CultureHack, Triangulated

Okay, It's like this: I'm in my study with the new Sonny Rollins live collection playing at concert level. The volume's needed to drown out the house guests, who are rooms away, but you'd never know it from the noise that surrounds them in much the same way smog clings to Los Angeles. And yes, I lied about what I'm doing in here; writing I said, but hell, the Nisus Writer Pro window with the novel's "whirring" sequence is--what?--buried beneath maybe five other applications?

Know this too: I'm contemplating bringing a bottle of scotch in here and then barricading the door with a bookcase, preferably the one containing all 20 volumes of the OED. The tentative plan being to hole-up in here until the house guests finally give up and let themselves out. Study-as-safe-room; study-as-sanctuary; study-as-cloister. Writer Holds Himself Hostage, Demands Retreat And Departure Of Failed House Guests. A daily supply of sushi could be arranged for delivery at the window. With enough scotch and sushi, I’d easily out-last the bastards. And for a large enough tip, the delivery guy might even cart-off the empty trays and drained teriyaki packets from the previous meal. This has begun to solidify; this indeed might be a Plan . . .

Am I being a poor host? Well, yeah--absolutely. But--and this is crucial--they first proved themselves to be substandard guests. Leaving them to weep tears of boredom and slowly starve is vengeance, not a pre-emptive strike. Because they've got the whole invade/conquer thing down to a science; trust me on this. 

How did it come to this? Me, in the study, contemplating a vast reservoir of scotch. Them, out there, whooping it up to on-demand films that will undoubtedly destroy any aging-hipster street-cred I may have left. (Contemplate my next cable bill: The Seventh Seal, Vertigo, O, Lucky Man, Ernest Saves Christmas, Ernest Saves Easter, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Chicken Ranch Girls, Saw IV, Inland Empire, The Royal Tenenbaums . . .) Ultimately, the problem is my hopeful, naive notion that perhaps the host/house guest relationship was a symbiotic one. As the much younger Slashdot crowd would say, Epic Fail. 

I think it was Evelyn Waugh via Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited who compared conversation to juggling glittering pieces of good china. Forgive me if I don’t Google to verfiy this--awash in visions of scotch, sushi and bookcases, I’m not so inclined. But no matter, because the paraphrase--whoever might have originally said it--is what I happen to believe. And my house guests, well, they don’t juggle, and care not a jot for either glitter or good china . . . 

The take-away, the moral of this sad, real-life fable, is not to get carried away and extend invitations for holidays you don’t believe in to people that, ultimately, you don’t really care about. See this as the social equivalent of getting drunk and waking up with a tattoo on your chest of a nude Vanessa Redgrave circa 1968: It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now, well, maybe not so much.

But having vented here, I shall take a deep breath, pull myself together and open the door to the study, wading back into the banalities and racket of my Massive Social Miscalculation. I’ll do my best Cary Grant while, in reality, understanding that I’m actually the blinking-too-much Hugh Grant. But, at the same time, I’m going to Keep My Options Open: There’s a liter of scotch within easy, instant reach and the sushi place is in my iPhone’s Favorites list. You know, just in case . . .