#forgive me y'all but I'm back on my (Wendy Wasserstein) bullshit

[mariacallous]

“Jean Harlow’s Wedding Night” from Wendy Wasserstein’s “Bachelor Girls”

A man I was engaged to asked me to meet him in Paris. Credit Suisse was putting him up at the George V, he said, and wouldn’t it be pleasant to spend a few evenings together?

Well, that’s not really how the story goes. Actually, this banker I had been dating for two months was planning a business trip to Paris. I knew that New York would be unbearable without him since my career, my friends, my apartment, even my cat failed to provide me with a sense of fulfillment equal to what I felt in his company. So I managed after about three hundred phone calls, and after five days of putting all my other work on hold, to secure a writing assignment in Paris: “A Bachelor Girl’s Guide to Paris in the Springtime,” or whatever.

So that my banker friend wouldn’t dare think I was in Paris just to be near him or that my magazine assignment wasn’t my first priority, I arranged to stay at the Plaza-Athènèe. After all, I mean, why would a person with a room at the Plaza-Athènèe be desperate to spend the night at the George V?

Before my friend arrived, I spent three days in Paris thinking about him. I thought about him at the Musèe Rodin, at the Jo Goldenberg delicatessen, and at a showing of Back to the Future with French subtitles. The day before he arrived I wrote him a note from Madame de Staël, which I ripped up; a note from Simone de Beauvoir, which I ripped up; notes from Empress Josephine, Marie Curie, Desiree, Simone Weil - all of which I ripped up. Finally, I composed a simple and discreet note from myself, and left it in an envelope with his name on it at the front desk of the George V.

My banker friend liked my note. He called to thank me for it and invited me over to see his hotel suite. We stayed together that night in Paris. We ordered up champagne and salmon steak, and my friend asked whether I would mind if he watched the soccer match on TV. I didn’t mind. I’d been anticipating this moment for days. I could easily feign interest in those hyperactive men bobbing balls off their heads.

Eventually we went to bed. It was one of those torrid experiences when I wished I could be replaced by Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy. If only I could pretend he was the mechanical bull at Gilley’s. If only I had that kind of stamina. I was completely and totally smitten.

At 6 a.m. I rolled over on the 38,000-thread cotton sheets and felt him gone. I looked across the room toward the gilded rococo desk - there sat my friend, wearing jogging shorts and a Duke University T-shirt, lacing up his Nikes. His lanky runner’s body and his still youthful locks of curly hair shone in the morning light. I was convinced that I loved him more than any man I’d ever known.

I pulled a sheet around me and walked over to embrace him. I wanted him to know how very safe and protected he was with me, I wanted him to know that he didn’t have to run away at 6 a.m. As I went to press my lips to his head, he smiled boyishly and looked up at me with his very smart and very dear dark brown eyes.

“Honey, I’ve met someone new.”

Suddenly I became preposterously funny. I chatted on and on about the room service at the George Cinq; about the croissants, the waiter, the plates, anything that entered my mind. I had gotten as far as the Ayatollah Last Chance Diet when I finally made him smile. My hurt, my expectations, were none of his business. I wanted to keep the situation light. I wanted to keep it funny.

Most of the time I don’t feel particularly amusing. This is odd only because if you asked almost anyone of my acquaintance to name my outstanding characteristics, the answer you’d get most often would be, “Oh, she’s very funny.”

As a child, given a Saturday afternoon choice between Audrey Hepburn getting kissed in Technicolor on the “Million Dollar Movie” and an “I Love Lucy” rerun in which Lucy and Ethel dress up yet again to perform at Ricky’s Tropicana Club, I would invariably choose Lucy. I was one of those youngsters who cover their eyes and squeal “yuck” when in the end the boy gets the girl. Usually this was because the girl was so boring and what the boy loved about her was that she was so boring. If nothing else, Lucy and Ethel at least got to be lively. At least they were permitted to have runs in their stockings.

I first realized that other people found me funny when in the second grade, after careful practice, I brought down the classroom with my comedic routines on our prospects for lunch. (Vegetable Chop Suey was a highlight.) Through the next several years my satiric gifts allowed me to form alliances with rival “most popular girls in the class” because I was considered good company and had absolutely no interest in vying for their title. I was an elementary school Falstaff.

Being perceived as funny served me well even when it got me into trouble. My comments about Mrs.Haskell, our seventh-grade teacher, whom I was put on earth to single-handedly torture, were apparently so scathing that for an entire semester I was forced to stay after class two hours every day. But I didn’t mind. I still arrived home in time for dinner, and I got a good early start on my homework.

Anyone who is considered funny will tell you, sometimes without your even asking, that deep inside they are very serious, neurotic, introspective people. In other words, Eddie Murphy has the heart of Hannah Arendt and Joan Rivers is really J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Personally I don’t spend much time thinking about being funny. For me it’s always been just a way to get by, a way to be likable yet to remain removed. When I speak up, it’s not because I have any particular answers; rather, I have a desire to puncture the pretentiousness of those who seem so certain they do.

Therapists have on occasion told me to check my impulse to entertain - to stop being funny - and to allow my real emotions to surface. Sometimes this is helpful. But other times the ability to move beyond and above the sadness, even the tragedy, of a particular moment is one of life’s greatest survival mechanisms. There is nothing even vaguely amusing about the truth of the Holocaust, about AIDS, or about the human race’s capacity for self-annihilation. We should be grateful, then, that the minor mishaps of life, such as my ill-fated rendezvous with the banker, can be jostled into a wry position.

That morning in Paris I wasn’t just funny; I was angry, I felt hurt, I had been misled. Of course, I blamed it all on myself. If only I had worn red instead of that floral print, or Opium rather than L’Heure Bleue. If only I had left the note from Madame de Staël.

Later, as my friend showered and got dressed, I joked that I’d better get back to writing that news-breaking magazine article, “No Sex and the Single Girl in Paris.” There’s nothing like a self-deprecating exit line to ease the pain of an unenchanted parting. That morning I could think of many places I’d prefer to Paris in the springtime.

Usually, in fact, I do fall back on work. Work is a way of losing oneself that has plenty of advantages. Work is a way of shutting out ambiguous sentiment. Work is one way out of having to be preposterously funny. But work requires concentration, and, frankly, that morning I felt like Sputnik in orbit.

As a break from an afternoon of countless abortive beginnings, innumerable bottles of Perrier, and repeated rereading of The International Herald Tribune, I decided to call my banker friend at his office just to say hello. I wanted him to know I was fine about it all, and that despite the failure of our romance I wanted to stay friends. Oh please!

“Hi,” my voice squeaked in an unexplored octave. “Just calling to say hi.” 

All he said was yes. But it was that kind of “Dear Occupant” yes that one reserves for unsolicited magazine-subscription offers. The more distant he sounded, the stronger my compulsion to entertain.

Soon I was at full-tilt boogie. One-two-three anecdote. One-two-three anecdote. It was a good thing I didn’t know any Chernobyl or Natalie Wood jokes or I would have pulled those out, too. Finally I blurted that if he wasn’t busy or “like had finished his work,” I heard of this hilariously hip restaurant that was a favorite among radical deconstructionist Marxist Chanel models.

He laughed. I had broken through.

“I would love to.” He was almost jovial. “But I have a previous engagement. Actually, right now I’m waiting for the party to call and confirm. Thank you for thinking of me.”

If I were really the clever girl I pose as, I would have said “You’re welcome.” Instead I let him go with a polite “Well, if your plans change let me know.”

I immediately took a taxi to the Jeu de Paume. Fine, as long as I was in Paris I might as well be there for a better reason than a one night stand with “Thank you for thinking of me.” Despite this blow I was still a resourceful and sensitive person. This was apparent because in a time of turmoil I chose a museum over an impulsive shopping spree for, say, Hermès scarves - which, by the way, I don’t really care for.

But no sooner had I arrived at the early Degas collection than I felt a darkness that wouldn’t leave me. I found myself sitting in front of leaping pink horses and sobbing uncontrollably.

In the hope that a rush of endorphins would kick in and calm me down, I left the museum and, to avoid the stares of passersby, retreated to a corner of the Jardin des Tuileries. As i sat there sobbing amid the tourists, the dog walkers, and the students wearing backpacks, I felt as if I’d somehow come in touch with my true self. For a funny person, I felt frighteningly empty. And it wasn’t because i was unlucky in love, alone in a foreign land, or overwhelmed by the beauty of great paints; it was just me - plain, honest, and empty.

And as soon as I recognized this, I heaved another heavy sigh and remembered that I had promised to call my friend Patti in New York to relay every sordid detail of my Paris sojourn. I decided I’d name the evening “Jean Harlow’s Wedding Night” as a tip of the hat to Jean’s unconsummated nuptials. The thought of recounting the story to Patti - from the Brazilian soccer match to the Duke T-shirt at 6 a.m. - cheered me up immensely. With a few minor nips and tucks, my account of the episode could make an amusing cautionary tale.

I wiped my face and went back to the Jeu de Paume. I even hummed a little Cole Porter on the way. I am, after all, a resourceful and sensitive person, and I love Paris in the springtime.