But Enough About You: Essays Read online

  When I go downstairs for a glass of milk in the middle of the night, I turn all the hall lights on. But it feels like home again. And years from now, when my children are looking at these walls, scratching their heads and looking at paint chips, it’ll be me on the landing, in my boxers—a truly frightening sight—moaning, “Magenta Dream? You can’t be serious.”

  —The Atlantic Monthly, January 2011

  THE NAZI OF THE QUIET CAR

  I live on a train. A sad thing to admit, but there it is. It’s a nice train, I’ll say that much. It’s called the Acela, a name meant to denote swiftness as well as “costs more than our other trains.” It plies between Washington and Boston. My portion of the silver rails lies between Washington and New York.

  I generally inhabit the car designated the “Quiet Car.” Good old Amtrak, in its wisdom, finally decided, many, many years after the advent of the cellular age, to designate one car out of six for passengers who, oddly, prefer not to be unwilling bystanders at conversations in which they play no part. How my heart used to sink, in the early days, when the passenger next to me would lift from his briefcase a battery pack the size of a cinder block, attach it to his prototype cell phone, and bark, “CHARLEY, CAN YOU HEAR ME? NOW CAN YOU HEAR ME? GREAT! OKAY—LET’S RUN THE NUMS!”

  The Quiet Car does not hide its light under a bushel. No. Prominent, explicit signs hang from the ceiling at five-foot intervals. They declare, unequivocally, that NO CELL PHONES ARE PERMITTED and that conversation must be kept to a minimum and in hushed tones. In addition to this copious and ostentatious signage, the conductor usually announces over the p.a. system in a stentorian voice, “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS ANNOUNCEMENT, YOU ARE SEATED IN THE QUIET CAR. NO CELL PHONES ARE PERMITTED IN THE QUIET CAR AND ALL CONVERSATIONS MUST BE CONDUCTED [pun intended, I wonder?] IN A LIBRARY-LIKE ATMOSPHERE.”

  Often the conductors add that there are five other cars where you can sit and play bongo drums or hip-hop music at full volume, whatever turns you on. You just can’t do that in this one car. Not complicated, you’ll agree?

  I reflect that not once, in all these years, have I ever seen the famously garrulous Vice President–elect Biden in the Quiet Car. As senator from Delaware, he faithfully commuted on this train to and from Wilmington, Delaware, every day. I just googled “Biden” and “quiet car.” The first match is from a newspaper report in September: “At 1:57, Biden took a seat on the first passenger car—not a quiet car . . .” I rest my case.

  So, all perfectly straightforward, one might think. But no. Oh, no. Years of riding the Quiet Car, on which I have written maybe a half dozen novels, many articles, and now my blog, have turned me into something I never thought I would become: a Nazi. For it often falls to me, a generally gentle, timid soul, to be the enforcer of quietude. Sad, I agree. Really, my life used to be more exciting than this. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Now I am become Shush, Destroyer of Conversation.

  Invariably, just as one is settling into the cone of silence, there comes from two seats away an 80-decibel cell phone ring tone, sometimes “The Ride of the Valkyries.” Sometimes cuter: the sound of a Paris police car; sometimes au courant: “Te Extrano” by Xtreme. Sometimes generically grating, like the air-sundering oomp oomp oomp that hits you as you walk by a disco in the meatpacking district.

  So you brace, hoping the owner of the cell phone playing Wagner has simply neglected to put it on vibrate and will now press IGNORE. But no. No.

  “Fred! Hey! Yeah, the meeting went great! But look, we gotta get Bill and Chuck in the loop or it’s gonna be a total f— gang bang . . . What? CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”

  As my dear late mother used to say, “Which words in the sentence ‘No cell phones are permitted’ did you not understand?”

  And so the Nazi of the Quiet Car, his cone of silence shattered, must go to work.

  “Sir?”

  Look of annoyance. “Yeah?”

  Pointing to the sign. (Semiapologetic tone.) “It’s the Quiet Car?”

  Aggrieved look. “Uh-huh?” (Translation: So?) “Fred, there’s some asshole here telling me I can’t use the phone. I’ll have to call you back.”

  The Nazi of the Quiet Car returns to his seat, face flushing at having been publicly called an “asshole” in front of dozens of people.

  Sometimes an intensifier is added before “asshole.” On one occasion, the silenced party, one of Tom Wolfe’s masters of the universe, declared to his conversational partner before furiously ringing off, “There’s a real asshole on the train.” He added in a knowing, wry tone, “There’s always one.”

  Two weeks ago, when I suggested with a hint of asperity to a young gentleman sitting across the aisle, somewhere during his fourth conversation about truly nothing in particular, that he might go use his phone in another car, he replied, “You want to step outside? I’ll beat the f— s— out of you.” Whereupon he returned to his call with a “Where was I?”

  Once, the director of the FBI himself got on in Washington. He sat down in the row in front of me. He was accompanied by three or four manly men, bulgy about the armpits. He proceeded to converse with them, in manly tones, in a fashion that could neither be described as hushed or library-like.

  I exchanged “Oy, vey” glances with my my fellow suffering passengers, but none of them indicated readiness to take on the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Normally, as a journalist, I would be interested, fascinated, even, to listen in on insider G-man chitchat. But their conversation was of the “So what’s Jack up to these days?” with a bit of golf chat thrown in. Finally, the Nazi of the Quiet Car took a deep breath, screwed up his courage, leaned forward, and gently tapped the nation’s top cop on the shoulder.

  “Mr. Freeh,” I whispered respectfully. “You are a great American, and I am your greatest fan. But this, sir, is”—I pointed—“the quiet car.”

  His retinue eyeballed me unpleasantly. I braced to hear “Freeze!” or “On the ground, NOW!” and the unholstering of Glock 9s. Director Freeh looked up at the sign. He seemed momentarily nonplussed. Possibly, it had been a while since someone had told him to shut up.

  “Oh.” He shrugged. And then, simply and without fuss, got up and moved, along with his meaty, scowling entourage, to one of the Unquiet Cars.

  How I savored my little triumph. If I get an obituary, I hope the second paragraph will note, “He is said to have once shushed the director of the FBI.” Yes, this is how I should like to be remembered.

  —The Daily Beast, December 2008

  FISH STORY

  My wife, in her wisdom, decreed that we must have a fish tank in our bathroom. Like Rumpole of the Bailey, I refer to my darling as She Who Must Be Obeyed. So the only answer was “Darling, what an excellent idea. I am so excited to have fish in our bathroom.”

  I did not utter aloud the next sentence that formed in my mind: “How convenient for flushing them down the toilet after they have lived to the ripe old age of forty-eight hours.”

  She settled on a 38-gallon tank. It looked impressive. But even more impressive was the filtration system that theoretically keeps the water clear, so that you can actually see the fish. There is apparently some very deep thinking going on in the fish-tank-filter department. Ours looks like it could keep a human alive during open-heart surgery. And—as I found out when I had to disassemble it—you could almost certainly use it to cause a human being to die. Horribly. But I’ll get to that part in a moment.

  My darling was very excited. Together we picked out tchotchkes for the tank: plastic plants, a little fake coral head, more plastic plants, and of course the obligatory sunken ship and Diver Dan.

  Then the colored gravel, the bling, if you will, of the aquarian world. We chose jewel tones: deep purple, crimson, with hints of turquoise. It looked gorgeous. But the best part of the gravel was yet to come. (More on that, too, shortly.)

  What had we forgotten? we asked ourselves. Fish!

  We selected a half-dozen goldfish of a typ
e called ryukin, which sounds like an island that might start a war between China and Japan. Ryukins are hardy and comical-looking: fat little rascals, some with quadruple tails. Personality? To spare. Beguiling? Beyond—and then some. Whenever I come into the bathroom, which being sixty years old I do quite often in the course of a typical day, our ryukins wiggle those quadruple tails like Las Vegas dancers. Little minxes!

  How could I resist constantly feeding them? It says on the food container—I quote—“Feed fish several times a day, enough for them to consume in three minutes.” Within weeks, the ryukins were the size of blowfish. Not that you could actually see them, since the water was now opaque, as if someone had dumped a quart of buttermilk into it.

  The lady at the fish store berated me for constantly feeding them. When I protested that the label said to feed them several times a day, she replied truculently, as if dealing with a mental defective, “Of course it says that. They want you to buy lots of food.” Oh, I replied.

  But the most fun part was cleaning the filter and the gravel. This was my “punishment” for being so stupid as to follow the feeding directions. And here my education continued, for now I learned the reason for all that gravel. The gravel acts as a sort of repository for what the fish didn’t eat; and, of course, for what the fish did eat. But the gravel was merely the amuse-bouche. The main event was cleaning the filter.

  Fortunately, my beloved has a medical degree in both infectious and tropical diseases. So when she observed the considerable quantity of . . . let’s just call it “matter” all over me, she was able to declaim knowledgeably about the types of infections I was most likely to come down with: Bacterial seemed to be the winner, as opposed to viral, parasitic, or toxic. Of course, then you’ve got your “intoxications” to consider—microbial versus, say, biotoxic or chemical.

  But there I go again, Debbie Downer. Is it worth it? Let me tell you: There’s something about going to the bathroom and seeing those ryukins wiggling away, going, “Feed meee! No, feed meeee!” that brings a lump to my throat. But that could be the infection.

  —ForbesLife, November 2012

  COMMENCEMENT BUTTERFLIES

  I have to give a speech at a commencement exercise next Sunday and I’m a bit nervous. Actually, quite nervous.

  There will be about eight thousand people present. I once spoke to an audience of nine thousand people—in of all places, Bakersfield, California. It was inside a structure that resembled a zeppelin hangar, so it was at least a contained space in which such laughter as I might generate—during the coveted “humor” time slot of 8:45 a.m.—would ricochet about and linger and maybe encourage others to join in. In real estate it’s location, location, location. In public speaking it’s acoustics, acoustics, acoustics.

  Next Sunday’s event will be outdoors, and so my words will be going straight up into the trees, clouds, and roar of passing airplanes. And quite possibly, rain.

  If you’re a famous person like the president, or a movie star, it doesn’t really matter. The audience will pay attention to you ex officio. And even if they aren’t really listening, they’ll pretend to be listening, because of who you are. I will not have this luxury. Many in the audience will, doubtless, be thinking, or whispering to each other, “Who is this guy?” And the audience will include parents, grandparents, and fidgety three-year-olds who need to go to the bathroom right now.

  I’m also haunted by the fact that I spoke on this same ground at my own graduation day (a long time ago, during the reign of Emperor Augustus). Being young and oh-so-clever, I thought it would be witty to close my oration with a quote containing the f- word. I still wake up at three a.m. in a clammy sweat, remembering that golden moment. At the level of taste, it was on a par with Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction. No, lower. How proud my parents were. I wonder, did they nudge the parents sitting next to them and say, “That’s our son!” My father’s graduation present to me was a typewriter—remember those?—with the f, u, and two other relevant keys painted over with my mother’s nail polish.

  I’ve given one or two commencement speeches before, but not at universities. The first time was to my boarding school alma mater, a fine institution run by Benedictine monks. I was somewhat surprised to be invited, since I had recently written about my agnosticism in a newspaper of wide circulation.

  “Are you sure?” I said warily to the lay headmaster.

  “Absolutely,” he insisted. “We definitely want you.”

  My extremely Catholic father, upon learning of the invitation, e-mailed me furiously to say that he was “appalled” that I had accepted such an “inappropriate” invitation. He added: “If I were a parent of one of the students graduating, I would walk out of the ceremony and urge the other parents to join me in boycotting you.”

  We’ll put you down as undecided, leaning against.

  I replied somewhat frostily that I had not sought this invitation, and indeed had tried to decline it. He dismissed that as irrelevant. We didn’t speak for months.

  Arriving at the headmaster’s office on the big day, I was greeted by a low, ironic chuckle: “I must say, your selection as speaker has proven to be most controversial.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You certainly know how to make a speaker feel relaxed and full of confidence.”

  Had it all been a plot, to embarrass a lapsed alumnus? Catholics do know how to plot, as you know from history.

  On the way to the stage, I was accosted by Father Damian, my old housemaster and English teacher. I retain abundant fondness for Father Damian, but he still has the power, forty years later, to instill in me paralyzing terror.

  “Ah, Buckley,” he said, giving me an appraising look. “You’ve put on weight, I regret to say.”

  The invitation to speak at the university arrived before Christmas, so I’ve had plenty of time to toss and turn at night, wondering what—on earth—to say to these very bright young people and their proud parents.

  Last year’s speaker was Tony Blair, former prime minister of Great Britain. I found his speech online and did a word count: 1,900 words. The year before Blair, the speaker was Hillary Clinton, then a newly minted U.S. senator. Her count came to 3,400 words. My goal is to be more Blairian than Clintonian.

  I read some of my other predecessors’ speeches. I was struck by their demure tone and their frank worry about boring the audience.

  Fareed Zakaria (2007) ended his address: “Finally . . . you know, somebody once said to me, ‘About halfway through your speech, say, “Finally.” It wakes them up.’ ” I’m tempted to steal that.

  Garry Trudeau (1991) said at the outset of his talk: “. . . the chief function of the graduation speaker has always been to ensure that graduating seniors are not released into the real world until they have been properly sedated.” Might steal that, too.

  Well, it’s all rather nerve-wracking. My only consolation is the knowledge that the speaker is entirely secondary (or tertiary) to the proceedings. However dull, long-winded, or inappropriately profane the speaker might be, he or she is only a bit of parsley on the day’s plate, not the main course. There’s this consolation, too: every person in the audience will be about as happy as they’ve ever been. And ten minutes afterward, no one will even remember who spoke that big day.

  That, at any rate, shall be my mantra next Sunday as I mount the scaffold and look out on the sea of faces. And on the umbrellas, thousands of them, popping open as the rain begins to fall.

  —The Daily Beast, May 2009

  REALLY-REALLY-REALLY TOP SECRET

  What do you know: I see that my old friend Dennis Blair is up for the top U.S. intelligence job. The position used to be called “Director of Central Intelligence,” but then it was decided that we need someone more even more central, and if possible, more intelligent, so now our top spook is called “Director of National Intelligence.”

  Describing Admiral Blair as “my old friend” is putting it a bit strongly. I haven’t seen or spoken to him s
ince February 1983. Our friendship, if it was ever really that, consisted of spending nine days together, intense ones, on Air Force Two, flying between European capitals.

  “Denny” Blair was then a bright and dashing young Navy commander, seconded (a British term, which, being affected, I use) to the National Security Council at the White House. I was chief speec-hwriter to Vice President Bush.

  Remember the Cold War? Don’t you miss the Cold War? It was so much more fun than this one. Anyway, the Cold War was running kind of hot in 1983. As we now know from declassified files, the Russians were absolutely convinced that sooner or later, Ronald Reagan would launch nuclear weapons at them. We also now know that Ronald Reagan would never have used “the nuclear option,” even in retaliation. But in 1983, these facts were, as Don Rumsfeld would say, unknown unknowns.

  Vice President Bush was dispatched to undertake a PR blitz and handholding mission to our allies in Europe. Some years earlier, NATO countries had petitioned the United States, asking us to deploy on their soil intermediate-range Pershing nuclear missiles and air-launched cruise missiles (“Al-Cums,” in the grim parlance of Armageddon), in order to defend them against similar weapons already deployed by Russia.

  Then, having asked us, the Europeans came under pressure from peace movements and the Soviet Union. They backed down and wanted to cancel the order, as it were. But the U.S. position was that these weapons were vital to maintain the balance of power. (Or if you prefer, balance of terror.) Mr. Bush’s mission was to reassure Europe that the United States was not thirsting to initiate Armageddon, and to stiffen its spine so that the deployments could go forward.

  We went to eight countries in nine days; or nine countries in eight days. I can’t remember, my head is still spinning. It was grueling, but in the end, successful. NATO went through with the deployments and six years later the Berlin Wall came down.