Doomocracy: Table for One
I used to think about becoming a religioso, but I don’t have churchly predilections, or the other kind. The life of the ascetic appealed to me. Failing that, I wanted to be a hermit, but my tastes run to blissfuly functionless shoes and Zegna dress shirts. The problem is that I have never wanted the opposite, to be a member of society or its adjuncts. I notice that my dogs are exactly the same. They have no desire to participate in most activities, but God forbid those activities take place outside of their witness. There is a place for people like me, the table for one.
I don’t get invited to parties. Nothing about my affect suggests that I am a party person, which is not to say I am a wall flower. I enjoy parties, but it is clear to most people that I am enjoying them on a completely different level than small talk come-ons and the freedoms of music and libation. I need people to animate my world, but “people” in most contexts could not be more tedious, I imagine that being deeply connected to them is like being at the end of a very long rope on which you will eventually hang.
I have often wondered what I have in common with sociopaths. Latin suggests to me that both their problem and the solution lies in people. I imagine that my neighbors would describe me in the same terms, “He was so quiet, very polite. We knew him well enough to wave, but I can’t remember ever speaking more than a few words with him.” I need these people, which is to say, I would not live where I do without them. Indeed, I would not be as happy if I didn’t expect to see them every day, but I will never invite them through my door, and I will never say one thing to them in which I have put any thought.
Nonetheless, they figure heavily in my thoughts. They are robust sources of detail, like fractals but more interesting. Without them, the voices in my head would echo, the pictures in my head would be two mirrors facing each other, my emotions, such as they are, would be ineffectual, my actions would all reduce to masturbation. The world is not an equation, not even a quotient with an infinite remainder, it is an inequality, and I depend heavily on them to be greater than.
Sufferers of Asperger’s give me disorder envy; to attain their level of focus and achieve their levels of detail in a narrow field sounds like heaven to me. I would gladly trade away the last few social graces that lump me together with the center of the bell curve. My problem is the opposite: I am interested in everything, often simultaneously.
Last week, I was meant to be at a meeting with an artist to discuss a performance she was planning, but only one part of me was there. The other part was fascinated with the courtship ritual of what appeared to me to most resemble a christian missionary and his flat-chested paramour. If you had the time I could describe to you in no less than 10,000 words the intricacies of their proximity. Given godlike powers of ego-fulfillment I would wish for nothing more than to have overheard their conversation, to add that next level of complexity to their ritual. Another part was tracking the progress of a quite attractive black man in his pursuit of an alluring, slightly tom-boyish, brunette. His ploy involved the sharing of one laptop between them, allowing some significant but harmless physical contact. There was also the stumpy-proportioned Asian lady who got by on her personality, the guy with three day stubble who never made it off his cell phone, out of his silver BMW, and into the cafe, the energetic blonde in the slightly see-through tee-shirt working behind the counter, her co-worker, a frustrated male college student who would never get anywhere with her and seemed pissed to notice that I noticed how he looked after her. Then there was the ledge by the window of the screened in porch where we were sitting, it collected postcards and photocopies, the most interesting of which seemed to be advertising the idea of photography over any specific product or service. Not even to mention the cap of the Perrier I was drinking, which is made of metal that is pliable enough that it could be worked into a shape that resembled the BPOE emblem you see on the outskirts of small towns.
I am worse than a voyeur. I did not get any vicarious thrill. I would not trade any skin for my own. I don’t harbor fantasies, and the bank of images I build my dreams from is far more close to hand and no where near as exotic. It is not a fetish. It would be nice if it were, if only to give it a name. At various times, I have borrowed a visage, the flaneur, the connoisseur, the idler, the eyer, the one who enjoys because he knows so well what he is looking at, the one who looks so often and aimlessly because he knows not what he is looking for.
I have been called, by those who have known me the best, Radar, and it is not a recent name, a trait I have carried since toddlerhood. I am the owner of a mis-wired brain. Every kid wants to be told a story, not every kid finds that story in overheard conversations, in confidences whispered between confidants, in the idle chatter of neighbors and strangers, not every kid adopts the story as a lifestyle. I used to think I would be a minor character in my own story, the anonymous, out-of-focus man in the background of the picture, but now I don’t appear at all. I am the camera eye, inhaling the details of context the way a jet engine inhales air.
No one likes to dance with a partner who is clearly staring over their shoulder; no one dreams that they are the sequin and not the jewel. It shakes your confidence to be with me. I may ask you about the Cambodian who just drove by in the late 70s MG, total scene time: 0.3 seconds. I may not ask you about your day. It matters… but so does everything else.
Every restaurant has a table for one. It is usually out of the way. It is not a prestige table near the window. It is not a stage on which to make bold pronouncements to the room. It will definitely be by the route of a waiter. You will always have a full glass of whatever you’re drinking. There will be room at your elbow for a notepad or a book. There will be sight lines. You will overhear. People may notice, but their attention will be brief. It is the best seat in the house.
I think we missed our calling, perhaps as ace detectives where such random attention to detail and mental puzzle assembly would be put to use for the good of society. I, too, have always felt like the owner of a mis-wired brain. But somehow it works for me in certain contexts. In ohters, I am an entertaining oddball. Thanks for sharing.