A strange and puzzling interlude

My club offers dinner-party events where I may find myself seated with people I’d never met. Last night was such an event and it had me puzzling all day, today.

I sat to the immediate right of a man who was a quintessential — no, that is the wrong word — a caricature of a New Yorker — the extreme image of what we Midwesterners visualize when we think of New York people.

Yes, I know. Generalizations are odious, especially negative generalizations, but this man could have been sent by Central Casting. He was that perfect.

Big. Loud. Rude. Interruptive. Overbearing, Overly opinionated. Braggart. He had only just sat down when he leaned over and began to tell me what a great businessman he was, even from the age of fourteen.

By the time he was thirty-six, he had retired.

He has a large house, a very large house. And the house rests on city property, but is so big it includes, not a garden but a small farm. So big he hired a farmer to tend it.

And he never needs to pay for anything because he trades his vegetables for every kind of merchandise.

And his children all are brilliant, all magna cum something. His infant grandchildren, too.

And he’s going to vote for Trump, because Biden is too old, and weak, and mentally shot. And yes, he knows Trump is a lying “sack of “sh*t,” and he wishes he didn’t have to vote for him.

And yes, he knows Biden grew the economy and cured inflation, but anyone could have done that.

And Biden gives too much to “those” people, “You know what I mean.” (I said I didn’t, but he was already on to another boast.”)

And the food here in the club is better than last year because he told the club manager the food was no good.

And he’s still mourning his mother who died three years ago. And he’s trying to reconcile with his stepmother (whom, incidentally, I know to be a sweet lady), and he’s happy his father is happy, but can’t get over the idea of a stepmother.

And the music at this party is too slow. And he’s not much into dancing.

And as he makes each point, he repeatedly lays his hand on my sleeve as though he were confiding in his buddy. Each time I would look down at his hand, then he immediately would withdraw it, as though he realizes he has crossed some boundary.

But shortly, some new revelation about his charmed life arrives along with his hand.

And all along he keeps telling me how much he likes me.

Had this been a movie, I would have said he was overacting to an amateurish script. But it was painfully real.

At one point, I smiled and said, “You know what I like about this club?”

He, “What?”

Me, “No one here talks money or politics.”

He agreed, then lurched into another soliloquy about how he travels to the most expensive destinations, and stays in the most expensive accommodations, eats at the most expensive restaurants, and engages in the most expensive activities.

Soon, I grew so weary of his voice I tried to comment but he interrupted me. Or tried to.

I was determined to say something, however insignificant. But he didn’t stop talking.

So, I didn’t stop talking.

I forced myself to finish my first sentence, then said, “You can’t interrupt me.” Over and over and over. And all the while he kept trying to interrupt. It was comical, the two of us talking over each other with nonsense.

And his wife, sitting to his left neither smiled nor spoke, but kept glancing at me with the saddest face.

My primary thought during this unpleasant experience was, “Why me?” Not in a self-pitying way, but rather as a scientific inquiry — why did he feel compelled to pour out all this magnificent personal history to me, a much older, total stranger?

Today, I’ve been trying to sort through his fire hose of unwanted information. As I recall, he’s in his fifty’s; he’d lost his father when he was only 14 (a bit confused because of the “stepmother” contradiction) and has had to work full time ever since.

I wondered whether he was under constant pressure to prove himself to a world dominated by people triple his age. Carrying my Freud act a bit further, I’ll guess he carries a lot of resentment toward circumstances that put him into that position.

So knowingly or not, he may have decided to fight back in the only ways he knew, with aggression and self-promotion.

At some point during the evening, he must have decided I either couldn’t be impressed, or I was sufficiently impressed, I don’t know which, because he suddenly turned to his wife and asked her to dance.

Perhaps a half hour later, he returned to the table, and announced they were leaving for another engagement. He then turned to me, told me how much he enjoyed talking with me and how much he “really liked me,” and shook my hand with a surprisingly weak grip.

And they were gone.

Now, I wonder if there was a better way to handle such a situation?

I could have turned away from him and studiously ignored him. But that would be cruel when he only had been boorish, not mean, so he didn’t deserve cruelty.

I could have humored him by nodding eagerly and repeatedly expressing false admiration for his marvelous exploits, but that would have been even crueler if he caught on to my act.

Instead, but for our moments of talking over each other, I simply sat there and looked at him, showing no emotion or reaction whatever, which upon reflection, may have been cruelest of all if he were fishing for approval.

Or perhaps, it made no difference if he was so wrapped up in his own world, he was oblivious to me, as though he were talking to a chair. I don’t know.

The point to all this is that he and I, and to some degree all of us — we each live in our own world, trying to survive in a harsh universe that every minute tries to kill us in many different ways, and eventually will succeed.

While fighting this battle we know we will lose, we each can be what other people find unpleasant.

The man (I still don’t know his name) may be the most generous, honest, kind human on the planet or he may be a scoundrel. Whichever he is, it’s unlikely he was born that way.

Each day of his life he received many trillions of inputs, which together chiseled him as though he were a piece of ice being carved by an ice sculptor, slowly we melt away, to irresistibly become a formless puddle.

There is a philosophic question about how much control we have over who we are. I suspect it is very little, perhaps none.

Most of my friends are “nice,” or at least they act in ways I find pleasing. Do they do that intentionally? Do they understand what pleases me or even care?

Or are we all just corks bobbing in a crowded ocean, flung by twirling tides, rubbing and bumping.

Though I found the man annoying, I’m trying very hard not to dislike him. But then again, can I really control how I feel?

In a strange way, I hope we meet again, just to see what happens and has happened. How have the tides moved us?

Science marches on.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell

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THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.