"Hello, Megan. . . how was your summer?"
Glib answers. Funny answers. Promises of future drinks and fun. Everything lies ahead.
As I've said so many times, Counrty Club kids are much different from State College kids. You could stand them in a courtyard side by side and immediately tell the difference. It is not just the clothing, though there is that. It is privilege and the associated manners. They stand straighter, move with assurance. There are boys, of course, but one rarely notices them. They are still goofy boys, by and large, though they are not like State School boys at all. But the girls. . . . They make one yearn for youth and immortality.
Nikki Glaser nails it.
She nails a lot of things.
So, yea. . . youth and immortality. Who needs that? Let me teach you how to grow old. Most of my friends and colleagues are younger than I by decades. I like that they don't talk much about the past. They don't have so much of it as my older friends do. My older friends, of course, talk about the past a lot. I don't mind talking about the past if it is in a historical context, but the personal stuff just starts to depress me. The younger friends with children, though, bore the fuck out of me when they talk about being parents. It is the most inane thing people can talk about. They all tell the same stories in different settings. It is comfort to them, of course, this kind of shared experience. It is the same kind of comfort as a chain restaurant or a Holiday Inn, I reckon. No surprises. You know exactly what to expect.
"Little Timmy's playing soccer now."
"Oh my God. . . aren't kids great. Bobby is on a really good team right now. We love his coach. . . ."
The kids are much better to talk to, of course. They never talk about their parents unless it is in pejorative terms.
And, as they grow, it is all about bragging that they are in college or are about to graduate and get that million dollar job. Or, in a different crowd like my relatives, it is about meth and prison and overdoses.
Oh, those Country Club College kids. . . they are going to make out. The future's so bright (as the song goes) they gotta wear shades.
You've never seen such beautiful hair, such flat stomachs, such long legs.
I watched a documentary on Leopold and Loeb last night, though. These kids, apparently, don't all end up well (link).
Selavy. I'm not saying they are all good kids. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts and minds of. . . "them"?
You know well that I have Gatsbyitis. I've lived as a Gypsy in the Palace. There are plenty of twisted hearts and twisted minds there, but the decor looks great.
The black sheep son of the fabulously wealthy family is only 30, but he thinks he knows more than I do. He does, of course, about country clubs and summering in the right places, about captained yachts and fund raisers. He has a prep schoolboy charm even at his age. But he IS a black sheep. I find him more interesting than his wealthy, more steadfast friends do even though his family will be hosting a Trump fundraiser.
But I don't want to get into that. Besides, he is thrust upon me, a friend through acquaintances only.
I was sitting in the Cafe Strange yesterday afternoon, drinking a latte and writing in my notebook. I hadn't any ideas. They just wouldn't come, and I wondered if I have written everything I know now, wondered if I was written out.
"More figurative language," I put down. "Tropes. Suggesting rather than saying. The old sleight of hand."
I used to know how to do it. You see a fly caught in a spider's web and report it in deathly detail, then move out reflecting on some cosmic "truth," some greater meaning, then finish back with the spider and the fly. Virginia Woolf stuff. Annie Dillard.
I should have done that with the coyote sighting. Maybe I've lost "it," whatever "it" is.
My phone rang. It was Tennessee. Normally, I don't answer the phone, but since I had nothing to put on the page, I took the call outside. It was, of course, a driving call. He was on his way to the dispensary.
"What are you doing, homey?"
"I'm sitting in the cafe drinking an afternoon coffee and trying to write."
"You should start a blog about the people in the gym."
I snorted. I told him there was nothing to write about them, that they were "normal" republicans, that they did nothing of note except make money and talk about their children. They were bland, I said, which is not necessarily a bad thing in people, but you'd have to be a John Cheever to write about them. I didn't really mention John Cheever. I just put that in there now for you.
"I'm not a republican," he objected. "You know that."
"You're just a Melungeon," I said. "Makes you a little interesting."
I like safe, don't get me wrong. Leave It to Beaver and all that. It's where I want to live. But when I jump the fence, I'm in search of "the other," I don't want the ordinary.
When I went back in, I still could find nothing to write about, so I put away my pen and looked out over the freak show around me. These were not Country Club kids, but holy shit, they were fascinating. One day, I'll get my camera. . . .
The process of life is a downward spiral. It just is. From those magical days of youth, we head into the void, each step bringing us closer to the despair we must not acknowledge. So, you know, people talk about their kids, their beautiful past when they drank all night and fucked like little animals.
"I remember this one time we were doing blow, you know, and everybody was getting crazy and we decided to go to the club. I knew the dj and so we all got in, and man, somebody had some Molly and when we left, the sun was coming up, and we all went back to my place to continue the party. . . ."
Told on bleachers overlooking the kids soccer game.
The past, of course, is one big lie we keep telling, and the future. . . well, best not to think too much about that unless you are deeply religious, and even then. . . .
Still, thinking about tomorrow isn't a bad thing.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
And now, I'm going for a run.
Footnote: I like live performances like this much more than studio recordings that are so overproduced. And here is Beth Orton "then," a little moment caught in time. And the photo. . . I took that in a NYC museum lunchroom in 2010. Another little bit of the past future tense.
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