“Among the small number of things that I have liked and known how to do well, what I have assuredly known how to do best is drink.” — G. Debord, situationist
As the Lenten dinner guests left, and all the chatter in the house fell facefirst onto the platform bed, and the fireplace grew cold with dead ash, and the clockradio’s coroner’s report on Friday night said that the evening expired peacefully at 12:53 a.m.—as all that happened—I accumulated my tenth straight day of life dry as a Mormon on a Sunday. It was the precise same moment, ten days prior, that I last fingered the snifter of Lillet Rouge at Cafe Figaro—Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, technically seeping a little into Ash Wednesday—and polished off the last sweet whiff-of-orange-infused drops. (It was still Shrove Tuesday for me, as for me, religious days do not begin at midnight, but at sunrise.) I had just been outside, saying goodbye to the guests, furtively—my blood oxygen-deficient from the cold—ten days dry, it would take much wiggling to recover.
Duly noting here that ten dry days is scarcely a milestone worth duly noting. The only thing noteworthy about the fact was the surfeit of Pellegrino bottles in attendance. I bought myself one for the dinner. Lynn came home also toting a Pellegrino bottle. Later, Lisa arrived with flowers—and a Pellegrino bottle. I put the flowers in a vase and the bottles in the fridge. After dinner, Lynn suspected a conspiracy: somehow I had controlled all gifting behavior, including her own.
~~~
We sat down to dine. Lisa asked that I say a blessing. I objected on the grounds that I was the only male present, and also the tallest; two all-too-common selection practices. Yet there remained a grudging consensus. I think at bottom people like me saying grace or a blessing not because I am tall and male but because I am so flippant and non-saccharine when speaking spirit to a table of mixed beliefs. I did ultimately consent, and sideswept Lent in the blessing anyway—for it was indeed a Lenten Friday dinner, fish and pea soup and salad, all simple and tidy and meatless. There were no crossings of the self, no mentions of Trinity (a word which famously does not appear in the New Testament), no acknowledgments to anyone in particular except vague, lugubrious universal presences—and Lent.
~~~
Neither my table blessings nor ten days dry nor even Lent itself perplex people half as much as Catholicism does. Of course Catholicism perplexes people; most of all, it perplexes its own adherents. Bennion, opposite me, commences a line of inquiry regarding my Ash Wednesday confession with Cardinal Mahony [click for as many details as it is appropriate to divulge] straightaway. She never pounces, Bennion—no, when she is interested, she plays at conversation like Karpov with the white pieces, the slow suffocator, moving deliberately, maddeningly patiently, wrapping a little tighter with each opportunity. She is all attention and no hurry. When she is getting somewhere she wants to go, she sounds increasingly suggestive, nearly Socratic. But she lets you answer with much more than yes or no. She is asking things in a way that will, she hopes, lead to a certain revelatory point. She does not make the point herself—it will either be made or not made by the respondent.
In this instance, she is more curious about confession itself than about Mahony in particular. I am more inclined to talk about His Eminence than violate the sancitity of the box. Of course, identified as someone who knows a thing or two about the faith, and as someone who may occasionally try to chat up his dead parents, or even essay a prayer to a saint with a carbuncle on her forehead, I only invite all questions. I am also very aware that the world in general is very curious about Catholicism, and most of that curiosity is expressed in the hope that it will be found that Catholicism is somehow more wrong than, say, Buddhism, or Marxism, or acupuncture, or ice hockey. Even most Catholics themselves approach Catholicism in this way; curious about it, also curious to see if tripwires are easily set for it.
~~~
I wriggle free even before the crostini are finished. With me not drinking wine, there’s much much more for everyone else. The three women are on bouteille le troisieme. Lynn, a little tipsily, takes out the tilapia while I lay the potatoes and baked chevre across the salad. As long as Lynn and I stick to our own respective dishes, we’re fine—otherwise, it’s always too many cooks.
Lisa mentions that she’s desiging cuffs of late, an innocent admission. Nothing is purely innocent before Bennion. She zeroes in again, a red-tail hawk with talons under the table. Given that corsets are also in vogue of late, and cuffs are also constraining to women, and that this is a table with three women who work in fashion…Bennion waits, waits, waits for the description of the cuffs, the description of the guy who’s also into cuffs, the market analysis of all of cuffdom, the basic status of cuffery today…she waits, and waits, and finally offers: “How is it that you’re drawn to the most constraining kind of accessory? How do you feel about it?”
I’m thinking the question is a mere stab, but I’m wrong—it strikes paydirt.
~~~
[Interlude: I get a parenthetical pass on my own constricting accessory of choice. Nobody makes mention of the fact that I so often wear scarves in the past few years, and typically wear them fairly tightly, even here in LA. I am simply cold, almost all the time. At night, walking outside, I wrap them around my face, even covering my nose. I hate inhaling cold air—it goes down to my kidneys immediately, and I feel like I’m dying of stagefright. I could be ill; it could be a natural condition; it could be anxiety; I don’t know. I only know that alcohol helps it, immensely. Right now, ten days dry, it’s like I’m perpetually in a drafty airport hangar.
Today I was heartened to see three straight customers in line at Trader Joe’s, all wearing scarves. I’m not alone. It could be simply this series of extra cold winters, not cold by any measure from elsewhere, but too cold for any native, fortysomething, middle-aged but declining Angeleno.]
~~~
Lisa agreeably owns up to all kinds of simpatico constrictions. She talks about them fairly freely, even with some gusto.
The conversation leaps to the fireplace—I tried the 7/11 firewood, which worked only passably well. Asaf, back from Pakistan, was stunned to think of me carrying a portable cord of firewood half a mile back to chez heureusement.
[Incidentally, I asked him if he was jet-lagged from the 24 hour trip.
“Jet lag?” he shrugs. “No, man. No jet lag in Pakistan.”]
Other constrictions at the fireplace: tattoos, the postmodern fragmented state of America. Lisa wonders if Lynndie England is a symptom of a fragmented culture. Bennion is cold despite her own scarf and jacket. Lynn has her lemon bars out; they’re an enormous hit. The fire would die without the gas flames heating it.
~~~
I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion.
—Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
But Lent itself is constricting as any cuff or scarf or corset; there’s no doubt about it; and if you’re Catholic, you can even get a tattoo-like tribal marking on Ash Wednesday, an beloved unsubtle reminder of the chokehold that death has on us all.
Lent in the Clinton years was merry and sugar-coated, and we were entreated to do something positive, constructive, and ecumenical, rather than “give something up.” His Eminence our Cardinal himself appeared with two other local Protestant bishops one Ash Wednesday in the late ’90’s on stage at USC in an unlikely ecumenical mash-up service involving three religions.
But that was then, the nineties, when Lent was competing with stocks and shares and restaurants. Back to basics in the zeroes: war, division, home cooking. American Lent now is spare, insular, formal, ritual. I must say, for me, after ten days, it’s turning out the old grim practices of contemplation, repentence and abstinence are working in their usual their mystical ways. An admission, though: I am one of those who believe that the simplest dinner with friends is flush with mystery, riddled with meanings, rife with sacramental moments. Ten days dry, ten days of Lent, ten days of contemplation and ten days of lotus positiony awareness, and my mind is swept too much by ecstasy to make any point tidily, or even merely. One hemisphere thinks I need the alcohol, not just to stay warm, but to check the exploding brainwaves, to reel them in to a more manageable circuit. The other hemisphere thinks that unchecked schizobriety is the only fully-engaged writing, convenience to readers be damned, and that a personal Clear unto oneself is the only lucidity that matters.
