Misery
My final evening in Ithaca, we had dinner at the house of one of the professors who taught the workshop. It was a pleasant, but highbrow affair I could have done without, with lots of wine drinking and cheese eating. I drank only one beer, however, because I was the driver for a group of three or four people from my hotel.
Perhaps if I’d been able to drink more, I’d have been more comfortable. As it was, I had only an Ithaca Pale Ale, which turned out to be one of those beers that taste so dreadful you have to drink at least three before you don’t mind the taste anymore.
As for the cheese eating, I think it was the brie that, later that night, resulted in my violent illness. More later on that.
In the meantime, at the beginning of the evening, around seven, we all gathered outside on the deck and gobbled h’orderves and slurped down drinks, all the while engaging in chatter no one remembers two minutes after the words are spoken. It was a muggy evening, and laughing faces grew red and sweaty in the growing twilight.
The noise level grew proportionate to the amount of wine consumed, and my “excuse me’s” were barely audible above all the noise, as I occasionally pushed my way to the appetizer table for more cheese and diet coke. The brie was excellent, an enormous, white-crusted wheel of it that must have cost as much as an iPod Shuffle.
I kept going back for more brie, spreading it like butter on pieces of french bread. The cheese was that soft from the heat. The bread was rather stale, however, as I found out the first time I tried biting into it during conversation. It was one of the most embarrassing moments I have ever experienced.
I bit into the bread, and suddenly found that I could not easily bite through the crust, chew and swallow, and move on in the conversation. The person I was conversing with stood there looking at me, as I tried to gnaw the bread crust apart. I pulled and twisted it until finally it separated.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Tough bread.”
The person, whose name I can’t remember, looked at me as if I were a fool.
Later, when it grew dark, we went inside for a dinner of vegetarian lasagna and salad. Maybe it was the salad that made me sick; I’ve heard of people coming down with salmonella in salad.
The professor had arranged several cloth-covered, candle-lit tables for the 27 of us to sit at. She and her fellow instructors served us a plate of lasagna and salad. I sat beside my one coworker from Washington, a fellow from the Chicago Theological Seminary, and a Graduate Student from UNC-Chapel Hill. They were my primary conversation mates the rest of the evening.
I don’t feel that worked out too well. Perhaps the rather upright fellow from the seminary did not appreciate the story I related about how I almost pissed on a homeless person one night in Chicago. This was the famous night of my friend Todd’s “bachelor party,” such as it was.
It was probably ten o’clock at night, and we had stopped at a park down beside the lake, to give him various gag gifts we had bought him. Someone had bought him condoms, another person had bought him an erection cream for “stamina.” Those are the only two gifts I can remember, but I am sure there were more.
I went off in the bushes to find a place to piss, and as I was relieving myself, I heard a rustle near where my stream of urine was landing. A homeless person was lying there in the underbrush, in the dark, and he or she had rolled over almost right into the line of fire. I cut it off and jumped back, zipped up and ran for the safety of the parking lot where my friends were.
I told this story to the fellow from the seminary, and he smiled politely and said nothing. I admit the story does not seem so funny now, as it once did. Perhaps telling it in that sophisticated setting has forever ruined a good story. I also admit that I told it for shock value; sometimes I like being uncouth for the sake of being uncouth. Other times, as with the bread, I am embarrassed by my unintended faux pas.
The Graduate Student from UNC seemed on edge all night. He kept up a flow of conversation about North Carolina, which I tuned out after awhile. I think he was nervous. I was not nervous, just bored and thinking of a thousand better ways I could have spent the evening.
Looking back, maybe I already was beginning to feel a little ill, too.
By the time things wrapped up around 9:30, I was ready to go. The next day would be my last, and by the next evening, I would be back with my family again. I had a good time at the workshop and feel like I learned a lot, however a week is a long time for a workshop or conference. I am used to these events happening over the course of two or three days, max. I was ready to be finished.
Back at the hotel, around 10:30, I met with two of my workgroup participants, and we put the finishing touches on our class project we were due to present the next day. Funny how some things never change from childhood to adulthood. During group-work in school, there are always two or three people who do all or most of the work, and two or three others who artfully abstain.
I went up to bed about 11:30. Two hours later, I woke up sweaty with nausea. I made it to the bathroom in time, and I spent the greater part of the next three and a half hours right there, vomiting up the lasagna from earlier in the evening. From 1:30 to 5:30, I would have gladly given a toe for relief from the misery of nausea.
It has been years since I have felt that bad. Was it the brie? Was it the lasagna? The salad? I cursed the entire meal. Why? Why did this happen to me?
Around five AM, there was nothing much left to vomit, and I was able to sleep a little before getting up at 6:30. My diaphragm ached from the exertions of the night, and my guts cramped at the merest thought of food. So I sipped a little water, but otherwise ate or drank nothing that morning.
Packed the car. Checked out of the hotel. I left the maid five dollars and a note telling her I’d cleaned up as best I could, but she should be cautious. Wear gloves, scrub well.
I went to class and we presented our final projects. I could not keep my eyes off my watch. That final class session felt like a waste to me. I was already moving on.
Funny how in a class, you may not remember people’s names, but you feel like you come to know them nonetheless. I am dreadful with names, definitely not the kind of former teacher who remembers all his students’ names going back to his first days teaching. When I was teaching, I was lucky to recall the names of students I was currently teaching.
It’s a personality flaw of mine, perhaps, that I am just not particularly interested in people as such. I look on them too much as subjects for my writing, and so names don’t matter–making up names is part of what I do anyway–the only things that matter are the curious details about my interactions with them.
I exchanged email addresses with a few people, at their request, but I wonder if they understood how unlikely it is we will ever write. Life is a continual state of moving towards others, but never quite making the connection.
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Man, sounds like you were around some insufferable snobs. I’m sure they all went home to their Bentleys and gardeners and cheez whiz. As for the illness, sorry, man, that sounds like hell. I’m rarely that sick, but when I am… I can relate.
Yeah, I went to a conference in Boston many moons ago where I exchanged cards with people in the hopes of making “connections” for my career. One was with a guy pretty high up the food chain at NYT. I find it interesting to look back now, after chaning jobs and job functions, and now with me considering leaving the field altogether. Though I realize your exchange sounds more social than that. Maybe it’s summer camp all over again: “write me write me write me.” And it never happens. Or the odd person from your childhood you run into, promising to go on a lunch neither of you will actually eat. I sometimes think that these empty gestures are more about making ourselves feel better, like our time with these strangers was productive, rather than actually contacting the other person.
Comment by Heather — Monday, 24 July 2006 @ 1:23 pm
For the most part, the people and the professors at this workshop were pretty down-to-earth and ordinary. I meant “highbrow” only in the sense that expensive appetizers and wine was served.
I admit I am pretty easily impressed, however. My idea of sophistication is pretty much centered around cheese and wine. She could have been serving a drug store Zinfandel out of a box with a block of Kraft cheddar, and it still would have seemed pretty classy to me.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 25 July 2006 @ 7:19 am
I always feel intimidated when I’m in a situation where people are socially and economically higher than me. I remember being asked to cover an event where it cost $75 for the dinner. I got a comp ticket because I was covering it, but you won’t believe how nervous I was, or how much time I spent trying to find something appropriate to wear (borrowed a dress.) I got over that in time, but I still felt weird, poor, like someone was going to find out I didn’t belong there. It’s amazing what sort of places you can go to as a reporter, though. It’s almost a social strata of its own.
I think you’re always self-conscious, though, because you seem to bring up times where you’ve misspoken. Everyone does that. We’re all entitled to be idiots occasionally. If someone doesn’t like your almost pissing on a homeless person story, yes, it’s possible they find that gross. But you also aren’t going to be great friends with that person, either. Write it off to, well, that wasn’t sucessful, but I will never see him again. That always makes me feel better. Unless I have to see someone again. And I might remember the stupid thing I said, but I bet a lot of people forget shortly after.
It’s funny about the cheese, btw… When I went to Big Sur on my weekend, I ate too many pieces of string cheese. So not your fancy highbrow cheese. I think it might’ve warmed up too much, even though it was in a cooler. I’m lactose intolerant, and sometimes cheese will just hit me wrong. I spent a few hours being completely miserable — and making Heather unhappy in the bargain — and wasted some of the enjoyment of the ocean and stunning views.
I can’t even look at string cheese right now, but I imagine I’ll go back to it soon enough. But I’m coming to the conclusion I’ve got to stop eating stuff that always makes me sick (I went home early from work a couple weeks ago after eating something I shoulnd’t have) and I’ve gotta stop gambling that it may not make me sick.
But a life without cheese is a sad one.
Comment by Mel B. — Wednesday, 26 July 2006 @ 3:00 am
We’re in good company with our love of cheese. There’s a certain fellow named Wallace who rather likes a nice bit of Gorgonzola now and then.
I tend to feel out of my element among smart people, rather than wealthy people. I can enjoy a party of upper crust twits, simply because it’s so much fun to observe them in their gilded bird cage. However, among intelligent, educated liberals, I feel perfectly out of place and uneasy. These were not wealthy people at this party, at least I don’t think so, but there was a whiff of the intelligentsia about them, and I felt uncomfortable. When I am around smart people, I feel bufoonish and slow, and that is the impression I imagine that I convey, as well. I suppose it’s a lack of self-confidence because I don’t feel I went to a good school, or did well in school, and that I am not well-read or particularly bright. Don’t know the latest trends in French literary criticism, etc. I just do not fit in with educated people.
Comment by Matthew — Wednesday, 26 July 2006 @ 7:47 am
Don’t believe a thing he just said about intelligence. He has it all!
Comment by Lynn — Wednesday, 26 July 2006 @ 6:34 pm
French Theory is passe now. All the big names are saying Theory is dead, anyway.
I tend to have much more class unease in those situations; I still don’t know anything about wine, for instance. . . though I doubt you can separate the two very well. Why is it we suppose the rich are typically smarter?
Comment by Todd — Thursday, 27 July 2006 @ 10:38 pm
Well, the rich go to better schools than we do, to start with. That presumes they probably had better grades than the rest of us. Thus they must be smarter than the rest of us.
Another way to look at it, if you don’t agree that they are intellectually superior, is to consider that they must know some trick or have some knack at success that the rest of us don’t know about.
I’m 32 years old and I still don’t know how in heck a kid ends up going to an Ivy League school. What inside tip does a kid going to Harvard have that I somehow missed when I was 18?
Comment by Matthew — Thursday, 27 July 2006 @ 10:56 pm
It’s all about legacy. George Bush was a C student.
Comment by Heather — Friday, 28 July 2006 @ 1:14 am
Too true, Heather. I think Yale even has a policy about the children of alumni, assuring them admission, don’t they? This is why when people talk about our great “democracy,” it just makes me sick. Our votes are meaningless, the pool of candidates small and predetermined. We are ruled by an aristocracy as surely as any monarchy. All you have to do is look at the Congress, our very own house of Lords, where seats are often “granted” a person based on party, family, and connections. The Tafts and the Kennedys are the most obvious examples, but there are others. Chris Dodd took over his father’s seat in Congress, I believe. For an ordinary person who didn’t go to the best school or socialize with the upper class to break into that exclusive boy’s club is nearly an impossibility.
But boy, the snobs that rule us can roll up their shirt sleeves and clear brush and play the role of the common man, can’t they? I remember back during the ‘04 election, a few Conservative radio hosts were using this picture of George Bush in work clothes and a cowboy hat, looking like John Wayne, as an illustration of why he was a better candidate than Kerry. It just infuriated me every time I saw it. Bush is a child of wealth and privilege, same as Kerry, yet somehow he gets a pass because when he wants to, he can turn on that Texas drawl and play the part of the good old boy.
I’m getting angry just thinking about it. This is why I rarely write about politics anymore. I just want to puke when I think of these asses in Washington, every one of them.
Comment by Matthew — Friday, 28 July 2006 @ 8:17 am
I see our point, but “better’ is relative. If a school does not make you work for a grade, then that undercuts “better” to a considerable degree. I’m thinking of the enormous grade inflation issues at Yale and Harvard.
Comment by Todd — Friday, 28 July 2006 @ 8:46 am
True, “better” is best defined as whether a student must work hard and leave school well-educated and on a strong career track. But that hardly matters when the end result is the same or better for a C student from Harvard or Yale..
Comment by Matthew — Friday, 28 July 2006 @ 9:40 am
That’s the thing–law manuals tell you that the “top firms” change their grade scale of those they want to interview according to the rank of the school you went to. For example, perhaps you’d need a 3.7 or better from a second-tier school to snatch an interview, but say only a 3.2 or better from a top ten. Grades likely don’t matter at all from a harvard or a yale. and they tell their students this: Don’t worry about your grades. You’ve already won the race by being admitted.
Grades don’t matter at places like those. How much pay and what kind of prestige position once you get out is what the game’s about for the rich and priveleged.
Comment by Heather — Friday, 28 July 2006 @ 12:50 pm