Cheating the Fiddler

I am no good at "going out." I don't like drink. I can't smoke indoors anymore. I don't have the clothes. I talk too little, then too much, then I go home.

Dorothy Parker was good at "going out," threw fine parties herself and understood how functions function, as it were, and, for a time at least, she went where she was asked, drank what she was handed and danced with the fellows who asked her, famously claiming to have ended up, time and again, if not under the table, then "under the host." If, in reality, she was never the "party girl" she describes so pathetically in her most famous story "Big Blond," she certainly got around. She quite got the spirit of the thing:

On Cheating The Fiddler

"Then we will have tonight!" we said.
"Tomorrow- may we not be dead?"
The morrow touched our eyes, and found
Us walking firm above the ground,
Our pulses quick, our blood alight.
Tomorrow's gone- we'll have tonight!

I have never quite felt so. I married young, at sweet 19, for love among many reasons, it must be said, and not the least of which may well have been to be excused forever thereafter from "going out." Freshman year in college, a gang of friends, gorgeous actors and dancers all, took pity on me once, and made of me a "project." They did my hair, as best they could. They dressed me in tight, acid-washed jeans, pointed boots, eye-liner, etc., (It was the eighties, my dears.) They taught me to accept drinks when offered, to make only the smallest of talk, even to dance a little in a way less likely to embarrass my sponsors. Having made me over, they took me out. The dance bar in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to which we then repaired was called the "Pegasus Lounge" -- still there it seems -- and, after a bit of an orgy on the dance floor, to loosen me up, I was parked on a bench next to a handsome, older man. I did not know it, but this poor soul had agreed to be my blind-date. My good faeries left me there, nursing a 7&7, and flew back to the dancing. Time passed, as it will in a bar when one is underage, and eventually my friend Jimmy came to check on my progress. Signs were good; my "date" and I seemed to be in close conference on the bench. But dropping lightly down next to me, Jimmy discovered, over the din of Cyndie Lauper, that I had reduced the man to tears. Straightaway thereafter he fled, never to be seen again. All astonishment, Jimmy asked me what on earth I'd done to the man. I explained that he was feeling rather fragile as his mother had only just had a hysterectomy and he was very concerned for her recovery. Seems I'd violated one of the essential rules of "going out" and dragged the man into serious conversation. I was declared "hopeless" by Jimmy and the rest of the crew, and left largely thereafter to see to myself.

"Only you," said Jimmy, unkindly, "could turn a trick's thoughts to the terrors of maternal gynecology at midnight on a Saturday!"

Having "gone out" again tonight, against my better judgement, and if only to a gathering of the bookish called "Get Lit," hosted by the charming literary editor, Paul Constant, of the newspaper, The Stranger, I am happy to report nobody fled in tears. That though, is the full extent of my triumph. The party was intimate to begin with, I having arrived far too early. I walked in, saw six people in name-tags at a table by the bar, fled to the WC, and then slipped out for a fortifying burrito at a taco-stand down the street. I immediately regretted not having brought a book to read with my dinner, but no matter. Having eaten and strolled the neighborhood again, I stepped into a sex shop and goggled for a bit, before bucking up and returning to my scheduled evening "out." When I came back there were a few more people than there had been when I fled. (No one was so unkind as to ask if I hadn't been in briefly just an hour before.) A heated discussion of new technology was ongoing when I took a name-tag and sat down. A charming young novelist, in a stylish short-brimmed hat, was being chatted up on the subject by local booksellers, including V., with whom I'd once appeared on a panel discussion after a showing of Alex Beckstead's excellent documentary, "Paperback Dreams." Dear V. was, as usual, awfully clever and well informed. The mood was surprisingly light, the conversation interesting. I sat listening and sipping my glass of box-wine, until I yielded to the urge to chime-in. Mistake. I blessedly don't recall the full extent of my participation, but I do know that, at some point, I told the young author of literary fiction he might well have to choose between his forthcoming first child and writing novels of seven hundred pages. Oh dear. Then I believe, having driven a few good people from the table, I argued the importance of used books with poor V., who did not in fact disagree me, himself being a buyer. ?!

By the end of my evening, having thoroughly bored the good wife of our host, and having failed to introduce myself to anyone I did not already know, I latched on to the bookstore's vivacious director of promotions and events, Stesha Brandon, and let her do the donkey's work of including me in such conversations as into which I might unbidden intrude. Bless her. Stesha is a dazzler at a party. I warmed in her reflecting glow as long as I might and then, again and finally, fled.

I came home to my husband, fresh brownies, and the comfort of dear Dorothy Parker's poems, perhaps in the vain hope of, if not learning how to "go out," at least the right attitude for "staying in." Here then, a moving example of Dorothy's art:

A Certain Lady

Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,
And drink your rushing words with eager lips,
And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,
And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.
When you rehearse your list of loves to me,
Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.
And you laugh back, nor can you ever see
The thousand little deaths my heart has died.
And you believe, so well I know my part,
That I am gay as morning, light as snow,
And all the straining things within my heart
You'll never know.

Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,
And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, --
Of ladies delicately indiscreet,
Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.
And you are pleased with me, and strive anew
To sing me sagas of your late delights.
Thus do you want me -- marveling, gay, and true,
Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.
And when, in search of novelty, you stray,
Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go ....
And what goes on, my love, while you're away,
You'll never know.