Where There's Smoke (22 page)

I SO DO NOT WANT TO BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

FRANK MOORHOUSE

While in New York last month, I went on a date with a young American woman I'd met at a book event for Edmund White, I suppose it was a date.

After we had settled at our table in the restaurant in the West Village, I opened the conversation by asking her what her present marital-cum-relationship status was.

‘I'd rather not go
there,'
she said, laughing.

I wondered why not, and I wondered if we would ever ‘go there'. Which I was hoping we would.

To loosen her shyness, I gently introduced a tone of candour by offering a small revelation about myself, ‘I'm still seeing a man whom I first seduced when I was 17 and although he's married with children he keeps dropping in to, well, visit me, so to speak.'

‘Whoa,' she said, raising a hand and her eyebrows ‘Whoa –
too much information
.'

It seemed precious little information about a rather amazing tale from the very heart of my life. However, I rushed to disembarrass her, ‘I wanted just to let you know I was bisexual – it's not as if he's
in my life
, so to speak. It's a rather amazing tale from the very heart of my life. But I know that being bisexual is a rather unbefriended state of being. You might've even heard of him, even in New York, he's a big deal.'

It's my policy to get small life details such as this out of the way
.

I mentioned his name.

‘I'll pretend that I haven't
heard this
,' she said, smiling, fanning herself with the menu in a comic way.

I felt that it would help if I clarified, ‘But it's not as if it would ever get in the way of what might happen between us …', to my consternation she'd now put a finger in each of her ears and was making a buzzing sound –
bzzzzzz
– to block anything I might say and then said, ‘Hell-low? Hell-low? I think you dropped out', laughing.

An apt quote strolled in to my mind or what I considered apt, my sense of apt was, I felt, somewhat under challenge at this point in the date, if it were a date, and I concede that I am not too good at apt. The quote was,
‘She thrust a dimpled finger/in each ear, shut eyes and ran … we must not listen to goblin men … who knows upon what soil they've fed …'

She laughed, ‘Rossetti, I know that poem.' She reached across and touched my hand, ‘I'm not like that. Don't worry.'

Not like what? The poem had a dark ambiguity about it and so did her touch. I now regretted introducing dark ambiguity. I changed tack, feeling slightly off-balance, ‘I take it, you don't have any trouble with our age difference or you wouldn't be here', I said. ‘I don't myself have any problem with age difference, in fact, I think cross-generational affairs are enriching. To both parties. Now and then.' And could led to severe heartache for the older person but I did not feel that was something to talk about just now.

‘
Whoa
– let's keep our boundaries,' she laughed.

‘Boundaries? I have no boundaries,' I said, smiling, and continued, ‘In the 1970s we had no boundaries. We thought boundaries put people into emotional houses of correction. Back then, we “let it all hang out”, we put everything “up front”. I am a member of People Without Borders,‘ I said, with a big laugh.

‘Oh, it's just that it raises privacy issues for me,' she said, with a smile, reaching across and patting my hand and then withdrawing her hand.

I said, with a smile. ‘Privacy is another Correctional Facility, a way of separating people from people. Why should we hide away from each other in quaint nineteenth-century cupboards, or behind chintz curtains of propriety? Why should we worry what people know about our income or our health or our orgasms?' I then rushed to add, laughing, reaching over and touching her hand, ‘Except the State and its instruments.'

She laughed, ‘I'm rather unyielding on confidentiality.'

‘But those so-called “confidentiality agreements” are a new plague', I said, laughing, ‘They're pushed in front of us and we are supposed to roll over and sign,' I said, with a laugh. ‘They're all unconstitutional. You can't sign away your freedom of speech. Those agreements won't stand up in court. They're all intimidation and bluff.'

‘I hope they
do
stand up in court,' she said, laughing. ‘I surely hope they do.'

‘Returning to cross-generational sex …'

‘
Do I need to hear this?!
' she said, with a laugh.

I did not know if she was talking to me or herself. I decided she was asking the question to herself. I went on, ‘To me it's like having sex with a very fat person – or a very thin person if you're a fat person – or with a disabled person – or if you're a disabled person with an undisabled person – it creates a tantalizingly carnal dynamic,' I said, with a smile. ‘It's always a courtesy to ask their identity labelling preference,' I threw in.

She looked at me as if she didn't have a clue what I was talking about.

‘
Excuuuuse, me!'
she said, with a laugh, in that electronic, impersonal voice we now all have implanted inside us by talking machines. ‘
I'm really not in the mood for this right now
', she said, with a smile, and then she made a sound like a smoke alarm,
beeeeee
, and said, ‘Change of Subject Alert! Change of Subject Alert!'

I sat silently for a few seconds. I had never been in a Change of Subject Alert. I guessed that we could talk safely about the event where we'd just been. ‘What did you feel about Edmund White's chat,' I said, with smile. ‘Didn't you love the story about the man who was driving along with his partner who suddenly announced that the relationship was finished and that he had a new lover. The jilted lover then deliberately drove the car off the road and over a cliff. They spent six months in hospital in the same room.'

‘You've changed the story a little,' she said, smiling. ‘I found White's “chat” was way over the top,' she said, without a smile. ‘
What was he thinking!
There was a whole bunch of stuff in the talk with which I was distinctly uncomfortable,' she said, with a smile. ‘And he used a few not-out-loud words. Too much cursing,
so unnecessary!
'

‘But that “bunch of stuff” was his
life
– he was talking about his memoirs and the whole nature of candour,' I said, with a laugh. And then I added, with a smile, ‘I suppose he could've talked about his pets.'

‘
Hell-low!
' she said, waving a hand in front of my face, ‘if that's what he got up to with people I don't think I want to know what he gets up to with his pets.
Pur-leese, so-do-not-want-to-know
.'

After a wobbling pause, she said, smiling, ‘He could try a little
indirection
. Even good old-fashioned
discretion.
' Smiling, she then quoted Whitman, ‘
I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections …
' At least it sounded like an invitation to
know
her and fortunately the rest of the Whitman quotation drifted back into my mind, at least fragments of it.

‘As I recall, Whitman when he says “meant” in “I meant that …” he seems to imply that passion did not always allow for “faint indirections”. But yes, maybe we lead lives of too much haste, although the velocity of desire has something to say for it', I said, scrabbling to hold my position.

She studied the menu.

I took the menu up too.

I found another line or two of poetry for rebuttal, a little shop-worn by impatient lovers, well, still good:

‘But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near … dah dah … then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.'

‘Well done, Mister Writer, but I think we could do without the worms at my virginity – at the dinner table …'

Then, looking back to the menu, avoiding my eyes, she said, ‘I think hombre, maybe you're a tiny bit on the outrageous side tonight, yes?'

I treated her question as rhetorical. I ordered the oysters. She said she had an aversion to oysters. Perhaps, I thought, I should eat them with a screen around me. My conversation didn't seem to me to be
that
outrageous but now my menu choice seemed lewd.

Changing the subject somewhat as, I think I'd been instructed, and at least moving away from the human species, I volunteered the information that oysters switched their sex every year or so. ‘Perhaps humans should try that,' I said, lightly, with a laugh, pleased with what I saw as its thematic coherence with our earlier ‘conversation'.

‘Heavy,
heav-ee
,' she said, with a laugh.

‘Hold on – I wasn't talking about sex
as such
,' I said, smiling, ‘I was simply observing the oyster as
creature
.'

‘
Yeah, right!'
she said, with a smile, glancing up at me quickly and then looking back to the menu.

We lapsed into silence. I thought I could say that I believed that in life we should all study at least one small creature in some detail but that would've been something of a non sequitur and we surely did not need any non sequiturs.

I began again, lightly, with a smile, I said, ‘I heard that Mike and Dee-dee are in some sort of trouble,' naming acquaintances we had in common.

‘
Into the vault
,' she said, with a laugh, making a gesture with her hand and mouth as if turning a key on a lip-lock – a lock on her vault, I guess, I suppose, perhaps, ‘I hate people tattling on other people's lives,' she said, laughing.

‘But isn't that how we find out about the world?' I said, with a grin. ‘Through other people's lives being tattled to us? It's called community.'

‘It's called malicious gossip,' she said, with a smile.

‘Gossip is fun,' I said, with a laugh. ‘Gossip is good. I find that nothing brings you face-to-face with the treacherous nature of the human condition and its frailties more vividly than gossip – including the very act of telling, the betrayal in the telling.' Then I chuckled, ‘As Hilary would say, it takes a village to raise a gossip.'

‘I never reveal the contents of any conversation I've had with anyone without their permission, never,' she said, without a smile. ‘And I would hope you would respect our conversational privacy.' She placed a finger vertically over her mouth, the
don't-tell
sign. ‘Agreed? Deal, hombre?'

She then leaned across and hooked her little finger into mine and jerked it lightly to seal the confidentiality.

‘How very high school,' I said.

I thought that because of the internet and all, there was a new position called,
what-I-know-I-own
. But I didn't go into that. ‘I thought that in an intimate conversation we said “keep this to yourself”,' I said, with a smile. ‘And then afterwards we get straight onto the telephone,' I laughed. ‘We tell
everyone
. Or write about it, as the case may be.'

‘No –
sor-reeey
, she said, without a smile, ‘It's the other way around now – all conversation is confidential unless it is specifically released by the other person. Sorry, mister-writer,' she said, with a laugh.

She had a law degree, although she said she didn't practice law, perhaps I shouldn't be revealing that. ‘Do you mind if I ask you where you did your degree?' I asked, moving to neutral ground.

‘Actually, I
do
mind. There's a lot of snobbery about colleges – I don't want to buy into all that. Just because I was privileged enough to go to an Ivy League university – and to have passed very well by the way – is none of anyone's damned business. N-O-Y-B.'

‘You worked for Clinton for a while after graduating, isn't that right?'

‘Don't ask: don't tell,' she laughed.

‘Why not?' I said, with a laugh.

‘Go figure,' she said, smiling. ‘I just don't think it's appropriate to talk about former employers,' she said, with a smile. ‘Especially
that
former employer.'

‘Public figure: public property. I've even met Clinton, although he may not remember me.' In all likelihood. ‘I know a story you might enjoy.' I doubted it. I went on, ‘Perhaps it's an urban legend, perhaps not … Two women recently were at their Oxford college reunion, they went to the same college as Clinton, and one said to the other “Do you remember when …”'

‘Whoa –
I so do not want to be having this conversation
,' she said, covering her ears with her hands. ‘In-a-ppro-priate.'

‘“Inappropriate” is one of those words.'

‘How do you mean, “inappropriate is one of those words”?' she said, with a laugh.

‘One of those superior words we use to put other people in their place – and to stop a line of inquiry,' I said, with a smile. ‘It's a shut-up-your-mouth word.'

‘How
very male
,' she said.

I tried to figure the
very male
part.

Seeing that I was deep in a welter of self-interrogation, she said, ‘It's a girl thing,' patting my hand with a smile, ‘Don't-you-worry-your-pretty-little-head-about-it.'

Then she smiled at me and winked. Which did not in any way put me at ease, the wink.

The oysters arrived. She averted her eyes.

I offered more of my oyster knowledge.

‘Men in every country often seem to believe their oysters are the best in the world. I think it has to do with oysters and the male folklore of virility which surrounds the eating of oysters. Now
that's
very male.'

‘
Whoa
– time to call the waiter,' she said, with a laugh.