joked, but I had the feeling that they were keeping me from something, that there was some other place in the room I should be, some other conversation I should be having.
And all night long, it seemed, I was circling the hospitality suite on the twenty-sixth floor of the Hyatt Plaza. Knowing what was going to happen there (more of the same), I still felt compelled to go, like rubbing your tongue against a chipped tooth. But it infuriated me: to be at the mercy of such irrational, unpleasant feelings after so many years, after a decent life and lovely children, to be returned here, to this hungry, diminished state.
I saw Weiner in a clutch of local politicians and arts bureaucrats. Weiner, an older Joseph Goebbels now, thin as a rake. (Someone told me he’d taken up long-distance running, the final domain of the sexless life.) He was with his flunky, Billy, still standing too close to people. (Johnny had died in the interim of testicular cancer.)
I went over; they were talking about an actor’s performance, how “over the top” it was. They both laughed, stealing glances at each other and laughing some more. They caught sight of me. Their faces hardened with politeness. We talked for a moment; wrong word; you don’t talk to guys like that, you banter. We bantered for a moment, but was it just my imagination or did Weiner turn away from my conversation before its point of logical extinction? Did he turn away a hair too quickly (this man whom I didn’t even like) to address an observation to Billy that the script for Tuesday afternoon’s film was a “hair-over-the-bald-spot script”? An observation with which Billy chuckled his agreement with a shake of the head that said, “It’s all so transparent !”
And then they were gone and I stood in the gathering late-night crowd, the lights lowered, the volume of voices rising, the illuminated city on display outside the picture window where once, I remembered, it had rained.
Then I saw my daughter. How beautiful she looked in her party dress with her three best friends. They blew into the room with such freshness, you could hear their laughter from where I stood. And just seeing her triggered something in me. An instinct for survival. I don’t belong here, I thought, and then I realized that it didn’t matter why I didn’t belong, that it was not something to fix but rather something to act on. When the backs of these beautiful young women were turned to order drinks from the bar, amidst shrieks of surprise and youth, I stole out the door I came in. I hurried along the hall in case she’d seen me. And for the second time that day I could feel the stranglehold of my past, of my body’s response to it, loosen around my chest. I hurried through the lobby. I saw M. standing by the elevator. She was with Catherine, my son’s mother. My two ex-wives going for a drink together in the hospitality suite. In a world where such a gorgeous, civilized thing could happen, there was, again, only one conclusion to be drawn: The ugliness was in me. Not at the film festival.
And as I broke out onto the street, the fresh September air hitting me in the face, as I sped along the sidewalk, I felt things dropping away from me, you could almost hear them, like an old car shedding its unnecessary parts. Your past really is a country where you used to live. You can’t not have been there, but you can sure as hell not go back for a visit. And as I moved further away from the throbbing jewel on the twenty-sixth floor of the Hyatt Plaza (“She’s married to you ?”), breaking through a wave of late-night partiers coming from the opposite direction, I began to feel better and lighter. Because I had, at last, actually learned something, a small strategy that, this time, might even stick. So simple, too: if a place makes you feel bad, don’t keep going back.
So here’s how the story ends. I left a message on my daughter’s voice mail when I got home. I said I had a bunch of party
And all night long, it seemed, I was circling the hospitality suite on the twenty-sixth floor of the Hyatt Plaza. Knowing what was going to happen there (more of the same), I still felt compelled to go, like rubbing your tongue against a chipped tooth. But it infuriated me: to be at the mercy of such irrational, unpleasant feelings after so many years, after a decent life and lovely children, to be returned here, to this hungry, diminished state.
I saw Weiner in a clutch of local politicians and arts bureaucrats. Weiner, an older Joseph Goebbels now, thin as a rake. (Someone told me he’d taken up long-distance running, the final domain of the sexless life.) He was with his flunky, Billy, still standing too close to people. (Johnny had died in the interim of testicular cancer.)
I went over; they were talking about an actor’s performance, how “over the top” it was. They both laughed, stealing glances at each other and laughing some more. They caught sight of me. Their faces hardened with politeness. We talked for a moment; wrong word; you don’t talk to guys like that, you banter. We bantered for a moment, but was it just my imagination or did Weiner turn away from my conversation before its point of logical extinction? Did he turn away a hair too quickly (this man whom I didn’t even like) to address an observation to Billy that the script for Tuesday afternoon’s film was a “hair-over-the-bald-spot script”? An observation with which Billy chuckled his agreement with a shake of the head that said, “It’s all so transparent !”
And then they were gone and I stood in the gathering late-night crowd, the lights lowered, the volume of voices rising, the illuminated city on display outside the picture window where once, I remembered, it had rained.
Then I saw my daughter. How beautiful she looked in her party dress with her three best friends. They blew into the room with such freshness, you could hear their laughter from where I stood. And just seeing her triggered something in me. An instinct for survival. I don’t belong here, I thought, and then I realized that it didn’t matter why I didn’t belong, that it was not something to fix but rather something to act on. When the backs of these beautiful young women were turned to order drinks from the bar, amidst shrieks of surprise and youth, I stole out the door I came in. I hurried along the hall in case she’d seen me. And for the second time that day I could feel the stranglehold of my past, of my body’s response to it, loosen around my chest. I hurried through the lobby. I saw M. standing by the elevator. She was with Catherine, my son’s mother. My two ex-wives going for a drink together in the hospitality suite. In a world where such a gorgeous, civilized thing could happen, there was, again, only one conclusion to be drawn: The ugliness was in me. Not at the film festival.
And as I broke out onto the street, the fresh September air hitting me in the face, as I sped along the sidewalk, I felt things dropping away from me, you could almost hear them, like an old car shedding its unnecessary parts. Your past really is a country where you used to live. You can’t not have been there, but you can sure as hell not go back for a visit. And as I moved further away from the throbbing jewel on the twenty-sixth floor of the Hyatt Plaza (“She’s married to you ?”), breaking through a wave of late-night partiers coming from the opposite direction, I began to feel better and lighter. Because I had, at last, actually learned something, a small strategy that, this time, might even stick. So simple, too: if a place makes you feel bad, don’t keep going back.
So here’s how the story ends. I left a message on my daughter’s voice mail when I got home. I said I had a bunch of party
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