Brenda and the F Word

Think of all the things, the physical, three dimensional things, we no longer need to touch: pens, pencils, maps, newspapers, records, books, film (if you’re an editor), CD’s, DVD’s…They’re disappearing.
Now think of the last revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and of how it was the appearance, not the disappearance, of things: of radios and planes and trains and cars, that radically changed our lives. It’s fascinating to me. This transformation of the concrete into the abstract. And how uncanny and clever, the name of that Apple, hand-held device, the iTouch. This name that alludes to the past but gently ushers us into the next, new dimension…

I have been afraid of authority figures all my life. Rather than rebel or “resolve” the issue, I’ve managed to avoid them. Professionally, for instance. I’m a free-lancer. A nomad. Which means that even if I pitch to power, I can afford to take risks, to be brave, because I have less to lose. Sure, these powers-that-be, these authority figures, can fire me. And they have from time to time. But they can’t cut off my health insurance or kill my pension fund. I don’t depend on them. Some of this terror developed from watching my parents. The authority figure was my father and the fear, the fear incarnate, was my mother. What I can’t figure out is how/why the fuck I became the very thing I fear most? An authority figure. How does that work? And how in hell, this late in the game, do I fix it?

I couldn’t imagine Mr Auchincloss or his wife, Adele, ever losing their tempers or their patience. Perhaps, because unlike the chaos of my own home and upbringing, everything around them seemed in perfect order. And probably had been since Plymouth Rock. But they were a remarkably odd couple. He, somewhat effete, cerebral. All skull, skin, tight, pale-faced. She, big-boned and ruddy, almost mannish in appearance. She gardened for hours in a pair of baggy old khakis and had a wonderful laugh. More like a guffaw. “She didn’t let my father take himself too seriously,” his son, John, said during his eulogy. “And without her, he would have never discovered the outdoors; places like the Amazon and Alaska.”

He certainly was an indoors kind of guy, Mr. Auchincloss. Sedentary in all but his mind. A true urbanite. But both of them had manners. Oh, yes. Manners bred as deeply into the bone as reticence itself. It was a code, a civility, that had less to do with please and thank you and more to do with morals; with puritan like principles. I have no doubt that it is manners not money that shaped their opinions of others. The irony, of course, is that Mr. Auchincloss wrote a great deal about money. The perfidious, corrosive, insulating nature of old-time money, power and privilege. But he was as discreet in his dissection of this very particular, peculiar society as he was precise. Even if his writing never quite moved me, not the way Wharton does, I was always in awe of his mind, his discipline, his eye for detail, and his phenomenal memory.

Which brings me, circuitously, to Leigh’s eloquent comments yesterday. About the darker side of the WASP ethos: “the alcohol fueled chilliness”, the formality passed down through generations, and the selfishness of parents who live for themselves rather than for their children. I am certainly not in favor of selfishness. But I continue to believe in the virtues of separateness. (Which, by the way, is not the same as secretiveness.) Too much information, all the hovering and helping, it can cripple a child’s rebellious instincts. And without rebellion, there is no independence. I shuddered when I heard that my son had read The Nearly Departed at 15 years-old. Not only was he too young, the memoir blurred the boundaries that keep parents/adults safely apart. For him, the brutality, the intimacy of my own experience, was simply too hard to process; to assimilate as anything other than uncomfortable amounts of information. Enough. One more intriguing observation, however. There was only one son at Tuesday’s service. I wonder where the other two had gone?

There were more limousines parked outside the Church of Heavenly Rest yesterday than there are parked outside M-40, Jay Z’s club, on a Thursday night. I was there with hundreds of others to pay my respects to Louis Auchincloss. And no, it was not entirely a Harold and Maude like moment. I babysat for his boys one summer. Anyway, great story tellers often become the stuff of great stories themselves. Even the non-story about the reclusive J.D. Salinger became a great story. This is what I thought as I sat in my pew and listened to friends and family talk about his life. Lawyer, man of letters, “professional New Yorker,” Louis (pronounced Louie like the old Louie Louie song) died at the venerable age of 92 last week. But everything about the man seemed venerable even when I met him as a young girl. He was in his mid-fifties then. Lean with a beaky nose and extremely delicate hands. Long slender fingers. Thin lips. Dark penetrating eyes. He spoke with that old-fashioned English, mid-Atlantic, voice I associate with George Plimpton and Bill Buckley.

Joe Kanon, editor, novelist, and once-upon-a-time publisher of Houghton Mifflin spoke of that “stentorian” voice; of how even when used in a stage-whisper, it often silenced an entire restaurant. “Gossip was just another form of story telling for Louis. And everyone, including waiters, wanted to eavesdrop.” He also spoke of his “work” with Mr. Auchincloss. “Work”,” he said “that consisted primarily of arranging launch parties and long lunches for the two of us. Because Louie was so good and such a perfectionist, he didn’t need an editor.” (With over 60 books listed on Amazon, there must have been a hell of a lot of parties, I thought.) Then he mentioned a lunch right after Louis had received a call from Martin Scorsese.
“He wants me to work on his new movie, The Age of Innocence,” Louis told me.
“Doing what?” I said. “Surely not writing.”
“No, of course not, Joe. They want me to talk.”
“Talk?” I said.
“Yes, yes,” he said, impatiently. “They want me on the set so the cast can hear how people spoke back in Edith’s day. (Edith being Wharton. Dead for the past 73 years or so.)
“But Louis,” I said. “No one talks like you. No one ever did.”
“Yes, but they won’t know that,” he laughed.
There was the story of another call he received at his law office that I loved, too.
“Louis had asked his secretary not to disturb him. He was in conference, discussing a last will and testament. Twenty minutes into the meeting, the secretary poked her head through the door.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’ll want to take this.”
“I asked for no calls,” Louis said.
“But it’s the Pope.”
Louis took it.

What would the Pope want to chat about with a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant like Auchincloss, I wondered. I also wondered if the man had chosen Estate work on purpose; for the sake of his writing. Money was one of his most obsessive subjects. And with the exception of divorce, nothing reveals more about our feelings about money, not to mention other human beings, than the prospect of death.

There were stories about travelling with Auchincloss from the formidable Evelyn Halpert, one of his oldest friends and the former headmistress of the Brearley School.
“If we were driving, well, if I was driving, through a particularly flat or boring region of France, let’s say, Louis would sit in the back seat and entertain us by reciting stanzas of Racine’s poetry. He knew them all by heart.”
“Just keeping up with my French,” Louis would say.
“But nobody speaks 17th century French anymore, Louis.”
“I do,” he would say before launching into a bit of Corneille.”

Obviously, my relationship with Mr. Auchincloss wasn’t quite as intimate. I saw him only from a “safe” distance. I did know that he was working on his Wharton book that summer because we traveled, briefly, to Newport. But most of the time, we “children” lived separate lives. When we visited the house up on Lake Champlain, for instance, we stayed in a cottage within shouting distance (not that I ever remember anyone shouting at the Auchincloss’s) of what we called “the grown up’s” house. The boundaries here between children and grown-ups couldn’t have been more precisely or painlessly defined. Children dropped by after lunch then again during cocktails. Afternoons were also sometimes spent in grown-up company. Sailing, mostly. Otherwise, we inhabited our own blissfully peaceful, private world. A world of reading (there was no television in either of their houses), swimming, picnicking and napping. (during which time I was free to sunbathe on a deserted back below the cottage.) In short, this was not a place where parents were ever mistaken for friends. There was no warring between the two camps. Just mutual respect and a tacit belief that children grew more healthily without the constant surveillance and smothering presence of adults. (Is it coincidence? The connection between the words mother and smother?)

The end tomorrow. If I succeed in posting the fucker. Pardon the 21st century English.

fuck!

A new concept for bars. Tuesday nights only. Show your iPhone at the door. Get half off the price of your favorite cocktail. Then c’mon on in and drink/chat with the hundreds of other ‘appy users. (Haha!) Show off your new flashlight app, R.newest purchase. Very fun for those who’ve never seen a flashlight. Ditto for the jogger app. Which illustrates how to do it for the millions who may not be familiar with jogging. (And where the fuck might that be, I wonder?) I, personally, like the iOwn app. For yes! Keeping track of everything you possess except important things like a sense of humor and a brain. Then, there’s the Grocery IQ app for making lists and this, my all-time fav–The how to browse and search the app store app. It’s outta control, guys. I mean it. But see you there!

I have a tendency to scribble my thoughts on the back pages of books. It’s a filthy habit, I know. So Saturday, I get a call from my son, J. He’s working with his Dad at a shoot in Belgium. I can tell he’s nervous. Embarrassed.
“Mom?” he says. Then “Mom?” again.
“I’m here, J. What’s up?”
“That book you sent me? The Art of Deception?”
“Fabulous, right? Best thriller she ever wrote!”
“Yeah. But that’s not why I’m calling. There’s stuff written in the back…”
“I always do that,” I say. “Which doesn’t mean you should.”
“Well, it’s really weird, Mom. I wish I hadn’t seen it.”
“Oh Jesus!” I’m thinking. This is NOT good.
“Weird, how?” I ask, calmly.
He’s stammering. “Weird like “I’m a free bitch. And do you want to fuck me.”
I’m laughing so hysterically, I can’t breathe.
“It’s not funny, Mom.”
“Yes, it is, J. Relax.”
“Why should I?”
“Because it’s Lady Gaga not me. It’s stuff she said at the concert. I was gonna blog it.”
“Oh my God!” he yelps with relief before fits of laughter. “I was terrified Dad would see it.”
“I miss you, J. Say hi to Dad!”
He hangs up, still guffawing.

There are some kids who would never have “shared” this discovery; who would have probably kept their mouths shut, harboring the secret for years, while assuming their mother had lost it. Or worse. But I’ll certainly bear this moment in mind the next time I’m free associating/scribbling down my thoughts in the dead of night.