When I was young

When I was young, I sat outside my parents’ house at 3AM looking at the stars through binoculars. Once a policeman drove by and asked me what I was doing. So I showed him the Pleiades.

When I was young I calculated how old I would be in the year 2000. The number seemed preposterously high. As if I had accidentally hit the “factorial” button on my first hand-held calculator instead of the “sum” button. I was sure there was an error somewhere. Some force would intervene either to prevent the year 2000 from coming or to prevent me from reaching it.

When I was young I worked on Wall Street. On October 19, 1987, I was on jury duty at Foley Square. I called my girlfriend, a graphic artist, during a break in the jury selection process. I thought she would wish me a happy birthday, my last before turning 30, but instead she asked me what was happening on Wall Street?! How was I to know? I was on jury duty at Foley Square. When I did find out, I was sorry I had missed the excitement, but otherwise I didn’t really care, because I didn’t have any money invested in the stock market.

When I was young, I rose at 6AM to do three laps of Central Park on my bike before work. I spent at least one day every weekend on a group ride outside the city. My vacations often consisted of bike tours. France, the California coast and Vermont were some of the destinations. When I coasted down a big hill, I thought to myself, “It’s great to be alive.” Buying a new derailleur and freewheel cluster was a big event. I had to save up for it....and for the bike tours.

When I was young I was an avid baseball fan. My obsession with the sport peaked in 1969, then again in 1986. In that year, I saw the seventh game of the World Series after spending what seemed like a small fortune for one ticket. In the days prior to the game I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Then the big day came. It was the fifth inning, and my team was losing. It wasn’t possible that I had come through all this to see them lose in the seventh game of the World Series.

When I was young in New York taxis would have been a strain on my budget. So if I had to go somewhere with no convenient subway connection, I walked. I covered the distance from my sister’s apartment on 53rd between 1st and 2nd to my apartment on 55th between 8th and 9th innumerable times on foot. I virtually had the buildings memorized, and I enjoyed being out in the fresh, albeit urban, air, regardless of season.

When I was young I cooked. It seemed everyone else in New York was going out to the latest, most sublime eatery, and only I couldn’t afford them. I learned a lot about the culinary arts during those years, much more than I would have from going to those trendy restaurants.

In another week I’ll turn 50. Now I worry about the stock market.

Going back

I couldn’t sleep the other night and it wasn’t because of the results of the referendum. I had numbers floating in my brain. “Eighty” first of all. But also “seventy-nine” and “eighty-one”. And “ninety”, “fifty-five” and “eighty-eight”. And “oh-three”, “oh-four” and “oh-five”. The numbers were floating on a sea of orange costumes. Some costumes included sport jackets, some could be mistaken for firefighters’ jackets, some had Chinese calligraphy, some could be worn by race car drivers. But they had one thing in common. They were all sported by graduates of an American university on the occasion of one of its most tradition-steeped events: Princeton Reunions.

Princeton Reunions, four days of partying, reconnecting, recollecting and learning, take place on the Princeton University campus between the end of final exams and graduation. Alumni from every class attend, with the greatest representation coming in the round-number years: the 5th reunion, the 10th, the 15th, and so on. Out of the one thousand or so members of my 25th reunion class, around 500 attended. Of the 680 or so living members of the class of ’55, the 50th reunion, about 350 attended. Each reunion is assigned a courtyard on the campus which becomes its headquarters for four days. There is music and dancing, and the beer flows freely. Elsewhere on campus, there are lectures, conferences, discussion groups, shows put on by undergraduates, and “arch sings” – short concerts given by a capella singing groups under the many acoustically-blessed Gothic archways on campus.

It’s been twenty-five years since I graduated from Princeton University, but when the conductor on the New Jersey Transit shuttle train that brought me into town last Thursday announced that Princeton would be the next and only stop, for a moment I felt like a freshman again, arriving on campus for the first time, apprehensive about what my life would be like for the next four years and more than a little overwhelmed by it all. An hour later I met S., another member of my graduating class, who has been to nearly all of our 25 reunions. For several years, she said, she had “test anxiety” whenever she set foot on the campus.

Five years ago I attended our 20th reunion, having had little contact with the Princeton community over the previous 12 years. That time I was filled with anxiety. Who would I see? Would they remember me? Would my life and career measure up to theirs? Would I want them to remember me as I had been 20 years earlier? Would they want to know me as I am now? But it was a revelation. All the insecurities, the competitiveness, the need to be clever, all melted away and I related to my former classmates on a completely new level. Moreover, I learned that they had been suffering the same anxieties. In fact, some friendships started at that 20th reunion.

This time was an opportunity to extend the “success” of five years ago. Leveraging that experience, before I left, I wrote to some people I hadn’t seen in these 25 years, including T., one of my freshman year roommates. I was hesitant about it, because we hadn’t got on that well with each other that year, and hardly saw each other after that, even while we were undergraduates. I had this lingering sense of guilt that I had never been very polite with him. Maybe he would hold it against me if I wrote to him. So I screwed up my courage and hit “send”.

In fact, seeing T. again was particularly satisfying. We saw each other on the first evening after the Class of ’80 talent show. He is now a jazz musician and has been teaching music at Princeton for the last 16 years. I told him about my anxieties and about how I used to do and say the most outlandish things. He said he was touched by my e-mail. I think he understood my desire to let it all out because he told me exactly the same story I had in mind to tell him.

One winter evening during the 1976-77 school year, I was studying in the common room in our dormitory suite. I was having trouble understanding what I was studying and as often happened then, I started getting hot under the collar about it – literally. So I opened the window wide. The only problem was that it was about eight degrees Fahrenheit outside. T. was also studying in the same room, and he had a cold to boot. Somehow I had trouble understanding that someone else might be cold when I was hot. T. said that L., another of our roommates, also present at our 25th Reunion, virtually had to hold him back. But 25 years later - no, 29 years later - we were both able to laugh about it, and I felt very relieved.

I saw Professor M. for the first time in at least 25 years and we agreed not to let another 25 years go by without any contact. I saw about half of the members of my "Outdoor Action" group, with whom I spent a week canoeing, hiking and spelunking before starting classes freshman year. I saw my cousin from the class of 2003 and learned a few things about Princeton today, ... or in the recent past, anyway.

It was fun to make contact with the other "internationalists". S. was there from Madrid. L., the intervening freshman-year roommate, was there from Norway. P. was there from Geneva. T. was there from Beijing. And P., whom I had never met before, was there from Japan. Many of the contacts I made were facilitated by H., who hosted me and several other classmates. Indeed, I met several classmates I had not seen since graduation or simply never met before and had a great time talking to them. Now if I can only remember what they said to me. Come on, Steve, think. You went to Princeton, you can do this ….

Theater memories

Concentration has never been my strong suit, and a typical day of translation work is peppered with internet searches for something urgent, such as an early 1950s-vintage Citroën Traction (more on that another time). That I am supposed to appear on stage and sing a song Friday in front of 100 or so strangers as part of my voice workshop is not helping me to concentrate (more on that in a few days if I survive). But it is making my daydreaming performance-oriented.

My last – and only – period of intense theater activity took place in high school, between the ages of 15 and 17. As this was Long Island, NY in the 1970s, the repertoire was the American musical comedies of the 1940s and 1950s (you have to please the parents): South Pacific, Carousel, Kiss Me Kate, Bye Bye Birdie and others. The memory that pops into my head was from a summer production of Applause, the then-recent Broadway adaptation of the 1950 film All About Eve.

I rarely had a major role in these shows because they all required solo singing. Maybe that’s why I’m doing a voice workshop now, though it’s a wee bit late. So I was usually in the chorus, which required singing, but no solos. My friend L., however, landed a minor role in Applause. It was minor compared to the major roles, but it was major compared to the chorus. This status got L. access to the “stars” dressing room. He liked that. To stoke my jealousy, he described the scene. Among other things, the stars often had to make elaborate costume changes at lightning speed, and there wasn't enough space for privacy. He liked that, too. Would I like to see for myself, he magnanimously offered.

A few days later, during one of the dress rehearsals, L. and I wandered into the “stars” dressing room, deep in conversation (on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, if I remember correctly), as nonchalantly as we could manage. Sure enough, there was F., who played the leading role of Margo Channing, her top half bereft of all clothing, her face attended by a make-up artist, her look generally fretful. Satisfied, L. suggested we continue our conversation (by now we had moved on to Much Ado about Nothing) elsewhere, as it was noisy in the “stars” dressing room.

During one of the performances a few days later, I took advantage of a few scenes in which I didn’t have any entrances to watch the play from the wings. After a few minutes, N., playing Eve Harrington, the other leading female role, appeared, looked around anxiously and asked me, could I hold this dress for her please. She then made her entrance in the next scene. A few minutes later F. appeared.

“What are you doing here?” It was all she could do to keep her voice a whisper.
“I’m watching the show.”
“What are you doing with that dress?”
“N. asked me to hold it for her.”
“Give me that. You just want to see N’s tits.”

Over the years, whenever this scene has wafted forward in time from its never-too-distant hiding place at the mouth of some cerebral cave, it has always been accompanied by the responses I could have offered, but didn’t.

Defensive: “But I was just standing here …”
Apologetic: “I really was rather boorish the other day, wasn't I?”
Wise guy: “Oh, is that why she asked me to hold it?”
Vicious: “Not to worry. If they’re anything like yours, I won’t be sticking around.”

Alas, never was a young face whiter, a young jaw slacker, young eyes wider and a young mind blanker than mine were that evening. I handed her the dress and fled.

On Friday I’ll be singing Un Homme Heureux (William Sheller) as part of a duet. Wish us luck!

Diane Arbus

There was an article in Saturday’s New York Times about a Diane Arbus exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum. As I read about her life and her work, I realized how closely tied they were to New York and how much they drew me back there. I read the descriptions of some of the photos in the exhibit, and I could see them before me although it’s been 20 years since I last looked at them. I remember the chronological progression in her monograph, entitled simply “Diane Arbus”. The people with something unusual about them, the people who look normal but are hiding something mysterious, then the “freaks”, and finally, the mentally retarded. My photography teachers at Princeton knew her and one said he saw her a few days before she died, that she had her cameras with her and seemed excited about taking pictures again.

When I lived in New York my haunts included photo galleries and book shops, where I gravitated to the photography books like a bee to a flower bed. Sooner or later I always found myself with the Diane Arbus book in hand. I leafed through it so many times I nearly memorized it. I couldn’t afford then to collect books of all my favorite photographers, nor did I have room in my 160ft² (16m²) apartment to keep them. My brother-in-law used to call my apartment “the hovel”.

A friend once took me to a Diane Arbus exhibit in New York while I was still living there. I have never seen anything like it before or since. It was a performance. The space was divided into booths. In each booth were people dressed as the subjects of her photos, with the décor to match. Suddenly everyone snapped into position and there was a flash of light. An image was fixed on my retina. It was the image of a Diane Arbus photo. Then I went into the next booth.

There are parts of my life in New York that have never found an echo here in France. There’s no French counterpart to replace them. France is neither a continuation of them, nor an answer to them, nor the antidote, just different, something other. In some respects it has taken me a long time to open up to France’s otherness, or my experience of it as otherness, to allow a place for it inside me. When I have, usually through another person’s enthusiasm, the experience has been rewarding, first on an intellectual level, then on an emotional attachment level. There are wonderful things here, some that I have already discovered (it’s only been 15 years!), others that are waiting to be discovered.

Now I can afford those photography books and could order them easily from Amazon, but I haven’t got the courage to do it. I’m afraid to re-open a closed chapter of my life, apprehensive about what I might find inside.

But I still miss New York.

Domestic debates

Riverbend has written a very funny piece entitled “Chalabi for the Nobel Peace Prize”. It’s about political debate in Iraq, but I won’t spoil it for you; you have to go there yourself and read it.

On a personal level, her post reminded me of political debate between my father and my uncle when I was growing up. Whenever the family got together for a holiday meal, they went at each other, one provoking the other with some comment intended to gain an advantage. My father, usually on the defensive, would raise his voice – I’d say little by little, but in fact it was all at once – while my uncle calmly, but loudly, reeled off anecdotes and analogies to prove his point, whatever it was. The analogies usually had some compelling logic to them, which infuriated my father, never a particularly logical debater, even more. My uncle camped on his position, convinced of the rightness and righteousness of it. Needless to say, the debates dominated the dinner hour and no other discussion was possible.

I say this took place while I was growing up, but in fact, the debates continued well into my adulthood (and their old age). In the later years the arguments became vicious. Several times, my father and my uncle stopped talking to each other, made amends, then stopped again. The arguments really ended for good only with my father’s death two years ago, but in his last few years, they had hardly spoken to each other. In the family, the rest of us had always said that things would be saddest, not when they argued, but when they stopped arguing.

My mother was always searching for a way to defuse the arguments. She tried to find subjects my father and uncle could agree on, but these were rare. She also tried to make light of the issue from time to time, but her attempts at humor were waved off by the two serious men discussing the momentous issues of our time.

In her own personal relationships, she always found common ground with other people and focused on it. There were very few people in our family she ever broke with completely. Looking back, I think that was part of her legacy to me: keep the lines of communication open.

Now, if you haven’t read Riverbend’s post yet, click here.