Léopold Survage: Plate V
[Rhythmes Colorés: Cinq Lithographies Originales in Couleurs
(20th century)

"My presence will be best represented there in the future by my absence."

The Muse and I went to dinner last night with a group from a local alumni association. This group does good works, and our host helps. In addition to their good works, they also organize these suppers where three or four couples gather to share courses and conversation. We were responsible for the appetizer course. The Muse made some fancy crackers adorned with goat cheese and Mirabelle jam. She also made some icy hot gazpacho to serve as soup. Another brought a salad, another wine, and another a rhubarb pie. Our hostess made a casserole with deplorable green beans that were overcooked, leathery, and nasty. Fortified and distracted, we commenced to attempt to conduct a conversation around that table.

The conversation did not go well. I'd been to two other dinners our host had attended. In both instances, the cadence of her comments consistently prevented the conversation from developing into something enjoyable for anyone. Her speech pattern seemed most similar to a bull in a china shop, disruptive to the point that whatever purpose that time might have served was undermined. The last time we had been invited to dinner at her house, I'd sworn to The Muse that I would never again attend any gathering there. When she announced last night's pairing, I reminded her of my earlier oath, but I had deferred my final decision until it was too late to gracefully exit before engaging. I prepared as if for root canal surgery.

She presents as so isolated that she's starving for attention. If she's not preventing anyone else from getting a single word in sideways, she's injecting another irrelevant question. Someone might be disclosing some intimate thought when she comments on the color of their socks and then begins, without invitation, with a colorful story about the interesting socks she's seen in the past. The way distant past. She offers no transitions or translations, and she mentions people she only references by their first names. We might later learn that that was her long-dead little brother, but in the moment, we're speechless and lost. Asking a clarifying question guarantees another unwanted extension or another wild ass branch into an utterly different irrelevance.

After an hour or more of being subjected to this patter, my speech clutch shows definite signs of wear. It's not just that I feel left out; I sense that everyone else around the table has come to feel the futility in even trying to be civil with each other there. One might manage to slip in no more than a part of a comment before our hostess interrupts with yet another "interesting" and irrelevant observation. The conversation never finds its rhythm, but only because it can't. We made as early an exit as we could decently affect. I sat up for more than an hour past my usual bedtime, struggling to regain my composure. I felt as if I'd been ridden.

The Muse noted that last night was a bit better than the prior time, when our hostess had subjected us to her Bible lesson as we struggled through our dessert. She'd been engaged in a lengthy self-study course designed to help her properly think about her Bible. The workbooks were apparently designed to tell her what the Bible verses really meant, and she had been dutifully memorizing lest she incorrectly interpret something herself. Seated at the opposite end of the table that evening was one of the most vehemently atheist people in town, and she was as offended as if she'd been a Jew being subjected to New Testament lessons against her will, which, of course, she more or less was. She left in a cloud of brimstone, which gave the rest of us cover to ditch before it might have otherwise been decent to do so. I swore I'd never return.

Nobody appreciates a know-it-all. Nobody really needs anybody to interrupt their stories. We share much more than supper when we get together, presumably for supper. We come to share ourselves. One suffocating person can suck all the air out of a dining room, and all the attention in the universe couldn't satisfy such neediness, certainly not over supper. I swore again that I would refuse to attend any future dinner featuring her as either host or guest, for the context costs me too much. I have better things to do than sacrifice my presence to listen to her incoherence. A small yet significant decency feels violated in her presence, one she will never understand. My presence will be best represented there in the future by my absence.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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