But still … what if right after that there were a bunch of other awful things that caused the whole house of cards you had built with Bobby to topple? Like inconsistent remarks when he called from his office at the cardboard box factory or the lumberyard or the Home Depot or the broadcast facility or the haircut emporium or wherever it was that he worked? What if it now was becoming clear that love and work had again united for Bobby, but this time you were not part of either one?
Well, that would be rather upsetting and even heartbreaking for most people. But let’s say that over a period of years, once the inevitable breakup had transformed itself into water under some theoretical bridge, you worked hard to close that chapter and move on. That is a difficult thing to do under the best of circumstances, but what if it was even more trying for you because at this point Bobby had become a public figure whose name and face and business trajectory were hard to avoid? Sure, in this day and age, who doesn’t fall into that category? But what if you encountered pictures or references to Bobby so often that it almost seemed like some kind of cruel cosmic joke? For instance, what if everywhere you drove in your very hometown for a couple of months you saw full-sized billboards featuring Bobby beaming down at you? What if this all seemed to culminate that day on the freeway when you found yourself stuck in traffic, inhaling poisonous gas fumes, trapped behind a city bus that was moving at about ten miles an hour, the whole back of which was plastered with such an enormous image of Bobby that it almost looked like he was flattened across your windshield?
But let’s say you were made of sterner stuff and gradually learned to tune all this out. “It’s just a photo,” you might have thought, as you tried to remind yourself of every cheery, uplifting thing you had ever read on a refrigerator magnet. For example: “Failure provides the opportunity to begin again intelligently” and “Just because you make a mistake doesn’t mean you are a mistake.” Even though maybe a littler voice in your brain was also muttering at the exact same time, “Yes, but God must be in on this. Bus fumes are so over-the-top symbolic.”
But then what if ten, fifteen, twenty more years went by and you got on with your life, went to therapy, pursued your career, owned a lot of dogs, fell in love a bunch of times, and began to feel so healthy emotionally that you could appreciate the good part of Bobby again? Maybe this made you feel proud and optimistic, not just about yourself but about mankind in general and its ability to forgive and to heal. What if you felt so grown-up and balanced and distanced from your own past that one day when someone sent you an announcement that Bobby had gotten married, you thought, “How great for Bobby!” But what if, as you were perusing the details of the national press release, you realized that according to the dates Bobby offered, the years you and he had spent “working on the relationship” overlapped exactly with the early dating period of his current relationship? And what if in that moment of comprehension, an odd sucking metaphysical vortex opened up in the center of your handsomely renovated unconscious, and out of it sprung a dendrite-like coiled appendage that vacuumed up the DNA from your positive emotional growth, took all your feelings of goodwill, tumbled them around in a giant metaphorical reactor, and spit them back out in an emotional tsunami of unpleasantness?
“What the hell is this?” is what you probably thought, even as you did your best to let it pass. Because so what, really? Who gives a shit? It was twenty years ago.
But what if mere weeks after that a big, stupid scandal broke around Bobby, involving assorted charges of infidelity and extortion? And what if the resulting wave of media attention that came in its wake caused all kinds of people to try and drag you back into the maw of Bobby all over again? What if it was big enough that you looked up from your messy desk one day to find a reporter from the New York Post and another one from some newspaper in London standing in your driveway? And what if then, in the space of a few days, you were also contacted by Good Morning America, the Today show, the CBS Early Show, and Nightline, as well as by individuals from different day parts of CBS and ABC News and assorted magazines, all wanting to talk to you not about whatever you were doing—for example, your new shoe store or haircut salon or the new book you had out or whatever—but instead about Bobby? And what if even when you said no, ABC News called some relative of yours who was completely unconnected to any of this—like, say, a brother who lived in the Midwest—to see if he could shed any light on the whole situation? And then, to top it all off in an orgy of overuse of the fifth letter of the alphabet, what if you also received an email from E! Entertainment Television asking you for an interview and a few pictures from your private collection, to be included in a new show they were doing called Doomed by Lust? Yes! What if they really said the show was called Doomed by Lust? How did you get connected to a show with a name like that? When did you turn into Charlie Sheen? Or Pamela Anderson? Or a Kardashian? Or one of those Housewives of [Name Your City Here]?
And then what if this gossip cycle swelled so much that a few days later, at the checkout counter at the grocery store, you found yourself staring at an endless parade of articles about Bobby with titles like “Inside Bobby’s Secret World” and “What Bobby Does to Lure Young Girls”?
Let’s say that you’re a person who doesn’t buy the magazines at the grocery checkout line because you honestly don’t care who Jennifer Aniston is dating. But still you couldn’t help but wonder, “What does he do to lure them? Sticky wads of bills attached to invisible wire?” So what if you let your curiosity get the best of you and you decided to pick up one of these magazines and have a look even though it was against your better judgment? And after slogging your way past all those pictures of Jennifer Aniston—in swimwear! in leotards! Oh no! She’s crying! Is she going to be okay?—you found an enormous half-page picture of you with Bobby from twenty-five years ago? And your jaw dropped open because this picture of you, from the early eighties, was right underneath the capitalized word “LURE”? And what if, in that instant, you felt like you had pushed open the door of an occupied public restroom to discover that you were also the person sitting on the toilet in the stall?
“Oh my God!” you heard yourself thinking, or … wait, did you just say that out loud? You are suddenly talking more like Jennifer Aniston than you’ve come to expect. “Are they saying I lured someone? Or are they saying I was lured?” And what if now you actually wondered, “Was I lured?” Maybe you were! Think back! Think! Are you involved somehow?
Is it possible that there is another version of you running around somewhere twenty-five years ago over whom you have lost all control?
And then what if you decided to sneak a peek at a different magazine to learn a little more about Jennifer Aniston and also to make sure you aren’t in there, too? You’re pretty sure the first one was just an aberration. But what if you discover, to your horror, that there is another gigantic twenty-five-year-old picture of you with Bobby in this magazine, only this time the article is about how Bobby is leading “a secret double life”? What does this have to do with you? Does that mean you are leading one, too? Have you inadvertently entered one of those other eight dimensions they always speak of in string theory? Could you have possibly tripped on a tear in the fabric of time, where you are now leading a parallel existence that is somehow connected to a secret world of luring?
And what if while this was all going on you also started coming in contact with all kinds of information about Bobby and his assorted extracurricular activities from the years that you two were together … information that so totally re-informed and reorganized the way you viewed the landscape of your own past that you wondered if your original theory about the impossibility of combining love and work could have been a mistake? What if the problem wasn’t really combining love and work? What if it was combining love and Bobby?
What if now, in your dotage, it finally occurred to you that all the messages you’d been receiving from the world at large about the best way to be a female in a relationship, which to you has meant placi
ng love on a pedestal that rises above all else, is just a terrible, terrible piece of advice?
That would be a really weird experience to look back on, would it not?
My Advice to the Fidgety Young People
EVERY JUNE, AS I READ OR WATCH EXCERPTS OF THE PITHY, heartfelt speeches delivered by people of note to graduating seniors all across the country, I have to admit: I get a little jealous. So every year I secretly compose the imaginary commencement speech that I would deliver if anyone ever asked. I make it full of timeless wisdom and gallows humor and lace it with enough blunt profanity to hold the attention of and perhaps even inspire the most fidgety audience of young people.
I guess it was a chance to fulfill that fantasy (and a paycheck big enough to cover my mortgage for three months, plus first-class transportation, including airfare and limos) that caused me to say yes to a request to speak at a college career fair in Lafayette, Louisiana, sponsored by a deodorant, a women’s magazine, and a line of cosmetics. Not exactly the commencement at Harvard, but my task still sounded noble. As I understood it, I was the lucky person who would dispense, to the idealistic and verbally expressive youth of Lafayette, information and advice about a career in writing.
After several changes of plane, I boarded a tiny aircraft, the only one that landed right in Lafayette itself. I sat next to a salesman who spent the entire flight detailing to our one and only stewardess his thoughts about good and bad ways to die. Happily this leg of the journey was pretty short. About a half hour later, I was greeted at the gate of a very small airport by a ruddy guy who looked as if he ran the refreshment stand at a motocross track. He was dressed in an ensemble that was many shades of shamrock green: bright green slacks, a slightly different green polo shirt, a lighter green sport coat, and somehow a fourth variation on green in a baseball cap. Not that he needed anything additional to tie the outfit together, but each piece was also emblazoned with a logo endorsing a different kind of beer. Turned out he was a rep from the deodorant company that had hired me, so although he looked like he might be sweaty from a morning of racing speedboats, in fact he smelled lemony fresh.
As I followed him to a stretch limo the length of a city block, I decided to climb into the front with him, the better to wrest control of the steering wheel should his morning of sun and suds cause any sudden veering into oncoming traffic.
“Yesterday we had a dude from MTV,” he said as we drove out of the terminal parking lot and onto a highway that offered a panoramic view of the many miles of mangrove swamps. “Pretty big turnout. I forget her name. But she was good. She talked about how she dropped out of college after one week because she couldn’t find parking. Very inspirational.”
“What other events are scheduled for today?” I asked.
“There’s a makeover booth. And I heard there’s a big astrology tent,” he said. “I might stop by later.”
While my mind tried to comprehend how this college career fair had incorporated an astrology tent into its prospectus, twenty minutes of silent driving followed. Could it be that astrology was somehow considered a reasonable career path in Lafayette? Was there also going to be a booth for aromatherapy? Would there be a psychic?
But before we headed to the campus, first we stopped by my hotel so I could check in and freshen up a little. My driver/host had allowed an hour for this. Unfortunately most of that time was eaten up at the front desk after I learned there was no record of a reservation in my name. Not until I agreed to put the charges on my personal credit card did everything begin to get back on track.
This left the drive over to the campus as the only time I would have to review my notes. Yes, I had been told by the people who’d hired me that all I needed to do was simply take questions from the audience, but I was planning to end with that. First, I would open with the list of things I wanted young writers to know. I would talk to them about the need for telling the truth. I would offer hard-nosed words of solace that they could lean on in tough times … words to keep a budding writer from being easily discouraged. I planned to quote Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., on authenticity (“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”). I wanted to reference Mark Twain’s remarks about editing and rewriting (“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it”).
When the car finally lurched to a stop, I looked up to see the stunned faces of the students by the campus center, staring slack-jawed as the biggest limo in the world tried to park in their student union parking lot. I watched their expressions of great interest turn to painful disappointment before wilting into bewildered contempt when I, not Lady Gaga, emerged from the front, not the back, seat.
“You’re speaking in that building over there,” my driver said, pointing toward a generic-looking beige brick university building with a small sign pasted on the front that said “Career Fair.” As I pushed through the glass doors into a massive, open room that was silent except for the sound of my heels clicking on the expanses of gray linoleum waxed to a super-high-gloss sheen, I was instantly reminded of what they called the “cafetorium” at my grade school. There were the familiar towering stacks of long gray lunch tables, the acoustic-tile ceiling dotted with those lighting fixtures that look like upside-down ice trays. And there were differences as well as similarities. I definitely didn’t recall my grade school cafetorium having an enormous cauldron of Soft & Dri deodorant samples underneath a sign that said “Free! Help Yourself!”
Just a few feet beyond the antiperspirant buffet was a specter that still haunts my dreams: rows and rows of molded white plastic chairs, all of them empty.
At the far end of the room was a small stage decorated with an easel that held a blowup of a Cosmopolitan cover beneath a banner that said “Soft & Dri.” And on the apron of the stage was a bulky gift basket, overflowing with Avon products: moisturizers, cleansers, fragrances, shampoos, conditioners.
A wave of nausea hit as I realized that the basket was for me.
With a half hour to go until my talk, I stood frozen, pretending to read a piece of tourist literature about the area that I’d grabbed from the hotel. It wasn’t reassuring to learn that the biggest local attraction anywhere nearby was a medium-sized swamp. By now I was filled with so much anxiety that I was unable to decode the English language, so fixated was I on the thunderous sound of that empty room.
A tiny, hopeful voice inside me spoke up, urging me to relax. “Remember the hectic pace of college life,” it said. “Students always show up late for everything!” Then a bigger, darker, smarter voice appeared from somewhere to counter: “Doesn’t someone always come early if there’s going to be a crowd?”
When at last I heard footsteps, and a lone teenage girl walked in to take a seat in a middle row, I wondered if I should run up to her, embrace her, take her out to buy her dinner and deliver my talk to her over coffee? Or should I simply shake her hand and tell her, “You’ve gotten your makeover, you’ve had your chart done. There’s not much more I can add. Be sure to grab some free deodorant on your way out! And thanks for showing up!”
“We’re going to start in a minute,” said my driver, Mr. Bright Green Beer-Logo Ensemble, making a surprise re-appearance as career fair liaison and seminar emcee.
I now counted an audience of eight girls bobbing in that sea of four hundred white chairs. But, I reminded myself, they’re not just eight random college girls. They are eight future writers from Lafayette, Louisiana. These are girls who deserve to be treated respectfully and to be encouraged. There could be a young Eudora Welty or Harper Lee among them! Who knows? They might always remember this day.
Summoning a sense of purpose and dignity, I strode to the front of the room. I would make a difference in these young lives, dammit. I looked into the faces of the students who had come out to hear me. Nothing about them was easy to read. But wasn’t that always the case with young people? They were all in their early twenties. That was a time when they were still moldable not yet cong
ealed. They were a group of eight girls who already knew that they wanted to write. I hadn’t known that about myself when I was their age. I was moved that they were placing themselves in my hands, looking to me to tell them more about the thing they most loved to do. I would not let them down.
“Move your chairs into a circle,” I said, dispensing with formality in an attempt to make this career day experience more personal and therefore more memorable. I was now swept up in the idea that the small size of the crowd was actually a blessing. It offered me an opportunity to morph this from a lecture into a seminar. I would zero in on what each of these young writers had on her mind. By giving each of them special attention. I would light a fire under them all that they would never forget. By the time this was over, they would run back to their dorms, crazed with the need to write something that mattered to them. Maybe they would dedicate their future work to me. We would all stay in touch!
“Let’s use this time to talk about anything you want,” I continued, launching into a few introductory remarks about learning to write in your own voice, and looking at your life in as clear-eyed a way as possible. I offered another Vonnegut quote: “Find a subject you care about and which you feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” And then, thinking I had gotten the old ball rolling, I turned to address them in earnest.
Cool, Calm & Contentious Page 10
