Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame by Robin Robertson Page A

you smile in a friendly way, you look at the dumb fucker with an earnestness that not only pays tribute to his but actually outstrips his, and you say something like the following:
    ‘Well, good morning, Chuck. It’s interesting you should ask about grandfathers and families because as you said everybody has one and they’re very important. I never actually knew my grandfathers myself, but I know a lot of your viewers will understand the value of community, which is one of the things I set out to tackle in my book
The Missing
.’
    ‘Right,’ said Chuck, ‘that’s interesting.’
    Just so’s you understand: when an American TV anchor says something like ‘that’s interesting’, it’s code for ‘can we cut this weird fucker out before he makes us DIE OF BOREDOM?’ This is the central rule of the American talk show: it’s a stupidity contest, and, no matter what else, you must let the host win.
    ‘But we all love our grandparents,’ said Chuck. ‘It’s a very American thing to love your grandparents. Is that not right?’
    ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Where would we be …’
    ‘That’s a crazy accent you’ve got there.’
    ‘I’m from Glasgow, it’s …’
    ‘Yeah, weird. Now listen, Mr O’Haygone. We don’t have much time. Is there some change taking place in the family?’
    For a nanosecond I forgot the rules. ‘Well, actually. My book is really about missing persons’
    ‘Exactly. There’s something missing in the way families relate nowadays. Is that what you’re saying?’
    ‘Well, when I was growing up some children went missing and I suppose I always wanted to enter into their story. I thought it would offer a picture of ordinary lives, and I thought I might try to follow the pattern of stories like that, and maybe describe a social atmosphere in the Britain of today.’
    ‘Gee,’ said Chuck’s sidekick, ‘that’s some heavy stuff. And have things kinda changed since your grandfather’s day?’
    ‘Well, I expect so, and actually, part of my search …’
    Of all the people who had ever existed in the world, Chuck wanted me to die the most. He wanted me off his fucking show. He wanted Dana Plato back on and he wanted Depressing No Good Bastard from Scotland off his sofa. He wanted it now. He wanted it, like, yesterday. Coolly, with his unreal hair, he peered into the centre of my nonentityhood, and asked his last question.
    ‘Do you have any advice for the mothers of America?’
    I already knew my humiliation was complete. I already knew I was lost, so why didn’t I seize the chance to be myself? Why didn’t I grab him by the lapels in front of his simpering, baby-headed audience of thickos, and say something large, something true and momentous and deserving? Because I’m a coward, that’s why, and that’s the thing about mortification – it’s fed by cowardice. So, when he asked me, a man with no girlfriend and no children, what advice I had for the mothers of America, my true instinct passed like a high-flying flamingo over the jungle-canopy of my sudden humiliation, and I glimpsed it for a second, and thought: Tell him, my advice to the mothers of America is not to stick a wet finger into a live electricity socket, but this coloured bird was gone as soon as it appeared, and I took a breath.
    ‘Not to be too anxious,’ I said. ‘When it comes to community, and changes in protection for children and families, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the new anxieties. My advice to mothers would be to avoid that if they can.’
    ‘Good advice from this young author out of Scotland. He’s been talking about his book about his grandfather and families. Thanks for coming in.’
    It was a small round of applause, but it fell like rain, and I walked through the studio and passed faces without words, and before long I was in the limousine, my orange face at the window, and we drove through Chicago, the driver oblivious to the world of authorly humiliations, and me in the back,