A Field Guide to Awkward Silences (15 page)

•   •   •

The actual venue was a place called the Indiana Roof. It looked like a theater set of a Spanish village. You kept expecting a bullfight in the middle of the dance floor. There was a stage at one end, lit up with red and green floodlights and little strings of white Christmas lights. That was where we were going to stand for the big presentation.

We debutantes and our escorts ate dinner in an upstairs area overlooking the dance floor while our parents, friends, and acquaintances drank at the bar downstairs. Periodically, a wave of laughter from below crested, broke, and washed over us as we sat picking at our tepid salad.

I tried not to spill spinach down my bodice. Class and taste, I told myself. Fine, this wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting. Fine, what I’d been expecting was that I would get out of the car and walk into the room and everyone else would be sepia-tinted. So far nobody was. If young F. Scott Fitzgerald was here, he was crouching behind the bar, mainlining gin and attempting to avoid notice.

The trouble with all the things that People Don’t Do Anymore is that some people still do them.

Sing barbershop quartets in coordinated sweaters? Hold doors for women? Wear hats? Attend Regency balls? Carry on as though the outcome of the Civil War is still undetermined? Sure. Chivalry’s not dead. Chivalry’s active on Reddit. Chivalry wears a fedora and expects you to put out. People keep telling Chivalry the hat looks dumb, but Chivalry won’t listen.

It’s all going on somewhere.

People still do all the things that people don’t do anymore. But they do it
now
, and that makes all the difference. It’s like you relocated your family to 1838 to build a new life with peace, quiet, and smallpox germs, and discovered that your entire high school had moved in next door. You can go to a debutante ball or a medieval weekend and there’s never a there, there. You can never get inside. It’s a gathering of everyone else who couldn’t make it under the velvet rope, dressed in scratchy, uncomfortable outfits, consoling one another. These weren’t historical strangers I could charm with my knowledge of the clavichord. They were people my own age. This was exactly what I’d come to 1890 to avoid, and it spelled disaster.

The thing that I hate most on this green-blue Earth is when you are stuck by yourself in a group of people who all know one another and don’t know you. That, and the opposite—because really, it’s terrible no matter which end you’re on.

There is never a moment when you sound more like a jerkturd than when you are talking to people whom you have known for years and there is a stranger, lurking somewhere in your midst, like the Ringwraith at the party. “Did you hear Christine broke three ribs?” someone asks.

“Yes!” you say. “FINALLY!”

“I’m so glad she’s not volunteering with those orphans any longer.”

“I hate her so much.”

“Everyone hated her.”

“She was just using those orphans to get into business school.”

“I KNOW! I was so worried she had
changed
.”

“She would never change.”

“I’m glad she’s not paralyzed.”

“If she were paralyzed she would post the WORST Facebook updates.”

“I bet she’d do marathons.”

“UGH SHE WOULD.”

“And untag herself.”

“OH GOD, I’M BOILING OVER WITH VITRIOL.”

The person listening timidly interjects that “Christine doesn’t sound so bad.”

At this point you have to scrounge for anecdotes that explain why Christine was so terrible. Usually it turns out that you really had to be there. “She was always asking about the point value of our math assignments,” you say.

“OH GOD,” your friends chime in. “Always.”

“And she went to prom with Jim Billington.”

“THE Jim Billington.”

“I don’t know these people,” the intruder says.

“Jim was the worst.”

“He used to ice-skate.”

“This doesn’t sound bad.”

“They always used to say, it’s okay to HAVE hooked up with Christine, but it’s not okay to BE hooking up with Christine.”

Your listener gets a pained expression. “Your high school was the basis of
Mean Girls
, right?”

“YES, BUT THAT HAS NO BEARING ON THIS!” you shout. “TRUST ME! I WORE KHAKIS EVERY DAY.”

And if you’re the listener—well, the same applies. Once the conversation gets away, it is gone. Your only hope is to hold it aloft as long as possible and strangle it before it can touch earth and gain strength from its native soil.

This was always harder if you were me. “Did you ever hear the story of the ancient wrestler Antaeus?” I would ask. “Hercules had to hold him aloft so he wouldn’t gain strength from his native soil.”

“Huh.”

“Gotta watch out for that soil.”

“Speaking of watching out for, guess who I just saw? Davy! Crazy Eyes Davy! From sophomore year!”

“NOT DAVY!”

“Oh,” I would say, mostly to myself, “Davy! Sure!”

“You know him?”

“Davy from sophomore year! With the crazy eyes!”

Understanding then breaks slowly over everyone’s faces. “Oh, ha-ha, very funny.”

After that, the conversation is gone and you can’t get it back ever.

That was what was happening now. As I forked down
ruminative mouthfuls of salad, I felt myself slowly evaporating from the room.

It wasn’t the past after all. Not the real past. Not the past I’d prepared for and expected. It was just middle school all over again, in a big fancy venue that looked like a luminous doughnut.

•   •   •

The way the debutante ball worked, as the instructress had drummed it into us, was that you lined up in the hallway and then proceeded out onto the dance floor in a stately manner, escorted by your father and followed by your two escorts, both in red sashes. As you walked, someone intoned your name and where you and your escorts were going to college. Then you curtsied to the hosts of the evening and took your place in the lineup next to the other debutantes. You just had to avoid falling over. I could do that, I thought. I’d spent most of my life not falling over.

“Now, wait a second,” you are probably saying. “So you just stood there and took it? You were being handed off from your father like a piece of property. What do you have to say for yourself? Susan B. Anthony didn’t die fighting in the snows of Mount Rushmore so you could get presented to society like a piece of vintage meat. Think of the patriarchy!”

What can I possibly say? Er. “Does it count as patriarchy if it was your grandmother’s idea?”

Yes? Okay. Fair. Shhhhh.

Which was why my grandmother was so eager to deny that this was a debutante ball. She was a feminist, herself. “That was not a deb ball,” she repeated, when she heard I was writing this. “It was a nice family party.”

“Yes,” I thought. “A nice family party, like all nice family parties, where I have to wear a long white dress, curtsy, and get introduced into Indiana society along with my two escorts. Typical Tuesday, really.”

But it wasn’t a debutante ball like I’d pictured, either. Debutante balls were supposed to be packed with high drama. Midway through the evening one of the debutantes would reveal that she had an impoverished fiancé and he would come bursting through the door dressed in his humble gamekeeper’s suit, and then he and her father would fight, and one of them would be flung onto the buffet table and send all the silver dishes crashing to the ground. At least that’s what happened on one episode of
The O.C
. I’d heard. I hadn’t actually had time to see it. Too busy time-travel prepping.

•   •   •

After the handoff came pictures. Then the dance with the father, dance with Escort One, dance with Escort Two. Between the venue, the white dress and the father-daughter dance, it was like the world’s most efficient wedding. Once we had finished dancing with our escorts, the people who actually had been drinking came flooding onto the dance floor like a drunk dam breaking. I perked up immediately. In the vanguard was a man with a neat white beard, dressed as a ship’s captain, who insisted on being called the Admiral. He shoved jauntily through the throng toward his daughter. She looked completely mortified.

“Don’t worry, Sweet Potato,” he bellowed. “I’ve got you covered.”

The Admiral winked. His nautical livery was quite something. I have no idea where you would purchase it. “I would like formal wear that makes me look like a drunk sea captain,” he must have said to someone. “Think Popeye, but maybe—and I’m just spitballing here—maybe a kilt, to go with?” Whoever he said this to had delivered in spades. The Admiral was holding up his end by appearing as drunk as possible, lurching around trying to help the debutantes obtain alcohol.

Sweet Potato rolled her eyes.

It didn’t take long for mayhem to break loose. The live band sang
some covers of popular songs and pretty soon my cousins’ dad was out on the dance floor doing a great impression of what looked like a spider about to vanish down a drain. I did what I always did at dances (how had I expected anything different? Who are these people who go to summer camp and suddenly become other people?) and stood in the corner yelling about the music and trying to work my talking points into the conversation. (“This place is like a reptile tank!” “WHEN WILL WE GO TO THE DISCOTHEQUE FOR THE SURPRISE PARTY?”)

•   •   •

My grandmother smiled at me.

“Isn’t this all silly?” she said. “I think it’s a bit silly.”

I looked around for someone to make eye contact with.

Grandma, I wanted to say, this was YOUR idea. If you think it’s silly, why are we doing it? Did we Gift-of-the-Magi ourselves by mistake, where we all thought we were doing what somebody else wanted? Because that can only end in unflattering haircuts and tears.

This was right about when someone should have come dashing in dressed as a stable boy, overturned a table, and shouted, “NO, OLLIE HAMLISH! YOU MAY NOT HAVE HER!”

Nothing, of course. The dancers continued to dance.

“You look lovely,” my grandmother added.

And another horrible thought struck me.

It was always like this.

Yes, the black-and-white debutantes of yore looked prim and proper and decorous and calm—like a row of carnations in white silk.

But so did we, in our picture.

In actual life there are no sepia tones.

Call it the Unified Tastelessness Theory of History. In historic
homes, people are always uncovering hidden layers of really hideous paint; James Madison’s bedroom was a wince-making teal. That statue was not the tasteful white you see; it used to look like Liberace on a bad day. There was a time when no yard in Ancient Athens was considered complete without a cheery stone phallus; they were like rude garden gnomes.

Why would it have been any different in the ballrooms of a century ago? No one notices she’s living in a golden age. Probably if I’d been around then, I’d have spent most of my time lurking in the powder room, admiring the fractal patterns in the woodwork, catching up on my reading. If I were stuck at a dinner table next to Oscar Wilde, I would have sighed and wished myself back in time, next to Samuel Johnson. And so on, back and back and back until I ran into Dicaeopolis.

In a strange way, that was comforting.

•   •   •

The dance floor slowly emptied.

Afterward, Drew said, everyone was going to a party with People They Knew. There was going to be Alcohol there. Someone had even gotten a hotel room and it was going to be Crazy.

I got into the car with my mother and headed home to my books.

That was where I did most of my best time traveling, anyway: between the covers of a book. That was where I found the people whose jokes convulsed me with laughter, whose lives enveloped and extended outward from mine, who welcomed me instantly into their worlds without question. And I didn’t even need gloves.

Given my luck traveling in space, it is probably naive of me to think that traveling in time would be any less awkward. But what can I say? We all have our fantasies.

With space, the stakes are fairly low. You might wind up at a bad restaurant. But traveling in time poses infinitely more risks. You might wind up on the menu. Talk about awkward!

So as an aspiring time traveler, I found these Yelp reviews super helpful.

That’s right, the same guide that tells you to avoid restaurants where they were rude to User Karen (Average Rating, 4.3 Stars) is now urging you to steer clear of 1830 altogether. Among other eras.

PALEOLITHIC

User: John

5 Stars

Fun! Great diet! Killed a mammoth with my bare hands! Great if you like camping and the outdoors—lots of fresh food and water, great vistas.

User: Kate

1 Star

Hate it hate it hate it hate it

Guys went out clubbing and dragged a bunch of women back to cave. Nobody is really sure about what’s edible. Nobody in this era can draw. Lots of peer pressure to wear fur, which I didn’t appreciate.

Still not worse than 1812 though.

User: Ann

0 Stars

Guy asked me, using hand signals, to come back to his cave to see his etchings. He offered to etch me like one of his French mammoths. It looked nothing like me. Then he made me stay in the cave and cook his meat and tend his fire.

ANCIENT EGYPT

User: Jim

3 Stars

Fun, but not what I was expecting. Pyramids, which I thought would be a big attraction, weren’t finished yet. Egyptians just walked like regular people. Most information we have about this time is not correct.

User: Sarah

2 Stars

Ancient Egypt was okay. Drinks menu was limited. Not the best place to meet people. Reminded me a lot of the Internet in the sense that it was full of pictures of cats and people seemed pretty excited about them. Also lots of fun emoji. Still not sure what “Feather Squiggly Line Bird” means.

ANCIENT ATHENS

User: Sarah

3 Stars

I’d heard a lot about Socrates and the Socratic method but he wouldn’t really engage with me because I was a woman. Would not recommend bringing your kids here because everyone seems a little iffy on the age of consent.

User: Aaron

5 Stars

Love it. Love it. Great comedy. The chorus got old quickly, but the dude dressed as a giant penis totally stole the show. A+ would go again. Not recommended for the agoraphobic because lots of the most fun stuff happens literally inside an agora.

Everyone seemed to belong to some kind of fraternity.

BIBLICAL TIMES

User: John

1 Star

Like Medieval Times but so so so much worse. My wife got stoned to death. Even if you think you like the Bible this is not your scene.

ANCIENT ROME

User: John

3.5 Stars

Everyone talks a lot about how great the Roman aqueducts were and how wonderful their sewer system was, but it wasn’t all that entertaining. Good if you’re into nonstop toga parties. Colosseum was cool. Very realistic violence.

Also, Latin is not pronounced how we think it is pronounced.

MEDIEVAL TIMES

User: Amy

1 Star

I thought “Serf Experience” was misspelled. It wasn’t.

Total downer. Would not recommend. Music is awful (unless you’re really into plainsong chanting). Everyone gets divided into four types based on the balance of humors in their body. It’s like being assigned Samantha, Miranda, Carrie, or Charlotte except it determines your medical care.

Right of jus primae noctis is gross. Not much nightlife. Could not find a bathroom or for that matter a toilet or for that matter a bed or for that matter soap.

I know “Medieval Times” is rated five stars by most Yelp users but honestly there was much less jousting and big turkey legs than I was led to believe and much more fleas and people dying of plague.

User: Sarah

2 Stars

I went here on a Groupon. For what I paid, it was not bad. If you like drawbridges, torchlight, and believing everything that is wrong with your body is because of witchcraft.

Just for future reference: if the selling point of your era is “once a bunch of serfs died of plague, life got a lot better for them,” your era is terrible.

Bright side: cheap trip! I’ve taken cruises that were worse.

User: John

1 Star

Worst Iron Maiden concert ever.

RENAISSANCE

User: Kathleen

4.5 Stars

LOVE IT. Music scene not the greatest, but if you like perspective in your art, this is the first stop. If there were any downsides I would say it was that Renaissance men not as well-rounded as I expected.

As a general note to travelers: everyone’s teeth in every era are way, way worse than you want them to be.

FRANCE FRANCE REVOLUTION

User: Marie

Zero stars would not recommend.

WHERE’S THE CAKE?

REGENCY ERA

User: Katie

3.5 Stars

Fun to visit. Great era for a three-day trip. Would not stay longer because no penicillin and also childbirth and arranged marriages. If I have to hear one more person delight us with piano playing I will draw and quarter something.

CIVIL WAR

User: Johnny

2 Stars

Wow, I thought it was impossible for politics to be more angry and polarized than they are now.

I was wrong.

VICTORIAN ERA

User: Yelp, Yelp, I’m Being Repressed

3 Stars

Not the biggest fan.

People had put all these little frill things on the bottom of their table legs to keep from being attracted to them, which was weird—like, who sexualizes a table leg? Not this guy.

This era puts the hip in hypocrisy, then removes the I and replaces it with a Y. (This is not a good slogan, but it is about what the era deserves.)

WORLD WAR I

User: Simon

1 Star

Not sure what’s so “great” about it. Fast-forwarded several years and everyone was still sitting in the same trenches only muddier and less hopeful-looking.

1960S

User: Kyle

2 Stars

Fine and everything. Was expecting more, given everything the Boomers have been saying about this era for decades and decades. Woodstock was just okay.

1970S

User: Ann

2.5 Stars

If you remember the seventies, you weren’t there.

One thing I’ll say: very cheap trip.

2015

User: Jim

4 Stars

Basically okay. One of the last nice times before the Yellowstone Caldera exploded.

2016

User: Sarah

1 Star

Ugh. Between the presidential race and that volcano, this was a downer of a year. Probably more the volcano’s fault than the election’s, come to think of it.

3038

User: Dan

4 Stars

If you’re not really a “people person,” this is the vacation for you. Very quiet. I was able to get a lot of reading done. Recommended if you’re into silence and don’t mind inhaling a little drifting ash.