Anything Can Happen (2 page)

Or, if you know your limitations, you will say: "I know how much I can drink or how far I will go." And you'll call that knowing yourself—as if you were a car with so much gasoline inside you or a bottle with a definite capacity.

Or you'll focus on your taste or appetites. "That simply isn't me," you'll say, while trying on a hat. "Not me. I'm a different sort of hat." And that's true. You are a different hat, of a certain size and material, to be worn in one kind of weather and not another.

Or you believe that you are several selves—a torch singer, a bruiser, a lewd woman, a mouse of a man. You're not everybody, of course. No one is everybody. But you're several people. You know that. So you love your several selves. That's who you are. Or you hate your several selves and see yourself as the enemy. That's who you are.

There
is
another way of looking at this question of identity. Find a point outside yourself—less idiosyncratic, less self-referential, more connected to people you have never met. It isn't hard, really.

In a hotel recently, I saw a cardboard sign posted on an easel in the lobby announcing a meeting that day of a group involved with the economics of veterinary medicine. The event was titled "Practice and Progress." In the upper right-hand corner of the sign was a yellow Post-it note that read
PUT THIS UP IMMEDIATELY!

And I pictured the person to whom that Post-it was directed—he or she who waited for orders from hotel management to put up cardboard signs for hotel meetings. And having received the orders, that person acted on them promptly, lest he or she lose the job and paycheck to someone who followed orders faster and better. So this person, whoever he or she was, would, upon receipt of the daily orders, position the poster on the easel in the center of the hotel lobby where all could see it, especially those involved with the organization on the economics of veterinary medicine.

And he or she, consciously or unconsciously, would also leave the yellow Post-it in the upper right-hand corner as a sign, however small, that he or she existed at all.

Once I had pictured this person, I knew who I was.

In 1993, on assignment for
Vanity Fair,
I went to Sudan with Sabastiao Salgado, the great photographer of human suffering, to write about the "lost boys"—those who had fled their villages in the north to escape the Khartoum government soldiers. Over 100,000 of these boys had made a biblical trek through the relentless heat, the semi-desert cold, the swollen rivers. They had eluded the animals that hunted them, and they had survived disease and famine. Salgado and I came to a spot near Nattinga where about four hundred boys were beginning to set up camp. They were searching for water and building their
tukuls,
or huts, when we arrived—two white men who might have dropped in from Mars. But when they saw us, they stopped whatever else they were doing and made two beds for us out of
kam,
a very hard wood that the Nuer use for spears. They made us beds, and they made us a table, and they made sure that we, their guests, were taken care of. At night they played music on a handmade lyre, a
rabala,
and they gathered round us to tell folktales, by flashlight, in the cold darkness.

When anyone asks me if I have ever met a true aristocrat, I tell them this story.

1. Why, in "This Little Piggy Went to Market," which is a mere five lines long, do two lines end in "home."
   
2. Why do priests, ministers, and rabbis only get together in jokes?
   
3. Where exactly is Magnesia?
   
4. Are members of the Hammond family organ donors?
   
5. Who was Absorbine Sr.?
   
6. Is there an illegal pad? Tell me there's an illegal pad.
   
7. E I E I O?
   

Always look at it as it might appear in its average moments—not as it might glow in the light-dance of the fireplace or burn from within on a fall Sunday morning when the amalgamation of the sun's rays blasts red upon those fat Dutch cheeks or as you would make it glow when you return home flushed with one victory or another, or with wine. None of that.

Rather think: What will this Rembrandt look like at 2:45 on a February afternoon when you have run out of toilet paper and the roof leaks and a horse has just kicked in your kitchen door for the fun of it. And when there's a dead squirrel stuck high in the chimney. Consider moments such as these, when you are about to acquire your Rembrandt.

And yes. She
is
as lovely as a Rembrandt.

Lyndon Johnson badgered Hubert Humphrey into killing a deer on a visit to Johnson's Texas ranch, then he sent the vice president the severed head of the animal as a reminder of his power over him.

That's really all there is to it. The first thing a tyrant learns is to make people do what they do not want to do—not by using physical force but rather by cajoling or teasing or manipulating the intellect, so that they not only lose all self-respect but also become so weakened in spirit that they believe the tyrant alone can lead them on the right path.

The time you made someone else apologize for something that you did wrong, for instance. That was a start.

Your mind, yes. You can take your mind to New England without doing it any great damage. But your soul—up there in the dark pines and the frozen water and the lengthening shadows of small mountains over empty fields and suicidal cows, it's no place for a soul. Read Hawthorne, the Mathers, and the Lowells, if you don't believe me. Spars, spires, white clapboard Congregational churches screaming murder in the night. And Harvard Square at twilight, when the zombies hang around the bookstores before they head for your porch. Do not speak of it. Makes one's blood freeze.

Can it be possible? We've lost ourselves again? When we had such a nice brand-new compass and this GPS? Well,
c'est la vie.
What I meant to say, the thing I meant to say was, "Look—our snow." But all I said was something about having miles to go before I sleep.

Nothing you said struck a bell. You named a name, but no one knew it. You cited a date. No one had heard of the occasion. Nobody was familiar with the town you mentioned—or with the country that the town was in, for that matter. And while you were admirably forceful in stating your positions on the issues, not a single one of them provoked the slightest reaction. At last, you changed the subject. But that engendered no response, either. One by one, heads turned away from you in boredom, disgust, or bafflement, leaving you to yourself at the table.

Well done.

Gesundheit.
[Applause]
My favorite flavor is vanilla chocolate chip. And I'm from the South.
[Applause]
I'm from the great state of New Hampshire.
[Applause]
Madonna will be with us in a moment. But first, you are going to win the lottery. What do you think of that? Subway heroes are both sandwiches and vigilantes. What do you think of that?
[Applause]
I got drunk last night, but I'm sorry. I blame it on the evil Dewar's.
[Laughter]
Does anybody read Edmund Spenser anymore?
[Sighs and a smattering of applause]
Pupu platter
[Laughter]
Death to the farmers! You know, when I was a boy, Ben Franklin was dead. What do you think about that? I really want to know. I feel your pain. I hear your anger. I smell your dirty underwear.
[Laughter, cries of
Oh!] Whoopie Goldberg will be with us in a minute. It's usually about here that I pause and look up to see if anybody is listening to a word I'm saying. But I know better. Shall we go on?
[Cries of
You bet!
]
When I was a boy, I loved going huntin' with my three beautiful children: Kelly, Kelleye, and Genipher. We'd go out and shoot and shoot until every dog and cat in the neighborhood lay paws-up on the sidewalk. Which reminds me: Let's bomb China. If elected, I promise to bomb the shit out of China.
[Applause]
She's my daughter.
[Slap]
She's my father.
[Slap]
She's my daughter
and
my father.
[Slap]
Let's all sing: "We'll kiss again/Like this again." Less employment, more enjoyment! Bomb China!
[Applause, cheers]
Yet I come as a man of La Manchuria. I walk softly but I carry a big stump. Yes, I had sex with sects. So what? Wouldn't you?
[Laughter]
But taxes are too low. As my great aunt, the king of France, used to say: "It's the taxonomy, stupide! Where's the boeuf? Je would like to know." Let's bomb France! Let's bomb Social Security and our children and grandchildren.
[Cheers, hoots of joy]
And everyone is goin' to have a good-payin' job. And there'll be twenty women in my cabinet, and twenty more in my cupboard, and they'll all be cute as buttons. Hey! Uncle Ben! That's right, you.
[Applause starts to mount]
Uncle Ben up there in the balcony. Uncle Ben of Uncle Ben's Converted Rice House, will you please sit down?
[Earnest applause]
Finally, let me say: Val Kilmer. Hello?
[Ovation]

You can tell a burgher from a peasant by the way his belly quivers.

You can tell a professor from a burgher by the watery leer in his eyes.

You can tell an aristocrat from a professor by the relatively few times he refers to his work.

But the street they walk on looks like all streets—the same sidewalks, trees, sewers, the same rubbish.

On Politeness

Politeness is gentility in everything that does not matter. No one ever said: "Please excuse me if I ruin your life."

On Conservatives

Conservatives conserve what liberals have won for them. You'd think they'd be more grateful.

On Rich Men

A rich man is always accorded more honor than a talented one because people understand money.

On Love

Shortly after one falls in love, one wants to be naked with the person one loves. Naked. Meaning exposed, vulnerable, unprotected. That should tell you something about love.

On Despair

Do not force your despair upon others. It isn't that they will not sympathize or wish you rid of it. But it is a lot to ask of people to add your despair to their own. People are not that strong.

On Heroes

You have to risk your life to be one. But there are lots of ways to do that. One can be a hero who seeks nothing he has gladly left behind. You, for instance. When you walked away from
them.
You were a hero.

On Journalists

Journalists are alarmists by nature.
That's
why they're untrustworthy.

On Cleverness

A French writer—Sartre, I think—was asked the age-old question about what he would take from his house if the place were on fire. He said he'd take the fire. Not his wife, not his children, not his pets, books, letters, or insurance policy. The fire. That is a good example of being too clever by half.

On Women and Men

One never hears a woman say: "I wasted my life." From which one may conclude that (a) women do not waste their lives;
(b)
they are too considerate to say so;
(c)
men are ridiculous.

On Censorship

I have no way of knowing this, of course, but I would bet that every civilization that destroyed itself began to do so when someone in power demanded to know what the people were reading.

On Assisted Living

I could use some.

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands, because you're way ahead of the game, and there's something to be said for the perseverance of the itsy-bitsy spider and the weasel who went pop. Of course, from time to time the bough is liable to break, Humpty-Dumpty will fall, London Bridge will fall, all will fall down. But the wheels on the bus do go round round round, and when you row row row your boat merrily merrily merrily merrily, life
is
but a dream.

Luchow's was a famous old German restaurant in downtown New York, situated just about where Irving Place and Fourteenth Street make a
T
. It was a bustling spot all year long, but especially at Christmastime when the proprietors propped up a huge Christmas tree for all to admire, and a hefty group called the Oom Pah Band tooted "O Tannenbaum" as the customers sang along. Diamond Jim Brady proposed to Lillian Russell in Luchow's, offering her a suitcase filled with one million dollars if she'd consent. (She didn't.) That's the sort of place Luchow's was until it closed some years ago.

My parents used to take my brother, Peter, and me to Luchow's every so often, even though my father suspected the restaurant of having been a Nazi hangout during the war. There we went, nonetheless, to stuff our faces and gape at celebrities. I saw Jackie Gleason there once, looking like the comics' Little King, and leading a retinue including Jack Lescoulie, of mellow memory, among the crowded tables. That was not on New Year's Day. My family never went anywhere on New Year's Day, though for two years running Peter and I, while never going anywhere, still managed to spend the day at Luchow's.

You see, when my brother was in high school, he acquired his own telephone, the number of which was but one digit removed from Luchow's. At first he was annoyed by this coincidence, as calls for Luchow's and calls for my brother came in at a ratio of twenty to one. So, eventually tiring of the phrase "Wrong number," he began to accept a few reservations. This was a cruel prank, to be sure, but partly justified in his, and later in my own mind, for our being on the receiving rather than the phoning end of the calls.

Returning from graduate school one Christmas vacation, I was delighted to discover my brother's new enterprise and immediately joined his restaurant business with all the high spirits of the season. Embellishing his practice of taking reservations straight, I would ask—whenever someone called requesting a table for eight, for example—if the caller also wanted chairs. In no instance, and there were dozens, did the people calling for reservations treat my question as odd. As long as they thought they had Luchow's on the phone, everything was jake.