Pangloss, I couldn't agree with you more about a desire to be caught up in history. While war is not my preferred method, it is hard not to feel a twinge of jealousy towards those men throughout history who have triumphed in difficult circumstances forced upon them by great and powerful tides. George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill; the common man drafted to fight in World War II; the brave journalists who flew to Afghanistan in the days immediately following 9/11. (I am not missing the point that every one of these instances involves combat.) So maybe a war isn't the answer, but some moment of global or human crisis, when humanity shows its worst colors, would provide a moment to offer our best. I only hope that we have the wisdom to recognize it, the nerve to chase it and the vanity to write a book about it when we are finished.
In the meantime, while we trudge this dark night, I want to share a story of my temporary job. Like Rod Serling's classic television show The Twilight Zone, tonight, your protagonist, Martin, found himself strangely exposed to two characters. One came from his past, a painful reminder of both past and present failings. The other came from the street, but might as well have come from his future, the awful negative to the photograph he hopes to develop.
Like all good stories about men, this one starts with a girl. The bar had a slow night, but the dining room was popping. I stepped out from behind the bar to deliver drinks to a table -- mother, father, college age daughter and high school age son -- and greet them while the table's actual server dealt with a new six-top. I am about to launch into the specials when the daughter interrupts me to ask if we know each other. She is a beautiful girl, blonde hair and green eyes. She speaks eloquently and compassionately. In all circumstances, she conducts herself with poise. I know all of this, of course, because I do know the girl. I went to high school with her. Back then, I hit on her relentlessly. Now I was explaining the fish special to her.
"So, what are you doing?"
"I just graduated from college, slinging drinks, looking for jobs. What about you?"
"I just got back from foreign study and am about to go back to Tulane." The girl is a rising senior.
"Where were you on foreign study?"
"Ghana. You were a year ahead of me. What are you trying to do?"
At this point I dramatically overinflated my minimal prospects. Why? Because I didn't want to admit to this girl that my odds are as bad as they really are. I didn't want her to think poorly of me.
But then I did something even worse. I told her, in general terms, that I had a plan but it was ruined, so I was trying to forge a new plan. She said: "That'll probably be me in a year." Weak smile.
Patronizing bitch.
There are a lot of terrifying things about this encounter. First, it checks your ego in a big way to serve someone you once considered your peer and also wanted to date. That ego check comes hard and below the belt, but it's not one that I think I particularly need. I certainly did not want it. The second thing is that she just returned from work in Africa, which was my plan before it was ruined. So already, she has accomplished the one thing I was going to do after college before she even finished her degree. She's a leg up on me. These two things sting hard, with all the childish bitterness of elementary school ridicule.
Third, I did no credit to my job. I tend bar and I'm good at it. Instead of holding my head high for doing a job well, I engaged in petty snobbery and tried to appeal to some college girl I literally have not seen in four years. I suggested that I was a failure and so is every other person with whom I work. I also decided in a split second to use her as a rubric for success. That last thing, though, is what made this half of the encounter awful.
"That'll probably be me in a year." It was something all of my behavior asked for, a validation from her for my bad state, a recognition that I wasn't a failure, an undeserved, patronizing remark that offered false solidarity. And I begged for it. And if she is ever anything like I was, she said, "Mom and Dad, I will never do that" as soon as I left the table.
To pander like that left me with less dignity than I had when I volunteered to deliver the drinks. If you can strike a difference between dignity and self-respect, I want to say that while I hardly respect myself for my position, before tonight I had never felt like it was costing me my dignity.
The second person I met was a bar fly. This guy was in his early thirties and handsome. Lots of teeth in the smile. He came in late, ordered a beer and made small talk with the other patrons and me. Then, as the night closed down, he sipped on a water and spoke one on one with me. We started out with a casual conversation, but soon we were talking metaphysics, and somewhere along the way, he lost the calm tone he had at the start of the evening in favor of a tripped-out drawl that rambled on and on about establishment agendas. I thought that I was talking to Dennis Hopper. "Dude, you gotta know about the agendas behind what they're teaching you, man. I've done lots of reading on my own, man."
I found this fellow frightening because of his back ground. "Man, I'm just wandering. I don't think I want to be part of anything establishment." The wandering gig, the free spirit lifestyle, the hobo-philosopher tramp -- I find that life romantic. But here was a guy doing that into his thirties. He was a burnout, and while I'll never do all the drugs he must have done, I can't say I didn't see one avenue my life could take in that guy.
So how does a person wander and follow a dream, eschew the economic demands for and cultural confiscation of identity? And to return, rather heavy handedly, to the initial point, how do we do that without some grand historical event?
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