‘I’d have to count the syllables first.’
But Kenny obviously isn’t going to count them now. So George says, ‘I didn’t expect to see you in this neck of the woods. Don’t you live over on the other side of town, near campus?’
‘That’s right. Only sometimes I like to get way away from there.’
‘But imagine your happening to pick on this particular bar!’
‘Oh, that was because one of the kids told me you’re in here a lot.’
‘You mean, you came out here to see me?’ Perhaps George says this a little too eagerly. Anyhow, Kenny shrugs it off with a teasing smile: ‘I thought I’d see what kind of a joint it was.’
‘It’s nothing, now. It used to be quite something, though. And I’ve gotten accustomed to coming here. You see, I live very close.’
‘Camphor Tree Lane?’
‘How in the world did you know that?’
‘Is it supposed to be a secret?’
‘Why no – of course not! I have students come over to see me, now and then. I mean, about their work —’ George is immediately aware that this sounds defensive and guilty as hell. Has Kenny noticed? He is grinning; but then he has been grinning all the time. George adds, rather feebly, ‘You seem to know an awful lot about me and my habits. A lot more than I know about any of you —’
‘There isn’t much to know about us, I guess!’ Kenny gives him a teasing challenging look. ‘What would you like to know about us, Sir?’
‘Oh, I’ll think of something. Give me time. . . . Say, what are you drinking?’
‘Nothing!’ Kenny giggles. ‘He hasn’t even noticed-me yet.’ And, indeed, the bartender is absorbed in a TV wrestling-match.
‘Well, what’ll you have?’
‘What are you having, Sir?’
‘Scotch.’
‘Okay,’ Kenny says, in a tone which suggests that he would have agreed just as readily to buttermilk. George calls the bartender – very loudly, so he can’t pretend not to have heard – and orders. The bartender, always a bit of a bitch, demands to see Kenny’s I.D. So they go through all of that. George says stuffily to the bartender, ‘You ought to know me by this time; do you really think I’d be such an idiot as to try to buy drinks for a minor?’
‘We have to check,’ says the bartender, through a skin inches thick. He turns his back on them and moves away. George feels a brief spurt of powerless rage. He has been made to look like an ass; and in front of Kenny, too.
While they are waiting for the drinks, he asks, ‘How did you get here? In your car?’
‘I don’t have one. Lois drove me.’
‘Where is she now, then?’
‘Gone home, I guess.’
George senses something not quite in order. But, whatever it is, Kenny doesn’t seem worried about it. He adds vaguely, ‘I thought I’d walk around for a while.’
‘But how’ll you get back?’
‘Oh, I’ll manage.’
(A voice inside George says, You could invite him to stay the night at your place. Tell him you’ll drive him back in the morning.
What in hell do you think I am? George asks it.
It was merely a suggestion, says the voice.)
The drinks arrive. George says to Kenny, ‘Look, why don’t we sit over there, at the table in the corner? That damned television keeps catching my eye.’
‘All right.’
It would be fun, George thinks, if the Young were just a little less passive. But that’s too much to ask. You have to play it their way, or not at all. As they take their chairs, facing each other, George says, ‘I’ve still got my pencil sharpener’, and, bringing it out of his pocket, he tosses it down on the table, as though shooting craps.
Kenny laughs, ‘I already lost mine!’
And now an hour, maybe, has passed. And they are both drunk; Kenny fairly, George very. But George is drunk in a good way, and one that he seldom achieves. He tries to describe to himself what this kind of drunkenness is like. Well – to put it very crudely – it’s like Plato; it’s a Dialogue. A dialogue between two people. Yes, but not a Platonic dialogue in the hair-splitting, word-twisting, one-up-to-me sense; not a mock-humble bitching-match; not a debate on some dreary set theme. You can talk about anything and change the subject as often as you like. In fact, what really matters is not what you talk about, but the being together in this particular relationship. George can’t imagine having a dialogue of this kind with a woman, because women can only talk in terms of the personal. A man of his own age would do, if there was some sort of polarity; for instance, if he was a Negro. You and your dialogue-partner have to be somehow opposites. Why? Because you have to be symbolic figures – like, in this case, Youth and Age. Why do you have to be symbolic? Because the dialogue is by its nature impersonal. It’s a symbolic encounter. It doesn’t involve either party personally. That’s why, in a dialogue, you can say absolutely anything. Even the closest confidence, the deadliest secret, comes out objectively as a mere metaphor or illustration, which could never be used against you.
George would like to explain all of this to Kenny. But it is so complicated; and he doesn’t want to run the risk of finding that Kenny can’t understand him. More than anything, he wants Kenny to understand; wants to be able to believe that Kenny knows what this dialogue is all about. And really, at this moment, it seems possible that Kenny does know. George can almost feel the electric field of the dialogue surrounding and irradiating them. He certainly feels irradiated. As for Kenny, he looks quite beautiful. Radiant with rapport is the phrase which George finds to describe him. For what shines out of Kenny isn’t mere intelligence or any kind of switched-on charm. There the two of them sit, smiling at each other – oh, far more than that – fairly beaming with mutual insight.
‘Say something,’ he commands Kenny.
‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’ll I say?’
‘Anything. Anything that seems to be important, right now.’
‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know what is important and what isn’t. I feel like my head is stopped up with stuff that doesn’t matter – I mean, matter to me.’
‘Such as —’
‘Look, I don’t mean to be personal, Sir – but – well, the stuff our classes are about —’
‘That doesn’t matter to you?’
‘Jesus Christ, Sir – I said I wasn’t being personal! Yours are a whole lot better than most; we all think that. And you do try to make these books fit in with what’s going on, nowadays – only, it’s not your fault, but – we always seem to end up getting bogged down in the Past; like this morning, with Tithonus. Look, I don’t want to pan the Past; maybe it’ll mean a whole lot to me when I’m older. All I’m saying is, the Past doesn’t really matter to most kids my age. When we talk like it does, we’re just being polite. I guess that’s because we don’t have any pasts of our own – except stuff we want to forget, like things in high school, and times we acted like idiots —’
‘Well, fine! I can understand that. You don’t need the Past, yet. You’ve got the Present.’
‘Oh, but the Present’s a real drag! I just despise the Present – I mean, the way it is right now – I mean, tonight’s an exception, of course – What are you laughing at, Sir?’
‘Tonight sí! The Present – no!’ George is getting noisy. Some people at the bar turn their heads. ‘Drink to Tonight!’ He drinks, with a flourish.
‘Tonight – sí!’ Kenny laughs and drinks.