I introduced myself, shook his hand, and told him I'd been looking forward to meeting him. Our mutual friend had shown me a few of his poems, I explained, and -- being something of a poet myself, I admitted shyly -- I had found them to be wonderful.
One in particular, which was a little fable of urban decay, but the decay was something psychological, a rot that takes hold in the minds and souls of the residents of cities. It was special, I told him, I thought, because unlike those youngsters whose poems speak of digital dysplasia and cultural emptiness, he had gotten to the root of an essential lost art, an early-twentieth-century brick-and-mortar approach that framed the problem as purely of the physical, a matter of matter, in how such an orientation of objects and people in space would inevitably result in their mutual dissolution.
But the cities will outlast us, I mention.
He smiles, but he's taken aback. This is a lot at once, for a poem he must have written years ago, to come from a stranger. I'm aggressive, and I've always been, and he just met me and I can see him trying to puzzle me out, piecing together the few facts he has into a coherent story. I hope he concludes I'm just showing off, or trying to impress him. I'm doing those things, yes, but more than that, I'm mocking him. I can't help myself.
He pulls together a few words of appreciation, politely asks about my poetry in return, but I wave it off. A poet should never talk about his work to someone who hasn't read it, is a statement I make up on the spot. That'd poison the well. He asks where he can read some, which is a perfectly nice thing to ask, and I mention pointing him at my blog. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
I'm not being rude, here. I want you to see that. The point of this whole thing is that I'm not being rude.
I show mercy. I explain my work, my job that is, which is mundane enough to let anybody reappraise me, to feel like they can manage me, but he still seems impressed, which is a little infuriating. I don't have this job for the glamour. I have it for the freedom to set aside the time to conjure up overwrought explanations of others' harmless poetry, to encourage them and myself, to cut us both with that double-edged sword of unkind flattery. To rip down sincerity wherever it raises its upright neck, to grab honest poets by their collars and shake them until something I can recognize as food for my kind falls loose from their heads up in the clouds and lands down here, in the muck, with me. But no, he thinks my job is great.
He is a man who can, with some truthfulness, overlay each and every neat compartment of his life with the gossamer shroud of the artistic, and he speaks to me, a creative hanger-on at best, a man paid in wires and plugs and ones and zeroes, a man who charges a dollar for a smile, a man idle in his ambitions, as a creative equal. So you must understand my frustration.
He values my feedback, it seems. And the contributions, as well, of everyone present. A vast and diverse harem of discoverers, creators, fusors, designers, and other aggressively hip inventors of the next unknown. The old stubbornness asserts itself, and for a moment, I'm silent as I fight the urge to up and leave, which would embarrass my friend. I won't be part of a collection.
They wear their sarcasm on their sleeves, this band of hopefuls, and I can see the uneasy pain beneath. All so afraid of rejection and failure, they embrace a culture that only accepts the different, and an ethic that elevates failure to the highest success. Victims of countless learning experiences. I can see lifetimes of self-experimentation burned into their skins. It's not over yet.
I hate myself, but I'm comfortable doing so. None of these people is ever going to accept themselves. They're all looking to him for that approval, and he strides among them, handing it out gladly. They glow at his passing, but the glow fades. He's just one man. I see the appeal -- really, I do -- but it's not for me. Addictions are hard enough to deal with when you can administer the dose on your own.
But what a man. I admit it. He's what I might have turned into, if I'd been a little quicker developing. And, hating myself, I can't exactly say I don't regret missing that boat. He has everything he wants, I suspect, or he's just incredibly good at acting like it. I make a note to find an awkward opening to ask him about his biggest flaws. I bet he says he's too slow of an eater.
I wonder how long I can go before he figures me out, or at least realizes enough to know I don't fit in here. My friend clearly shouldn't have invited me, but nobody, except this guy, is perfect. Looking around the room, at their dreamy, goatlike expressions, I intuit that choosing not to hate this man is as good as selling my soul to him.
My friend is gone, lost in his tale of a street fight in Kolkata. I'm the only one left in the room who sees a way out, or wants one.
Somebody offers me a toothpick on which is speared a piece of bacon-wrapped tofu. I like bacon and I like tofu, but I did not like his poem. It was a lie, if you didn't get that earlier -- not the part about thinking it was wonderful, which was a lie, but not the important one -- the lie was the thing about physical space and cities and people and the entire arrangement of atoms that might mean anything. I didn't just make it up. I deliberately set out to concoct an interpretation of his work both heavy and misshapen enough to break the weakened scaffolding of an insincere mind. I strapped my analysis with the literary equivalent of enough C4 to demolish his ivory tower, and I flung it through the top window.
But he didn't take the bait. That meant he was honest to the core, and he still served bacon-wrapped tofu. And that was terrifying. So I got out of there.
