We walked into an empty coffee shop on Fifth Street and sat down in a booth. He swiped his hand across the table and, leaning on his elbows, raised a menu in front of his face.
I had not seen him since we were roommates—not in person, anyway; there had been no shortage of photographs. Contrary to my hope that the photos I’d seen were flattering his complexion, he looked virtually the same, 15 years seeming to have done nothing to his taut, childish face.
I had been dreading the interview—to be honest I wasn’t particularly fond of him, even when we were roommates—and decided to jump right in and get it over with. After I asked each question, I would tune out and let my hand take notes on autopilot while my head drifted on to other thoughts, until I could tell by the inflection of his voice that he was finishing his thought and would soon require another question.
Until I reached my halfway-point question, things were going well. But suddenly sensing—I don’t know how—that he was about to say something detestable, I perked my ears.
“Well,” he said, “I’m an extremely lucky person to be where I am right now.”
And I could tell that by “lucky,” he meant happy. He did not mean to say that the only reason he achieved such fame was that he had been in the right places at the right times, knew the right people, and never found a lack of funding.
It wasn’t that he had blundered improvidently through a maze of masked prerogatives, intents, motives, enemies, profiteers, interested parties, subversions, sabotages, dissents (so many things to be masked—and each mask unique!), only to come staggering stupidly out the other side with a Lenore Marshal Poetry Prize, three offerings for full fellowship, and an inextinguishable public reputation.
Somehow, he had established himself, which made him very happy. For him to say he was “lucky,” and mean it, would be to acknowledge that there were any number of people that could justly occupy the place he did, and that he had reached it simply through chance.
When Princeton was deciding who they ought to invite to work in their prestigious creative writing department, I don’t think they narrowed it down to four people and said, “My goodness, these four people are exactly, indisputably equal in merit… why, we’ll just have to raffle it off!”
No, “luck” would mean that he had been given something he had not earned, let alone deserved, and he’s not willing to admit that.
Indeed, to decide whether he deserves his acquisitions we must first identify them—one: a trophy wife, beautiful in epic proportions. Or should I rather say epic portions? Some areas have certainly been bestowed upon—by lineage, God, and surgeons alike—more epically than others, namely her cannon-ball breasts and Iron Rump (I apologize for the lewdness, but said trophy wife happens to be Polly Macintosh, the famous aerobics instructor/actress, and she’s patented her video productions with this title, as well as her Rump, so that they can’t be referred to in any other way. I think it goes without saying that with tremendousness equal to that of her beauty, Polly is lacking in the area of brains).
Secondly, he has money; more money than one man born to lower-middle class Madison, Wisconsin, knows what to do with. Number two comes equipped with a number of luxurious off-shoots, such as said trophy wife; a Mercedes Benz (with spinners); a ridiculous labyrinth of a mansion, which Mel Gibson in a recent interview in this very magazine called “a bit ostentatious”; also, a gold necklace, dangling from which is an elaborately diamond-studded platinum “N,” the poet’s last initial; a Segway Human Transporter; a boat; a yacht, to tow his boat. Mansions, rims that keep spinning after you’ve stopped, bling – are these the possessions of a poet? Does this sound like the moral, anarchist, freethinking poets you looked up to in your younger years? Is this the behavior of one of love’s expressers, nature’s relaters, and life’s great namer, one of Emerson’s irrepressible “children of the fire?” Ha! This man has no more admirable qualities than Ralph Waldo’s tit! But, alas, it is true, even Kerouac was being flowed cash from his aunt during his much romanticized travels. The poet is no longer possessed by – he is possessed of.
Number three: that loving glow, incandescent, warm, and thought to be virtually unattainable for a poet in our culture of immediacy, TV sitcoms, and movie-madness: the limelight. And what does this entail? Not respect, necessarily, or scorn either, but simply that people care. For every wonderful offshoot of wealth, the limelight has a million more.
And for what? All of that for what? A few measly poems. A few crumby, worthless, uninspired –
Where was I? Ah yes, the poet had just finished expressing gratitude for the “luck” he’d encountered in his life. He babbled on, self-indulgently relating some bothersome anecdote that had nothing to do with whatever question I’d asked, then sat back and smiled smugly, awaiting his next question.
And now he is still sitting there, the bastard, forcing his smile… just peering now, really, because I have been silent for quite a while, although doing a number of things in my head. I am trying, for instance, to remember my next question; I am wishing, partly, that he were dead; I am lamenting the death of the poet in general; and wondering why he wore that ridiculous necklace to a low-key, one-on-one interview with his old college roommate; but most of all, I am wondering why he has not yet asked me the question I know he’s going to ask: what have I been up to since our years spent together at Madison College. I am convinced he is waiting for the absolute, perfect moment to assault me with that question whose answer can only be an excruciating “Oh, nothing. A few girlfriends, a dead-end job at the local paper, trying to get my novel off the ground…” I have decided to wait—to give him no further conversation, no more powder for his rifle. He’s saying something, but let him talk. I am staring through him and I will do so until I hear that question which... but he is getting up now to leave. He looks confused and offended. And now he is gone, while I am still here.
