’d finally quit writing, or laying about, and get in with some industry, and that’s where I’ll make my millions, my inevitable millions… This too was an eventuality always floating in the back of the mind, there to be eternally propounded, then, while conceded unanimously as valid, dismissed, like a conclusion that’s foregone but still never factored into later consideration. One never thinks one will be an “artist” forever, it always feels provisional, like you’re waiting for the bulk of your life to start, even as it so clearly recedes. No, I may be an artist now, but I suppose one day I’ll have to wake up, eat shit, and turn into a businessman. But where would I find the opportunity?

For the moment, I merely sat there, ensconced in the soft foam of the armchair, taking the occasional appreciative sip from my vodka gimlet and puckering like a schoolgirl, and admiring the crown moulding. Why did I consider it such an “inevitability” that I, one day, would be like them—the other patrons in the bar? If I was gonna grow old at all, I think it is, I wanted to do it in style—not just with dignity but with a regal sort of dignity you’re predisposed to in New York. You want to grow old and have a doorman take your gloves for you at the evening’s end. I imagined it, so I supposed everyone else did too, I couldn’t be so unique; why, then, did we all—my whole generation—envision a retirement in luxury, while refusing to even the slightest extent to perform an honest day’s work? What was I, a writer? Someone who sat at home, or if not sat at home, who wandered around? Who pilfered and pissed away money at bars, even as their prices rose ever precipitously? But then again, this wasn’t the entire story of my generation; this was the story of the self-selected few I numbered among my circles—my literary circles, my dive-bar circle… Elsewhere in the city an entirely different story was being told: the wealthy Wall Street executive, my age or even younger! These are the folks who never fancied themselves “artists.” They’re the ones of good, eminently hearty stock. They probably go to pilates studios. And have ample friends. They probably invest in real estate. (Could I invest in real estate?) They could retire today and become Society regulars! And find themselves quite popular here as well, as young people in the midst of a generally older crowd often are! (But which for some reason, I wasn’t. In fact, the though occurred to me only just then that nary a wry glance had been tossed in my direction, not this night nor on my previous venture to Society! Was it really so obvious—my flimsy claim to walk these cloistered halls, my shabby suit, all my scurried internal budgeting? Was I a mere straggler-by, one of countless who have of a stray week here or there made their way into Society, pathetically posing as a regular, only to never return?) Would I ever be such a regular—actually? Drinking the gimlet faster now, I wondered if it wasn’t actually more humiliating, much more, to drink here casually before one’s time, than to never deign to drink here at all. No, truly you have to establish yourself to a certain extent before establishing yourself here. It’s like something my father once said, very wise, how you should only buy a Ferrari if you can afford two (not like he was ever in a position to apply his own wisdom in this instance, but still, it’s not a bad line). Just wearing a suit wasn’t enough, goddamn it. I wondered if it wasn’t actually the ultimate humiliation. To do something before your own time! Because now, if my time ever came, and I was as “set” as all these guys—in their autumn dresses in summer and their forgettable ties—and I decided to actually start coming to Society, claim it as my “haunt,” I would forever be plagued by this false-start; firstly it would render my renaissance less special, as I would be seeing these interior halls not for the first time, and secondly I might still be remembered, either by the staff or the other regulars, or whomever of those survived—but especially because I might still remember myself, as who I once was, and everything I once thought I was, during that earlier period, before my proper time, when I first went to Society and I committed that false-start; still stalking me, whom I’d be forced to confront every time I (or rather my highly-successful and highly-esteemed future self) stopped by for a vodka gimlet.

It really tended to put a damper on my mood, and, if it could be said to have done so, really soured the taste of my drink, which was by this point mist on the glass.

Remember, this whole thing, whole noxious line of thought, had been set off by imagining the figure I cut in the mind’s eye of, say, the mysterious woman at the bar—the ostensive divorcée. I wondered, placing myself in her moccasins, how the woman would find me. No, it’s true, she was a mystery. I couldn’t pin her down—I couldn’t pin down how she might’ve been pinning me down. She just kept looking, significantly, at the mirror behind the bar. Impenetrable! I’d call her “mystery woman,” or, “that mysterious woman.” That, or I called her “the divorcée,” or “the woman at the bar.” (I wondered, what, if anything at all, would she call me? What would she first remark about me?)

Though I could readily picture—my own picture, in the eyes of the festive couples leering at one another over their low table across the bar: I realized now they wouldn’t see me as another regular, just “in the making”; instead, and more accurately, they probably saw me as a drunk—for this was a bar after all, not any exclusive club; any bum off the street could wander in here. They saw a thirty-five-year-old man—for that is what I was—sporting a five day’s beard—for that is what I hadn’t shaved—greasy of hair, cheap of suit, shoes of tennis and empty of mind. In the same way I mentally dog-eared them as the “festive couples,” they probably tagged me: “Cheap Suit.” The debonair demeanor wasn’t fooling anyone, I suddenly and violently realized; I could screw my face as neutral as I could but my evil eye would still burst through like a hammering heart in the floorboards. Nothing was invisible. I could hide nothing. I had the sudden premonition that my thoughts themselves weren’t even invisible any longer. Every mistake—everything right or wrong I’ve ever done, but mostly every mistake, was written in plainly legible script up and down my cheap, cheap, cheap-ass suit. This was all so clear to me now! Who I was, how I had lived my life that had led to this moment, was painted as indelibly on my face as the mark of Cain. I saw my every pustule and ingrown hair in the mirror of their eyes. Lazy, good-for-nothing, drain-on-society, bohemian layabout; a tippler with no other more edifying qualities to balance it out. “Cheap Suit.”

I was still—but with much refractory movement. If the body consuming itself could be called refractory. I was quivering in place, I was hyperventilating. When it was good to be large I was small, but I was large, infinitely large, in all other cases.

Really, I felt most of all like a kicked puppy. I felt like I should want a tail, so that I could stow it under my legs. I wanted my ears to bend down and for my eyes to become very, very large and doey. God, it was everything I could do to not sprint out right then, though I knew I needed to pay, there was no question, it wasn’t an option—so much was I dreading having to speak to anyone, even to settle my check with the waiter. I wanted to float undisturbed for the remainder of my days as if in a shroud of complete silence. Could one do this, I wonder? I wanted to sprout wings and float up the stairs and out into the night again! Are such things done?

The only thing that slowed me was the drink, and believe me it was not without abject shock that I discovered, my resolve having weakened sometime in the interim, that I had somehow chanced to have ordered another. But by then, I felt sick, and my heart truly was palpitating—no, I felt downright nauseous, it was without question, I had to get out of here. I suddenly feared that the opulent chandelier would collapse onto the ground and shatter so, so loudly, so loudly it would be appalling, that would shudder the marble flooring so viscerally, almost, that the force of it would upend my lungs into my esophagus and my testicles into my pelvic bone and I’d get a concussion from the impact all the way from where I sat, and casting out a spray of glass and razor-sharp diamond like buckshot, terminally in all directions. The chandelier was heavy and it was hanging there, and the taut of it was bearing down on me, and would continue to do so, until such an eventuality occurred. It seemed an act of deliberate impudence on the chandelier’s part that it wouldn’t. No, I truly thought this, and moreover I thought that the chandelier hanging down from the ceiling was my responsibility. I was a child again and I had, some way or another, kicked an errant ball, and it had careened into the chandelier and unhooked it, relinquishing it to the cruel laws of gravity that then sent it down, down, down—and, huddled in my bed, scared out of my wits, I knew the thud of it hitting the ground would wake my mom and dad; and I knew they'd be furious! Well, first of all, my fellow paying customers in the drawing room here, would be beside themselves…

No, something had to be done about that chandelier. Was I not a paying customer? I had every right to be here, you know, and what with these hazards strung about from the ceiling… Well, I just quite think I should have some say, after all.

But that was neither here nor there! I didn’t want to look around any more, at the other customers; now it was all I could do to fix my glare on the condensation on my martini glass, and the way it coagulated into all these partial, spirited thumbprints, that jaggled around and frosted and dripped in all manners; really it was quite interesting, actually, and the thought occurred to me that, yes, I did have a reason to be here, and a quite good one at that, maybe—potentially, you see—so good a reason that I may even be welcomed as a Society regular: I was a scientist that was taken to studying the movement of water droplets of condensation on—on, well, the glass. I was a scientific researcher. And while that wasn’t exactly a reason to be here, or really any bar at all, though glasses and frost are, to be sure, to be found there—it was a good excuse to explain my digilent focus on the glass I had in my hands, resting on the pleated surface of my leg, and leaving a rapidly expanding (and palpably wet) cup-ring there. Well you see, I’m something of a researcher, and—God, it’s a vice, don’t I know it!—but, yes, for better and for worse, even in my off time—kicking back a drink to relax—I still can’t help but have work on the mind; so you see, what I’m doing here—and this is actually quite interesting if you’ll take a look—is examining the way my fingerprints, or my “digits,” as we say in the biz, are cast upon the “condensation”—another technical term, but I trust you understand—upon the glass there; and you see how the water droplets really cusp around the finger prints—and oh! see that one there, that little droplet, who for convenience sake we’ll call little Tommy, little Tommy Footprint, or Fingerprint rather, little Raindrop Fingerprint Tommy there is doing a little jig as he marches towards the base of the glass, and…

But then again—and in a much more real sense—most likely, I didn’t even need to have a reason at all. I was a paying customer! One can peruse Thirteenth Street, one can hop into any bar one chooses, and one can furthermore stare at the mist on a glass—or anywhere else, for that matter, if he likes! If one likes. (And by “one,” I mean of course, namely, me. I can do that.) In a much more real sense, you don’t need a reason at all to do anything—because no one’s asking for it! No one’s thinking about you—about me, even alone, even at Society! No one cares! You can provide a reason, but no matter what you do, you can’t force a witness to bear it. Better just to remain silent, if you can be sure no one’s listening. What about me? Was I concerned about, let’s see, why the divorcée was doing, whatever it was she was doing? Was I expecting, say, the fancy set of couples over across the drawing room to provide for me a solid rationale for why they were doing, such or such? If I couldn’t spare a thought for them, who was I to expect that they—that the whole world!—should be so concerned about me! should be veritably falling on their knees in anticipation, waiting for my excuse! An excuse, in fact, for something so innocuous as drinking at a bar, or looking at a glass, something that, quite frankly, now that I think of it, would be more suspicious to even have a ready excuse for, so simple of a thing it is. It would maybe make it seem, having such an excuse ready, that I’m not actually staring at a glass at all. That, actually, what I’m up to is so impertinent, that I need to be able to provide an alibi—that I’m guilty of some nefarious crime! On second thought, though, now that I think about it (or so I was thinking to myself then, the night I’m speaking of), as a matter of fact all these patrons around me, were foremost in my mind! I was obsessed with the lady at the bar, the bartender, the businessmen, the old couples, the old man at the bar, the hostess, with everyone here this evening. I contemplated on each and every one of them like I was swirling a drop of whisky on the tongue; I questioned their station in life, where (in the case of the older couples, for one) they may have been, what they may have been up to before coming here tonight, I wondered if they had children, husbands, jobs, what the task of their lives might’ve looked like, what they were drinking and why they were drinking it; I even chided their clothing (their clothing! a lot of gall from a guy who’s wearing off-the-rack!), called their ties forgettable, their gowns “flouncy”—you wouldn’t think it, but all of it’s true; I didn’t burden you with the details in my telling, necessarily, sparing you the minutiae of my private interior monologue in the main, but such thoughts might have crossed my mind, in those exact words, even.

If I was doing this, why shouldn’t they? I was back at square one.

All these thoughts and more were troubling my mind. No, they wouldn’t grill me, they would be indifferent, but they would ultimately care. They’d probably even let me stick around; I wasn’t bothering anyone, after all; it wasn’t that I was a negative presence, it wasn’t like my presence would detract, it was that I wasn’t bothering anyone, I was perfectly neutral: it was that I wouldn’t subtract but I didn’t add. They’d condone me, sure, but I’d never really enter into their ranks. I was as the paisley carpeting. If anything I was a curiosity: sure, I’d enter their mind, but when I did—after they noticed the suit, that is—they’d think to themselves, why does he even want to be here? He didn’t slave away of a lifetime and earn the suit that I earned! What, he’s taking a load off—what load?

He can take our business, we’ll take his money; we’ll stand his presence, if not countenance him openly, and only so long as he doesn’t get too rowdy—but I won’t respect him, never!

“Perhaps a brandy tonight, sir?”

Thus spake the waiter, and in that moment, I could’ve kissed him. I figured, how bad could I actually be, even after all that? I, am a paying customer. They, will still take my money. Yes, I told him, a brandy. And also the check.

I had realized fairly a long time ago at this point, in the middle of this embittered monologue I was entrenched in, that the more I drank, it’s true, the more spacy my concerns began to be, and actually I would forget them for swaths at a time, finding myself thinking about other things entirely and utterly distracted from the challenge that was confronting me—if it even was a challenge! After the brandy, I might reconsider! That the solution was to take out the problem! (I was actually so drunk that I worried if I relocated to the easy-chair by the fire, I might stumble, or walk in a manner too conspicuously careful, and thus reveal to all how drunk I was at this point. So I stayed recklessly in place; by which I mean, I felt it, in my drunken state, a veritable act of courage or reprisal, or something honorable or of the active-duty military man, my decision to stay seated, “recklessly,” like I had actually decided to camp on enemy ground, so as better to avert the foe, from behind their lines.) I still sensed (what I then felt as) the urgency of my dilemma, really, one whose domain stretched far beyond that of this evening in particular, and into the way I’ve lived my life as a whole.

And I found that, as I drank, more and more in the midst of my introspection I would stop and, circumventing for a moment my train of thought, actually congratulate myself—congratulate myself, thinking how important it is to be introspective! And the feeling of assurance I received from that thought, that it was good to be introspective, and that I’m one of the people who is, was almost—in fact, I might have even conflated the two—the assurance of having resolved the dilemma, about which I was supposed to have been introspecting in the very first place! Quite like how, when you first start working on a new story—and how you might even think to yourself, maybe it will turn out to be a novel, maybe this is the one, and none too soon, finally—you might feel so good about having maybe started out on your next novel, and, in your excitement, might share this feeling with a friend, and the assurance your friend gives you, consciously or unconsciously, is so positive that you exchange it completely for the assurance you would’ve got from actually writing a goddamn novel! (Or, sort of like that feeling. Only I guess in this case, the “story” or the potential “novel” is my introspection, the “friend” is myself, and “I” am also myself.)

No, yes, I might even say I felt mightily resolved. And I stayed in place and that waiter brought me that brandy, and the very notion of conflict had become something almost academic to me.

Well, I guess I drank up and paid the bill or whatever, and I guess I must have doffed my cap, if I was wearing one, and bid all my new friends, my fellow regulars, goodbye (fuck you) at some point, for the next thing I knew, or rather didn’t know, I was fast asleep, in the world of dreams that is beyond that of knowing, or even feeling, or even vaguely sensing, or feeling words to be true without feeling them convincingly. I was fast asleep—and somehow on New York time again: it was midnight (or thereabouts) and I was asleep! The next night I was back up again: regressed to my annexed Europe time. And the effects of my realization, be it born of a drunken state or no, were independent from alcohol, and indeed persisted; I ended up sleeping an unconscionably long time, and when I did awake, I felt as though brand new. Maybe the hangover was my drunken state, and the force of my consternation was a sober reality…

It was a simple realization, but an extraordinary one. Though as I recall it now I’m tempted to say I can’t recall its special importance. No, even reading back over what I’ve just written, I don’t even think I have adequately put the feeling into words!