Saturday, May 22, 2004

 

ENTRY 121: WE BLOG, THEREFORE WE DRINK--I MEAN, ARE; or, THE BLOGGERS, THE DREAMERS, AND ME


Last night's GB:NY gathering at Barrage was the first time that I, antisocial as I can be, had met my fellow bloggers in anything approaching en masse. (I had previously met only Crash, who was there last night, and David, who wasn't, very recently.) So I didn't know quite what to expect. A bunch of carpal-tunnel cripples? An entire group of people jotting down notes to enrich later online reportage? Should I specify whether I was speaking strictly "off the record"?


The paranoia sort of evaporated when I walked in and saw a decent crowd already milling around in amiable conversation. In recent years I've become much better than I had been about grabbing a situation by the balls; I marched up and started introducing myself.


There were Famous Author Rob Byrnes, who struck just the right initial balance between charm and reserve, as relatively few people seem able to do (I entirely approved); Michael Vernon, a transplanted Southerner who is, thank God, as technologically inept as I; Mak, whose mild-mannered exterior belies the partier within; Steven, with whom I discussed the question of identity-concealment when blogging, and whom I was prevented, by some interruption or other, from telling how jealous I was of the clever way he nicknamed his therapist; and Zeitzeuge, who proves that I'm not the only kind of benevolent crazy to come from Texas.


I spent a good bit of time chatting with fellow Upper West Sider MzOuiser, who is lovely and hates her job and has the excellent taste to adore the UWS as much as I do, and who, like me, is sometimes thought to be Jewish (ah, to be witty and attractive and neurotic). Staying with her for the weekend was the nigh-legendary Zenchick, who has personality to burn and should definitely have at least one boyfriend by any normal logic and was the one, I think, to initiate the numerous sidewalk group renditions of "Rainbow Connection."


Then there were Patch, and Myke, and Attaboy (representin' for Staten Island, that perennially mysterious borough across the waves), and Bob, and Mike B. (thanks for the new word!), and probably others I'm callously forgetting, like the cold snake I am. But not a poisonous snake. A cute little garden snake, maybe. Or a pretty lizard.


I'm very glad I went. The group of bloggers I had the pleasure to meet was a lively, intelligent, interesting, socially generous crowd.


Before signing off, I want to try to reconstruct one of the more amusing exchanges of the evening. It's a little hard to convey, but I'll make the attempt.




Anonymous Funny Drunk Blogger: What’s your name again?


Me: [Insert real name here.]


AFDB: I love your sideburns. [Fondles sideburns.] Don’t you guys think his sideburns are just so cute?


Everyone Else: ….


Me: Thank you.


AFDB: What’s your name again?


Me: [Insert real name here.]


AFDB: Your sideburns are so great. Man. Mine just disappear because they’re so blond.


Me: Thank you.


[Group conversation resumes.]


AFDB: What’s your name?


Me: [Insert real name here.]


AFDB: I’ve gotta touch those sideburns. [Strokes one sideburn very lightly, as though it were a hemophiliac baby bird.]


Zenchick: [laughing] I think I’m going to pee a little. [Like she often says when she is laughing, although she valiantly maintains her hard-won continence nevertheless. We think.]


AFDB: You can’t be peeing. Then it would be running down your…um…. [Searches for precise word.]


Zenchick and Me: [in unison] Legs.


AFDB: What’s your name again?


Me: [Insert real name here.]


AFDB: Can I touch your sideburns?


Me: …?


Me: …!


Me: Yes. Since you asked so nicely.




Pretty lizard update: It was also good to meet him and him, but I didn't hear the names of their blogs at the time. And I almost met this fellow, who had a story strangely similar to my sideburns one.

10:28 AM

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Friday, May 21, 2004

 

SPECIAL BULLETIN


Apparently a cloud of bloggers is descending on our fair little burg this evening; Crash clued me in just a couple of days ago, but I plan to be there. What about you? Groupies welcome. Much digital-picture-taking and cross-linking will surely ensue. I understand it's called GB:NY. We even have an official ad:





As Zenchick said, "Oh dear LORD. This is out of control."

9:30 AM

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Thursday, May 20, 2004

 

ENTRY 120: REPATRIATION





Note: the blog is now back on New York time.


Last Thursday, the 13th, was the final day in England for Phil and me, and we ended up spending most of it apart. That's probably natural, considering that, even though we're both accustomed to spending a good bit of time on our own, we'd traveled all over an entire country together and shared breathing room for the vast majority of the past 10 days. (Without one single argument, I might add.)


It was a stupefyingly nice day, sunny and around 60 degrees (that is to say, 15). On Wednesday Phil had visited the National Gallery, which met with his very high praise, so I made the pilgrimage myself. When I reached Trafalgar Square, I decided I didn't want to spend the entirety of my last day alone. So I rang up Todd, who seemed surprised to hear from me but said he could meet me in an hour and a half. That seemed like the perfect amount of time to see some highlights of the National Gallery's collection.


And what a collection. I wandered the rooms (well-marked, with the artists represented in each room indicated on placards), gazing at works by Raphael, Seurat, da Vinci, Botticelli.... I was particularly intrigued by the Piero della Francesca holdings, as I'd taken a religious studies course in Renaissance art and had studied this painting at some length. It's always so startling to see such things up close.


I met Todd outside, and we walked past Whitehall and Parliament. He pointed up at the clock tower containing Big Ben, talking about how perfect a symbol it was for London, where people were always concerned about being somewhere on time. This reminded me of a pretty fascinating article I'd read in The New Yorker not too long ago about Ecuador's national campaign against its own culture of tardiness. Todd seems of the anti-workaday school; he admires my penurious writer's lifestyle, he told me. I could never quite figure out what sort of trajectory his work life had taken, although that's fine.


We walked and talked along the Thames, ending up at last at the Tate Modern, where I'd been just three days before. We settled on a couch overlooking the Thames, with a view of St. Paul's Cathedral, which had so miraculously survived bombings and fires and the centuries, surrounded curiously by more modern structures. Todd said how quintessential a perspective it was of London, the coexisting hodgepodge of old and new. I stared across the water, wanting to see what this place really was. It is an impossibly naïve way of trying to discern what a city is, just as there is a limit to what you can know by staring into the black void of someone's pupil, face-to-face. But sitting there and taking it in was, to be banal, nice.


It was time to meet Phil at the hotel to pick up our luggage.


The Underground was a mess, but I made it back without being too terribly Ecuadorian. We were off on the Tube to Heathrow.


I leaned against my luggage and stared out the window as the train churned inexorably west. It was all still a jumble of -cesters and multicolored Underground skeins and faces.


At the airport I spent my last few pounds on bottled water and some of the choicer English candy to which I'd taken a liking. With the remaining change I made a call to Stairs, to bid a final farewell, to thank him for everything, to make a joke about being deported. The payphone unexpectedly cut me off.


It was time to go. I left England with 43 pence in my pocket.


The flight back was uneventful. Thankful for the empty seat beside me, I scrawled in my journal until my eyes were too heavy for my hand to write. I half-dozed, rousing myself for food or drink in a dim twilight of movies and murmurs.


I stepped back onto U.S. carpeting in a daze; it was past 10 PM here, past 3 AM in London. On the flight Phil had told me he planned to dash off the plane and straight to a taxi; he lives in Queens, so a cab was feasible for him, though not for me. I said I understood, and I did.


Trudging through the customs line, I wondered sleepily whether I should have declared the £3 worth of candy I'd bought in the airport that was still in my bag; did they confiscate Kit Kats and Rolos in these darker days? Apparently not.


As I finished up with my testy customs officer, I glanced ahead and saw Phil walking away with his luggage. I nearly waved goodbye at his back, but remembered myself.


Now I am home. I've spent most of the last week catching up on things and readjusting. I find myself waking up a little before 7, which is nice. Since losing my job I'd taken to waking up at 8:30 or 9, which feels like I'm losing out on AM time.


People have been asking me the standard questions. What was it like? Were you sorry to leave, or glad to be coming back, or both?


Roger, who goes to London three or four times a year, talks of England as a kind of parallel universe, a not-quite-United-States. I suppose there is an aptness to that description. There seems a slightly greater sense of civility in the UK, which is not to say that the U.S. is uncivil. But the U.S. is--well, when you come to this kind of cultural analysis the subtleties of phraseology, the vagaries of diction become more difficult. I recall the phrase "cheerful barbarism" being applied to the U.S., and, although it seems slightly overstated (outside the White House), it does capture something of what I mean.


London surprised me because it lacked the degree of friction of New York, the rubbing-against-each-other that, while it often creates a wonderful spark and energy, can also make us numb to people and things around us after a while. We scrape against each other, bleed until we scab over, and eventually become calloused, indifferent. In London there are all these lovely parks, an urban sprawling (in some ways unfortunate, but also allowing one to breathe), a closeness-to-the-ground that skyscraping New York lacks. If the two cities were people, London might be the more circumspect one, glancing around and side-to-side, while New York, even with one eye toward ground level in observation, would have its chin tilted upward.


When I look back on my recent travels I think of the surprising politeness of fast-food employees ("Here's your change, love"); the charming cobbled streets that made me wish I hadn't brought a suitcase on wheels, but which were not too much trouble to lift my bag over; the overwhelming number of citizens who didn't bat an eye at my American accent, or simply ribbed me slightly about a certain pronunciation, but never gave me an Iraq glower; the depth of history, calcified in cathedrals and palaces and ruins, that is foreign to our young upstart across the Atlantic; the exasperation of waiting and waiting for the restaurant bill to come, coexisting with the mollifying thought that the service had been nothing but pleasant.


I think also of Phil's quiet, comfortable companionship and our penetrating conversations; the polite, warm hospitality of Stairs, who is a better host than I could ever hope to be; the intelligent, welcoming charm of Trevor, and the shocking relief of being able to relate on certain levels; and the freewheelingly joyous but thoughtful ways of Todd.


England didn't teach me who I was, for on some level I have always known who I am. But it did prompt me not to forget that I do know, and to use that to the fullest possible extent. I feel I understand a little more of the world now, that new things can happen, that people largely possess a basic good will toward those different from themselves. I know now that I was afraid to leave the U.S., but that I don't have to be.


And I know, for these reasons and others, that I am a decidedly lucky bloke. This is why we ultimately travel: to figure out again what we've always felt to be true.

10:43 AM

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