Republican Party Reptile Part 12

Getting Your

Wing-w.a.n.g

Squeezed and Not

Spill Your Drink

When it comes to taking chances, some people like to play poker or shoot dice; other people prefer to parachute-jump, go rhino hunting, or climb ice floes, while still others engage in crime or marriage. But I like to get drunk and drive like a fool. Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you're half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of c.o.ke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you're going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban side street. You'd have to watch the entire Mexican air force crash-land in a liquid petroleum gas storage facility to match this kind of thrill. If you ever have much more fun than that, you'll die of pure sensory overload, I'm here to tell you.

But wait. Let's pause and a.n.a.lyze why this particular matrix of activities is perceived as so highly enjoyable. I mean, aside from the teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over. Ignoring that for a moment, let's look at the psychological factors conducive to placing positive emotional values on the sensory end product of experientially produced excitation of the central nervous system and smacking into a lamppost. Is that any way to have fun? How would your mother feel if she knew you were doing this? She'd cry. She really would. And that's how you know it's fun. Anything that makes your mother cry is fun. Sigmund Freud wrote all about this. It's a well-known fact.

Of course, it's a shame to waste young lives behaving this way-speeding around all tanked up with your feet hooked in the steering wheel while your date crawls around on the floor mats opening zippers with her teeth and pounding on the accelerator with an empty liquor bottle. But it wouldn't be taking a chance if you weren't risking something. And even if it is a shame to waste young lives behaving this way, it is definitely cooler than risking old lives behaving this way. I mean, so what if some fifty-eight-year-old b.u.t.t-head gets a load on and starts playing Death Race 2000 in the rush-hour traffic jam? What kind of chance is he taking? He's just waiting around to see what kind of cancer he gets anyway. But if young, talented you, with all of life's possibilities at your fingertips, you and the future Cheryl Tiegs there, so fresh, so beautiful-if the two of you stake your handsome heads on a single roll of the dice in life's game of stop-the-semi-now that's taking chances! Which is why old people rarely risk their lives. It's not because they're chicken-they just have too much dignity to play for small stakes.

Now a lot of people say to me, "Hey, P.J., you like to drive fast. Why not join a responsible organization, such as the Sports Car Club of America, and enjoy partic.i.p.ation in sports car racing? That way you could drive as fast as you wish while still engaging in a well-regulated spectator sport that is becoming more popular each year." No thanks. In the first place, if you ask me, those guys are a bunch of tweedy old barf mats who like to talk about things like what necktie they wore to Alberto Ascari's funeral. And in the second place, they won't let me drive drunk. They expect me to go out there and smash into things and roll over on the roof and catch fire and burn to death when I'm sober. They must think I'm crazy. That stuff scares me. I have to get completely s.h.i.t-faced to even think about driving fast. How can you have a lot of exciting thrills when you're so terrified that you wet yourself all the time? That's not fun. It's just not fun to have exciting thrills when you're scared. Take the heroes of the Iliad, for instance-they really had some exciting thrills, and were they scared? No. They were drunk. Every chance they could get. And so am I, and I'm not going out there and have a horrible car wreck until somebody brings me a c.o.c.ktail.

Also, it's important to be drunk because being drunk keeps your body all loose, and that way, if you have an accident or anything, you'll sort of roll with the punches and not get banged up so bad. For example, there was this guy I heard about who was really drunk and was driving through the Adirondacks. He got sideswiped by a bus and went head-on into another car, which knocked him off a bridge, and he plummeted 150 feet into a ravine. I mean, it killed him and everything, but if he hadn't been so drunk and loose, his body probably would have been banged up a lot worse-and you can imagine how much more upset his wife would have been when she went down to the morgue to identify him.

Even more important than being drunk, however, is having the right car. You have to get a car that handles really well. This is extremely important, and there's a lot of debate on this subject-about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest. Another thing about a rented car is that it's an all-terrain vehicle. Mud, snow, water, woods-you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can't always get it back-but that's not your problem, is it?

Yet there's more to a really good-handling car than just making sure it doesn't belong to you. It has to be big. It's really hard for a girl to get her clothes off inside a small car, and this is one of the most important features of car handling. Also, what kind of drugs does it have in it? Most people like to drive on speed or cocaine with plenty of whiskey mixed in. This gives you the confidence you want and need for plowing through red lights and pa.s.sing trucks on the right. But don't neglect downs and 'ludes and codeine cough syrup either. It's hard to beat the heavy depressants for high-speed spin-outs, backing into trees, and a general feeling of not giving two f.u.c.ks about man and his universe.

Overall, though, it's the bigness of the car that counts the most. Because when something bad happens in a really big car-accidentally speeding through the middle of a gang of unruly young people who have been taunting you in a drive-in restaurant, for instance-it happens very far away-way out at the end of your fenders. It's like a civil war in Africa; you know, it doesn't really concern you too much. On the other hand, when something happens in a little bitty car it happens right in your face. You get all involved in it and have to give everything a lot of thought. Driving around in a little bitty car is like being one of those sensitive girls who writes poetry. Life is just too much to bear. You end up staying at home in your bedroom and thinking up sonnets that don't get published till you die, which will be real soon if you keep driving around in little bitty cars like that.

Let's inspect some of the basic maneuvers of drunken driving while you've got crazy girls who are on drugs with you. Look for these signs when picking up crazy girls: pierced ears with five or six earrings in them, unusual shoes, white lipstick, extreme thinness, hair that's less than an inch long, or clothing made of chrome and leather. Stay away from girls who cry a lot or who look like they get pregnant easily or have careers. They may want to do weird stuff in cars, but only in the backseat, and it's really hard to steer from back there. Besides, they'll want to get engaged right away afterwards. But the other kind of girls-there's no telling what they'll do. I used to know this girl who weighed about eighty pounds and dressed in skirts that didn't even cover her underwear, when she wore any. I had this beat-up old Mercedes, and we were off someplace about fifty miles from nowhere on Christmas Eve in a horrible sleetstorm. The road was really a mess, all curves and big ditches, and I was blotto, and the car kept slipping off the pavement and sliding sideways. And just when I'd hit a big patch of glare ice and was frantically spinning the wheel trying to stay out of the oncoming traffic, she said, "I shaved my crotch today-wanna feel?"

That's really true. And then about half an hour later the head gasket blew up, and we had to spend I don't know how long in this dirtball motel, although the girl walked all the way to the liquor store through about a mile of slush and got all kinds of wine and did weird stuff with the bottlenecks later. So it was sort of okay, except that the garage where I left the Mercedes burned down and I used the insurance money to buy a motorcycle.

Now, girls who like motorcycles really will do anything. I mean, really, anything you can think of. But it's just not the same. For one thing, it's hard to drink while you're riding a motorcycle-there's no place to set your gla.s.s. And cocaine's out of the question. And personally, I find that gra.s.s makes me too sensitive. You smoke some gra.s.s and the first thing you know you're pulling over to the side of the road and taking a break to dig the gentle beauty of the sky's vast panorama, the slow, luxurious interlay of sun and clouds, the lulling trill of breezes midst leafy tree branches-and what kind of fun is that? Besides, it's tough to "get it on" with a chick (I mean in the biblical sense) and still make all the fast curves unless you let her take the handlebars with her pants off and come on doggy-style or something, which is harder than it sounds; and pantless girls on motorcycles attract the highway patrol, so usually you don't end up doing anything until you're both off the bike, and by then you may be in the hospital. Like I was after this old lady pulled out in front of me in an Oldsmobile, and the girl I was with still wanted to do anything you can think of, but there was a doctor there and he was squirting pHisoHex all over me and combing little bits of gravel out of my face with a wire brush, and I just couldn't get into it. So take it from me and don't get a motorcycle. Get a big car.

Usually, most fast-driving maneuvers that don't require crazy girls call for use of the steering wheel, so be sure your car is equipped with power steering. Without power steering, turning the wheel is a lot like work, and if you wanted work you'd get a job. All steering should be done with the index finger. Then, when you're done doing all the steering that you want to do, just pull your finger out of there and the wheel will come right back to wherever it wants to. It's that simple. Be sure to do an extra lot of steering when going into a driveway or turning sharp corners. And here's another important tip: Always roll the window down before throwing bottles out, and don't try to throw them through the windshield unless the car is parked.

Okay, now say you've been on a six-day drunk and you've just made a bet that you can back up all the way to Cleveland, plus you've got a buddy who's getting a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b on the trunk lid. Well, let's face it-if that's the way you're going to act, sooner or later you'll have an accident. This much is true. But that doesn't mean that you should sit back and just let accidents happen to you. No, you have to go out and cause them yourself. That way you're in control of the situation.

You know, it's a shame, but a lot of people have the wrong idea about accidents. For one thing, they don't hurt nearly as much as you'd think. That's because you're in shock and can't feel pain, or if you aren't in shock, you're dead, and that doesn't hurt at all so far as we know. Another thing is that they make great stories. I've got this friend-a prominent man in the automotive industry-who flipped his MG TF back in the fifties and slid on his head for a couple hundred yards, and had to spend a year with no eyelids and a steel pin through his cheekbones while his face was being rebuilt. Sure, it wasn't much fun at the time, but you should hear him tell about it now. What a fabulous tale, especially during dinner. Besides, it's not all smashing gla.s.s and spurting blood, you understand. Why, a good sideswipe can be an almost religious experience. The sheet metal doesn't break or crunch or anything-it flexes and gives way as the two vehicles come together with a rushing liquid pulse as if two giant sharks of steel were mating in the perpetual night of the sea primordial. I mean, if you're on enough drugs. Also, sometimes you see a lot of really pretty lights in your head.

One sure way to cause an accident is with your basic "moonshiner's" or "bootlegger's" turn. Whiz down the road at about sixty or seventy, throw the gearshift into neutral, cut the wheel to the left, and hit the emergency brake with one good wallop while holding the brake release out with your left hand. This'll send you spinning around in a perfect 180-degree turn right into a culvert or a fast-moving tractor-trailer rig. (The bootlegger's turn can be done on dry pavement, but it works best on top of loose gravel or small children.) Or, when you've moved around backwards, you can then spin the wheel to the right and keep on going until you've come around a full 360 degrees and are headed back the same way you were going; though it probably would have been easier to have just kept going that way in the first place and not have done anything at all, unless you were with somebody you really wanted to impress-your probation officer, for instance.

An old friend of mine named Joe Schenkman happens to have just written me a letter about another thing you can do to wreck a car. Joe's on a little vacation up in Vermont (and will be until he finds out what the statute of limitations on attempted vehicular homicide is). He was writing to tell me about a fellow he met up there, saying: ... This guy has rolled (deliberately) over thirty cars (and not just by his own account-the townfolks back him up on this story), inheriting only a broken nose (three times) and a slightly black-and-blue shoulder for all this. What you do, see, is you go into a moonshiner's turn, but you get on the brakes and stay on them. Depending on how fast you're going, you roll proportionately; four or five rolls is decent. Going into the spin, you have one hand on the seat and the other firmly on the roof so you're sprung in tight. As you feel the roof give on the first roll, you slip your seat hand under the dash (of the pa.s.senger side, as you're thrown hard over in that direction to begin with) and pull yourself under it. And here you simply sit it out, springing yourself tight with your whole body, waiting for the thunder to die. Naturally, it helps to be drunk, and if you have a split second's doubt or hesitation through any of this, you die.

This Schenkman himself is no slouch of a driver, I may say. Unfortunately, his strong suit is driving in New York City, an area that has a great number of unusual special conditions, which we just don't have the time or the s.p.a.ce to get into right here (except to note that the good part is how it's real easy to scare old ladies in new Cadillacs and the bad part is that Negroes actually do carry knives, not to mention Puerto Ricans; and everybody else you hit turns out to be a lawyer or married to somebody in the mob). However, Joe is originally from the South, and it was down there that he discovered huffing glue and sniffing industrial solvents and such. These give you a really spectacular hallucinatory type of a high where you think, for instance, that you're driving through an overpa.s.s guardrail and landing on a freight-train flatcar and being hauled to Shreveport and loaded into a container ship headed for Liberia with a crew full of h.o.m.os.e.xual Lebanese, only to come to and find out that it's true. Joe is a commercial artist who enjoys jazz music and horse racing. His favorite color is blue.

There's been a lot of discussion about what kind of music to listen to while staring doom square in the eye and not blinking unless you get some grit under your contacts. Watch out for the fellow who tunes his FM to the cla.s.sical station. He thinks a little Rimsky-Korsakov makes things more dramatic-like in a foreign movie. That's p.u.s.s.y style. This kind of guy's idea of a fast drive is a seventy-five-mile-an-hour cruise up to the summer cottage after one brandy and soda. The true skidmark artist prefers something cheery and upbeat-"Night on Disco Mountain" or "Boogie Oogie Oogie" or whatever it is that the teenage lovely wants to shake her buns to. Remember her? So what do you care what's on the f.u.c.king tape deck? The high, hot whine of the engine, the throaty pitch of the exhaust, the wind in your beer can, the gentle slurping noises from her little bud-red lips-that's all the music your ears need, although side two of the first Velvet Underground alb.u.m is nice if you absolutely insist. And no short jaunts either. For the maniacal high-speed driver, endurance is everything. Especially if you've used that ever-popular pickup line "Wanna go to Mexico?" Especially if you've used it somewhere like Boston. Besides, teenage girls can go a long, long time without sleep, and believe me, so can the police and their parents. So just keep your foot in it. There's no reason not to. There's no reason not to keep going forever, really. I had this friend who drove a whole s.h.i.tload of people up from Oaxaca to Cincinnati one time, nonstop. I mean, he stopped for gas but he wouldn't even let anybody get out then. He made them all p.i.s.s out the windows, and he says that it was worth the entire drive just to see a girl try to p.i.s.s out the window of a moving car.

Get a fat girl friend so you'll have plenty of amphetamines and you'll never have to stop at all. The only problem you'll run into is that after you've been driving for two or three days you start to see things in the road-great big scaly things twenty feet high with nine legs. But there are very few great big scaly things with nine legs in America anymore, so you can just drive right through them because they probably aren't really there, and if they are really there you'll be doing the country a favor by running them over.

Yes, but where does it all end? Where does a crazy life like this lead? To death, you say. Look at all the people who've died in car wrecks: Albert Camus, Jayne Mansfield, Jackson Pollock, Tom Paine. Well, Tom Paine didn't really die in a car wreck, but he probably would have if he'd lived a little later. He was that kind of guy. Anyway, death is always the first thing that leaps into everybody's mind-sudden violent death at an early age. If only it were that simple. G.o.d, we could all go out in a blaze of flaming aluminum alloys formulated specially for the Porsche factory race effort like James Dean did! No ulcers, no hemorrhoids, no bulging waistlines, soft d.i.c.ks, or false teeth . . . bash!! kaboom!! Watch this s.p.a.ce for paperback reprint rights, auction, and movie option sale! But that's not the way it goes. No. What actually happens is you fall for that teenage lovely in the next seat over, fall for her like a ton of condoms, and before you know it you're married and have teenage lovelies of your own-getting felt up in a Pontiac Trans Ams this very minute, no doubt-plus a six-figure mortgage, a liver the size of the Bronx, and a Country Squire that's never seen the sweet side of sixty.

It's hard to face the truth, but I suppose you yourself realize that if you'd had just a little more courage, just a little more strength of character, you could have been dead by now. No such luck.

Manners

and Mores

Hollywood Etiquette

"Hollywood" is not, of course, a place. Nor is it a synonym for the entertainment business. There are upstanding citizens who make their living in that field. The real Hollywood is the reductio ad absurdum of personal liberty. It is ordinary men and women freed by money and social mobility to do anything they want unenc.u.mbered by family pressure, community mores, social responsibility, civic duty, or good sense. There's a little streak of it in us all.

The entertainment business is a venue for Hollywood because heaps of money can be made by entertaining and because the public is famously tolerant of entertainers. Los Angeles is a site for Hollywood because, if all the freedom and money go blooey, it's warm enough to sleep on the beach. Other places and professions have had this distinction at other times. During the eighteenth century it was the pirate nests of the Caribbean. When the Medici popes were in office, it was the College of Cardinals.

It is interesting that when people have great resources and few restraints they don't always run amok doing evil to their fellow man. In Hollywood the evil is mostly self-destructive. On the other hand the good is limited to an occasional movie like Tender Mercies. Thus Hollywood is a disappointment to Hobbes conservatives and Rousseau liberals alike. But it is fascinating to the student of manners.

Manners are the formal and ceremonial manifestations of a society's underlying values. Usually these values are things like loyalty, altruism, veneration of the elderly, valor, etc. But what sort of manners emerge in a society such as Hollywood's where the only underlying value is personal gratification? The answer is none. Friends are ignored. Enemies and chance acquaintances are greeted with kisses. People meet in public places to discuss finance before breakfast. Total strangers ask you what you paid for your shoes.

It's hard for a visitor from the civilized world to detect any standards at all. People shout the details of their s.e.xual lives but conceal with embarra.s.sment the brand of car they own. The streets are lined with expensive clothing stores, but no one dresses up. Restaurants have unlisted phone numbers. You never know what the natives are going to do next.

Not only the rich and irresponsible act this way but also the would-be rich and the would-be irresponsible. f.e.c.kless eccentricity has spread to every level of society, especially in the service industries. Waiters introduce themselves by name, inquire into your home life, and, if you aren't careful, will invite themselves to sit down and sample your wine choice. At the grocery store, when you extend a palm for change you're liable to have your Line of Life and Mountain of Venus examined and longevity foretold by the number of wrinkles around your wrist. Policemen pull you over for traffic infractions and show you resumes and 810 glossies.

A strong element of fantasy must be allowed for in Hollywood behavior. It can be disconcerting to do business with a bank officer in jogging shorts who does deep knee bends while discussing variable-rate mortgages. Meanwhile the man who cleans the pool comes around in a Cardin suit. The owner of every commercial establishment seems lost in dreams of grandeur. The drive-in restaurant has valet parking.

But sometimes Hollywood is too normal. Bellhops salute and carry eight bags without complaint. Taxi drivers tip their caps and say "You're the boss" when you tell them to go to Bel Air from Santa Monica by way of Sherman Oaks. It takes a while to realize what's going on. The bellhops and taxi drivers are acting. They're engaged in that rarest kind of fantasy life, imagining reality is real. Don't expect an encore, however. Tomorrow they'll be surly, drug-addicted rock stars.

Though there are no standards of behavior in Hollywood, there are some criteria of status: money, power, and fame. Money-though it is the first cause, prime mover, and only useful product of Hollywood-is the least important. Hollywood is a single-crop economy, and there's just too much money around. Millions are paid for Benedict Canyon building lots 2 degrees shy of vertical. Olympic-size swimming pools are built for families who haven't been outdoors since 1965. People send their pets to psychiatrists. Everyone has money or spends it as if he did. (Though there's no idea of what money might do. A fortune Joseph P. Kennedy would have used to elect a new Senate is spent on wrist.w.a.tches.) Money being common, prestige goes instead to power. There's endless talk about power in Hollywood and much deference paid to it. But it's a silly kind of puissance. What would Talleyrand have made of someone who had the power to put Leave It to Beaver back on network television or the power to turn a popular soft-drink jingle into a $30 million movie staring Lorna Luft? As for real power-the force to direct events and guide human affairs-the people of Hollywood don't seem to have that over even their own lives.

Since money is hackneyed and power is trivial, the real gauge of Hollywood status is fame. People are introduced in terms of their fame, even if they don't have any: "This is Heather. She would have been on Good Morning America if Andropov hadn't died that day." Fame is so important that the slightest a.s.sociation with it confers standing: "I'd like you to meet Trevor. His sister-in-law goes to the same chiropractor as Bo Derek's aunt." Even physical proximity to fame will do: "Wayne here lives three blocks away from Sonny Bono."

Fame of one's own is best, of course, but it's strictly quant.i.tative. Any kind of fame will do. A lesser-known Supreme Court justice, the woman who tried to shoot Gerald Ford, and the actor who played Timmy on the La.s.sie TV show are about equal.

If absolutely no fame or any a.s.sociation with it can be mustered, then singularity will do. The people of Hollywood put immense effort into making themselves unusual. This isn't easy in a world where being normal is the next worst thing to being pale and fat. Half a dozen soi-disant actresses may show up at a party in identical skunk-striped pedal pushers, yellow rain slickers, and antique corsets worn as blouses. In the last resort, Hollywood people buy strange automobiles and show you a 1962 pink Cadillac limousine with a baby grand piano built into the backseat. "It's the only one like it," they'll say. True, thank G.o.d.

With no values larger than the self, no sensible norms, no meaningful pecking order, and no fixed goals or objectives except attracting attention, Hollywood is a place of confusion. Play is confused with work and duty with employment so that a $50 million stock issue, a tennis match, and a dangerously ill mother are all greeted with the same mixture of frantic worry and stupid enthusiasm. Hollywood people often get themselves in financial trouble because they forget that spending thirty hours a week at a Nautilus gym is difficult, but no one will pay you to do it.

Confusion reigns in every aspect of existence. Romance is remarkably muddled. s.e.x is confused with love. Love is confused with marriage. People not only go to bed on a first date but discuss business there. Couples don't stay wed long enough to get to know each other. Child-rearing is muzzy in the extreme. Children are mistaken for friends or, sometimes, possessions. Often there seems to be a casting call for baby in the house. Who will get the part? Will it be Mom? Mom's third husband? Or the baby? There is even spatial confusion in Hollywood. Practically everyone runs or jogs. Then he gets in the car to go next door.

No distinction is made between private and public life. All talk, even to the dogs, is about money, power, and fame. Or it would be if anyone's attention span were long enough. Hollywood conversations are disconcerting things to overhear.

Producer A: "We paid a million five for our house."

Screenwriter B: "Did anybody get fired at Universal Studios today?"

A: "Cher dyed her hair green."

B: "What did that Rolex cost you?"

A: "I just signed to do a sequel to Rhinestone."

B: "We paid a million three for our place in Palm Springs."

Even Hollywood people can't keep this up for long without going nuts. As a result, talking on the telephone has replaced real conversation. Not that you ever talk to the person you called. There are too many answering machines, answering services, call-waiting features, multiple lines, and extension phones in peculiar places like the car trunk. And whoever you called is always on the phone already anyway. Instead you have long, intimate talks with the decorator, the Mexican gardener, the secretary, the nanny, or, most often, a phone repairman. This and cute recorded messages is how Hollywood people stay in touch. And stay in touch they must. No one in Hollywood is secure enough to spend five minutes alone with his thoughts.

Hollywood people are insecure about their taste, about their intellect, about themselves. And they should be.

Taste cannot function in such an environment because taste is contextual. Taste is the appropriate thing, and nothing can be appropriate to everything and nothing at once. A Hollywood individual may have a sense of style, but it's a loose cannon on the deck. When you drive through Beverly Hills you see grand Spanish haciendas with English lawns, charming French chateaus with attached garages, stately Tudor manses with palm trees and cactus gardens, all built right next to each other on dopey suburban lots. The owners could afford vast estates except they're ignorant of nature. They could own elegant townhouses but there's no town to put them in. Instead they live in a World's Fair of motley home styles divorced from natural setting and human community alike.

The intellect cannot function in such an environment. The mind doesn't work without order and rank. Thus Hollywood people can hardly think. And when they do think, they think the strangest things: "The Grenada invasion must have been wrong because no one has written a best-seller about it yet."

"A lot of people think it was just Robert Redford, but if it hadn't been for Dustin Hoffman there never would have been a Watergate expose."

When had at all, intelligence tends, like fame, to be quant.i.tative. Ask someone if a record alb.u.m is good, and he'll give you its position on the Billboard Top 100 chart. Ask someone how his six-year-old daughter is, he'll tell you her IQ.

In Hollywood the smallest exercise of the mental faculties becomes a Sisyphean task. You'll be standing in line at a movie theater and the ticket seller will ask the person in front of you, "How many?"

"Oh, wow," comes the response. "There's, you know, me. That's one. Then there's this woman I'm with. I mean, I'm not really with her. We both see other people. But, like, we're together tonight except we don't know whether our relationship is growing or not. So there's her. That's two. And then there are these friends of ours. But they didn't make it . . ."

In fact, the human soul cannot function in such an environment.

There is general agreement that primitive societies are valuable resources. Mankind benefits in understanding and knowledge from the preservation of native cultures. But I don't think any ethical social scientist would object if we got rid of this one.

Dinner-Table Conversation

The Book of Proverbs says, "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." But a dinner with brilliant conversation surpa.s.ses herbs, ox, and love combined. The best pleasures of the feast proceed from the lips, not to them.

As a scene for conversation, dinner has great advantages. The company is gathered closely together. Interruptions are discouraged. And performing one of the few pleasant bodily functions sets a happy mood. Also, there is another use available for the mouth. This is important. Statements and responses may be composed while teeth glean the inside of an artichoke leaf, while a bite of something more substantial yields respite when you've chatted your way into a cul-de-sac. And a drink of wine loosens the expressive tongue and reins the critical ear. The only better place for conversation is bed. But unless you have ultramodern standards, that limits the guest list. And even then, having five or six people in your bed is more likely to cause talk than conversation.

Any kind of dinner is not sufficient, however. A tea or buffet won't do. It may be an indication of today's Freudian obsessions, but few modern people can talk with anything in their laps. Dinner must be a sit-down meal. And the number of guests must be small, seven at most. Conversation is not a spectator sport or a relay race to be run up and down a banquet table seating fifty. There should be no visual obstructions such as immense floral centerpieces. It is impossible for a guest to make any but the most pastoral repartee when his face is framed in mums. Also, the food has to be of a kind which allows one guest to look another in the face while eating. Corn on the cob is bad. Spaghetti is worse. French onion soup is unthinkable. Emphasize refreshments. The better the wine, champagne, and brandy, the stronger and brighter the talk. Eschew the guest who doesn't drink. He's too likely to talk about why he doesn't. Also avoid hard liquor. The grape evokes the muses. But there is something in spirits distilled from grain that brings forth domestic animals. Gin martinis are particularly dangerous. Guests are reduced to dogs in their communicative abilities-sniffing and nipping at each other and raising the hair on the napes of their necks. The best way to beg off serving martinis is to keep only the worst brands of sweet vermouth in your house.

Of course, the guests must be carefully selected. Mix good talkers with good listeners. And don't confuse good listeners with people who are simply quiet. Furniture is quiet. A good listener listens with enthusiasm. He encourages the talker, asks pertinent questions, is able to expand upon the subject or deftly change it if the talk has become monochromatic. A good talker must have all the qualities of a good listener plus an ability to hold forth at length: to tell a fully rounded anecdote, make an elaborate jest, convey news in piquant detail, or give an unexpected coif to the feathers of reason. And a good talker must be able to do this without inspiring other guests to pitch him out a window. Such people are invaluable. They give the rest of us time to eat.

Conversation is a group activity, and the partic.i.p.ants should be thought of as a team, albeit with certain stars. The best teamwork is the result of practice. The best guests for good conversation are guests who've had good conversation with each other before. Their moves are polished. Mr. X will give lavish praise to some item of popular culture and pa.s.s the ball to Miss Y, who will say something pert.

Mr. X: "Smithereens is an artfully unattractive movie with a protagonist who's purposely unsympathetic, and it has no scenes showing development of personal relationships because our imaginations are intended to fill in not what happened but what did not."

Miss Y: "Things which require more than three negatives to praise never make money."

The wit of the Algonquin round table had more to do with such drill than with the native genius of its habitues.

If you can't invite the same group repeatedly or if you don't know any such group to invite, then try to gather people who have something in common. But make sure what they have in common is not a point of vanity. Only an idiot would have two sports impresarios, two opera tenors, or two Supreme Court justices at the table.

Also make sure your guests don't want to kill each other-a warning that should be unnecessary. But many hosts think it "interesting" to invite to the same fete, say, the head of a PLO faction and the prime minister of Israel or Norman Mailer and all his ex-wives. This is all right for c.o.c.ktail parties, but at a small seated dinner it's liable to result in stony silences or tossed gravy boats.

And do not invite people who have only one interest in their lives even if everyone else at the meal is similarly obsessed. Extended conversations on one topic quickly degenerate from ideas to opinions and from opinions to bigotries. Six fervent devotees of French Symbolist poetry will be fine through soup, but by cheese and fruit they will be yelling at each other.

"Verlaine's cl.u.s.tered images suggesting mood and emotion stink like pigs!"

"Do not!"

And so on.

The one thing which has to be mutual among guests is not acquaintance, interests, or background but att.i.tude. Good conversation takes place on a plane above mortal affairs. There must be sufficient detachment to banish the stupider emotions. The purpose of conversation-if something that's so much an art can be said to have a purpose-is to learn how others see things, how others make sense of existence or make peace with its nonsensicality. Good conversation gives you the advantage of being Argus-eyed or Hydra-headed (though, it is to be hoped, with nicer heads).

Conversation is therefore no place to talk about yourself. Your guests can observe you perfectly well and don't need help. What they want to hear is something they don't know or haven't thought of. Conversation is especially no place for the small and boring extensions of the self. Do not talk about your pets or infant grandchildren. By the same token, avoid being too personal with others. Some will think your inquiries rude, but, worse, the rest will jump to answer them. The disease of narcissism is not cured by spreading it around the table.

Neither has conversation room for awe or envy. Someone may be admired or praised, but an awestruck recitation of the powers and virtues of Fritz Mondale, for example, would put a damper on the evening. And a sudden outburst of jealous indignation that you aren't he would bring talk to a shocked halt.

Bitterness and complaint also lower the tone of conversation, and violate a rule of general decorum besides: "A gentleman never complains about anything he is unable or unwilling to remedy." Unless you're going to dash from the table and balance Social Security's income and outlay with a personal check, you should have another gla.s.s of wine and let the talk pa.s.s to outrageous defense expenditures.

The taboo against querulousness, however, should not be taken as a prohibition of d.a.m.ning things. d.a.m.ning is a perfectly Olympian thing to do and has been a source of delight to great minds throughout history. You can d.a.m.n the government up and down, call its every minion illegitimate progeny of slime mold, and say that a visit to Washington is like taking a bath in a tub full of live squid, so long as you don't complain.