What I Said: It’s weird being back at parties, huh?
What They Heard: Do your anxieties ever lead to internal screaming?
What I Said: Oh, wow—hors d’œuvres on tiny plates. Every meal I’ve eaten in the past twenty-four months has been toast served on a paper napkin.
What They Heard: My two abiding passions in life are Shelley Duvall and anti-embolism stockings.
What I Said: Doesn’t anyone wear a mask around here?
What They Heard: I could be persuaded to adopt China’s policy of anal swabbing.
What I Said: I’m almost sixty. All celebrity gossip sounds to me like “Riri and A#ap Busy took their baby bump Lil Jeenyus to Pete Davidson’s chill zone!”
What They Heard: I enjoy the early silent films of Mary Pickford and Una Merkel.
What I Said: Can I get you a slice of birthday cake?
What They Heard: I occasionally gin up an act of thoughtfulness, lest people think I’ve gone feral.
What I Said: Is this party ’grammable? Isn’t that the word that you people under forty use for things that will look good on Instagram?
What They Heard: Would you mind slowly and expressionlessly backing away from me while I talk, like you’re a movie camera dollying out on its last, hideous reveal?
What I Said: Did you read that there’s a party in New York called Pheromone, for armpit fetishists who don’t wear deodorant?
What They Heard: In what ways have you tried to hurt your mother recently?
What I Said: Remember the experience of falling into conversation with the slightly crazy-looking person sitting next to you on a bus or a plane? I miss that. Once, on a bus into the city, I sat next to an academic who’d translated an obscure nineteenth-century text about space travel, and he spoke Martian to me! Now I’ll forever associate the Interplanetary Meepzdor Flogba Proclamation with the Mosholu Parkway.
What They Heard: I keep all my savings in Central Park, under a rock I call Mr. Banky. There is a village of tiny fishermen living inside my dishwasher.
What I Said: All of literary New York is here. I saw Colson Whitehead in the stairwell and Jennifer Egan on the roof. The critics Christian Lorentzen and Lauren Christensen just arrived—if they got married, they’d be Lauren and Christian Christensen-Lorentzen.
What They Heard: It’s weird how “lonely” has an “e” in it but “only” doesn’t.
What I Said: I miss acquaintanceship. It seems like these past two years have found us spending more time than ever with our families and our inner circles, but no time whatsoever with people who are on the acquaintance level. Too much psychic insularity, no? And, in practical terms, don’t most job referrals and dating fix-ups come through acquaintances rather than through friends? We’ve been missing a rich source of social nutrients.
What They Heard: I’m self-publishing a handbook called “In Search of the Male Yoni.”
What I Said: Why is no one else bothered by how loud the music is? I’m worried that Alex’s upstairs neighbor is going to call the cops!
What They Heard: When I got my booster, I asked the pharmacist to give me the shot in my ass, just for the attention.
What I Said: I think I’ll head home now. I’ve really enjoyed myself, but it’s weird—I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a kind of force field between me and everyone I’ve encountered here tonight. It’s as if our conversation has been in speech bubbles, with each statement in a different font. I think I need to go home and practice talking in front of a mirror. I hope all my armchair philosophizing didn’t freak you out.
What They Heard: Hug? Anal swab? ♦
