7/12/2010

Evenings in Academia (Either way, it only happens after the dessert and the espresso)

I.
It’s Saturday night and in a surprising break with not-so-recent tradition I get back to my place before eleven p.m. and absolutely sober.
We were all just out for pizza. It was supposed to be the International Pizza Day or something just as dumb, or at least that’s what I was told afterwards: Not that pizza’s ever stopped us cold in our tracks before but to tell you the truth we were still utterly trashed from the previous night, which properly started with the Veuve Clicquot and spiraled downwards through the wee hours in this cool martini bar which we’ve become quite partial to lately, that serves the overpriced trendy drinks with cucumber, wasabi and the works.

The best part of living out weekends like a veritable vampire in wintertime is, I’ve just decided, the bits in which I get handled by the doorman post office parcels on Saturdays nights: Boxes written in Chinese mean I’ve gone trigger happy on eBay once again with the ridiculously-underpriced, six-dollar, shipping-included comic book action figures straight from Taiwan or wherever, whereas boxes hailing from Germany more often than not denote Amazon.

Tonight’s postmarking reads in German and was more anxiously expected than a newlyweds’ first born: Oh, here’s the usual bundle of comics of course but this time added with Bret Easton Ellis’ brand-new novel, Imperial Bedrooms. Which is the sequel to Less Than Zero, published some twenty years back. Which is my favorite book, and that’s mostly because it’s short and terse and mostly void as far a general meaning is concerned, and especially that all the characters are amoral, which sort of exempts me as a reader from that rather annoying process which is identifying with a fictional character: I can barely relate to real people these days, for chrissakes.

Thus ye mighty book-writer, this I beseech of thee: Don’t make me fall for Tiny Tim or Superman—and thankfully enough, Bret Easton Ellis never does.


II.
True story: I once held my ground on a literary argument for like a full hour against this guy with a Doctorate degree on nineteenth century literature in Portuguese. It happened last November at this deli in New York just before the Springsteen concert though I can’t for the life of me recall either how it started or how it ended, but I thought it was pretty cool because I’m such a space cadet most of the time and the guy was so like quoting from critics and academic theses and stuff, whereas all I could think of was an inch beyond Wikipedia or the Discovery Channel, really.

Which sorts of validates the popularity of Adam Sandler movies, I suppose, even though that has nothing to do with anything in here.


III.
Okay, honest to god now, call your perfect evening:

Mine is, and I so apologize for the unavoidable cliché here, having dinner with you at a nice trendy French restaurant. I’m having either the duck or the rabbit but more probably the duck and I have no idea what you’re having because as time goes by you become more and more a fictional character in a memoir even though you still send me the stray e-mail or two every year. We’re drinking cava in lieu of the champagne but don’t ask me why because that point’s sort of moot: End of the day, anything but orange soda, really. And we’re discussing books. Or, at least you are discussing books and I’m just—again—holding the fort on little more than a wing and a prayer and going back to why I’ve read The Great Gatsby for like five times because I so wanted to like it but it just never connects, never clicks, doesn’t do anything to me and let’s be very, very frank: Anyone with half an education would still maintain the author’s own private life is usually so much more interesting anyhow.

Oh, and we'd order two bottles of the cava, by the way. Just to mention. You know, the burden of great conversation: You’re such this brainy girl and never drops the ball and stuff. Me, I'd be struggling to keep up with you while trying not to mispronounce the names of the dishes on the Menu.

Evening ends with—after dinner we—Oh come on. We either have really kinky sex until sunrise before passing out drunk, or a Guardian of the Universe comes to Earth and deputizes me a Green Lantern to battle Major Disaster or Dr. Polaris, or pick a super-villain, whatever really.

Either way, it only happens after the dessert and the espresso.