IF THERE WAS A PLACE

If there was a place that had a right to call itself liberal in politics but conservative in tastes, it was Brooklyn in those years; and if there was a women who had a right to consider herself an ally of the former set of views and an enemy of the latter, it was [name redacted]; yet one morning at breakfast, sitting by her side, her husband heard her say to herself in her offhanded yet thoughtful way, with a smooth voice that was still somehow burred, looking across the top of her coffee cup, “I think I hate the young!” Horrified, her husband could only laugh and then protest, comically, “But [name redacted], will you make an exception for me?” She matched his laugh with her own. “You are not young,” she said. “You are old. By the young I mean those who refuse to think of how we really are, who bully us with their ill-fitting Utopianism. When you and I were their age, youth to us was an act of sanctifying humanity, a practice of seeing everyone around us in two lights at once, as responsible members of the community and as carriers of the most delightful weaknesses, and letting those people hang in the middle, to their benefit—and ours. Think of Mr. [name also redacted].” He husband knew the name. It was an older neighbor who had lived down the street from his wife when he had first met her. “He was a prattler,” said her husband. “Yes,” said [name redacted], “and quite proud of the plants in front of his house. And he smelled like camphor. But once he had a party, and he drank his weight in rum, and…well…the only way I can describe what happened is to say that he cracked and light flowed from him, light that contained dark thoughts, lyricism, a bottomlessness. His wife quarreled with him early that evening, affecting disgust, though she was probably feeling amusement, and I ended up with him up on the roof. More bottomlessness. In the morning he was a boring man again. Duality. The young cannot fathom this and thus cannot endure it, and they hide behind a veil of sanctimony.” Her husband had by now wandered away, as he was himself boring in daylight, though this story had cheered him regarding his nighttime prospects. A few minutes later, when the coast was clear or at least clearer, he came back into the room, agreeing.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas