Wry Martinis (3 page)
Authors: Christopher Buckley
My dog, Duck, sniffed the aroma of failure about me and no longer went about his game of unplugging my fax machine from the phone jack. It pleases him to do this every couple of days and listen to me on the phone berate my correspondents angrily for
their
defective fax machines.
One day, in the grip of this despondency, I thought about the first piece that I sold to
The New Yorker.
That was a big day for me. It was about Clinton and Bush getting drunk during their presidential debate, and it was called “The Three-Martini Debate.” And suddenly there it was, my title.
I know, I know, what a lot of fuss over—nothing. But this time Karp looked up from Dostoyevsky and said, “Hmm. Yeah.” Lucy sighed heavily with relief, satisfied she could go back to taking care of only two children instead of three. Duck again took up his pastime of rendering me incommunicado.
The title itself means, of course, absolutely nothing. It’s just an excuse to get the word “Martini” onto the cover in the hopes that someone will mistake it for a book on mixology. But it works on at least one level, as a small homage to
The New Yorker
, much owed in my case. I’m grateful to a number of people there, starting with its editor, Tina Brown, who has been more attentive and kind to me than she ever needed to be, which made it all the sweeter.
The New Yorker
still sets the standard for
thoughtful editing (to say nothing of the fact-checking). I’ve been lucky to work with a number of superb editors there: Rick Hertzberg, Chip McGrath, Deborah Garrison, David Kuhn, Chris Knutsen, Henry Finder, Susan Mercandetti and Hal Espen. An all-star team, that.
Thank you, Harry Evans, for publishing yet another book of mine; and thank you, Binky Urban, for making Harry pay for it.
I’m grateful, too—oh god, here it comes, his I’d-like-to-thank-the-Academy-speech—to the editors I’ve worked with over the twenty years of freelancing covered in this book. Clay Felker gave me my start in magazines and was the kind of editor who leaves you with a lifetime of great stories, and a lifetime of gratitude. I was privileged, and that’s not putting it too grandly, to have the chance to work with and learn from some of the other people who made
Esquire
the legend that it was: Byron Dobell, Don Erickson, Rust Hills and Gordon Lish.
The pieces in here originally appeared in a number of publications, including
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Regardie’s, Esquire, Forbes FYI, Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue, Allure, American Health
, and
Architectural Digest.
But there are some pieces in here that have not been published previously. This was Karp’s idea; he thought it would let him off having to put the word “collection” on the cover.
I’d be ungrateful, if not downright ungracious, not to thank my boss at
Forbes FYI
, which has been my happy professional home for over five years now. So, Bob Forbes, thanks for the great memories, the support, the friendship and last but hardly least, all the great times on
The Highlander.
A boss shouldn’t be this nice, and a day job shouldn’t be this much fun. Thanks, too, to his brothers Steve, Tim and Kip for their friendship and support.
Geoffrey Norman has been a buddy and colleague since the old days at
Esquire.
Now he’s editor-at-large of
FYI.
I talk with Geoff sometimes three, four times a day, and each time, I come away a little smarter and a lot calmer. For years, Geoff has been the first inflictee of much of the stuff in here, and as such has suffered mightily. There’s nothing I can do to repay this debt, except to say, All right, you can have a two-week extension handing in your New Zealand piece.
This book is dedicated to my father and mother. I was going to dedicate my first book to them, but then John Lennon died while I was writing it, and so I dedicated it to his memory. I was going to dedicate the
second one to them, but I got married, so I dedicated that one to Lucy. Then I was going to dedicate the third one to them, but my friend Reggie Stoops took ill and I promised him that I would dedicate it to him. Then I was going to dedicate the fourth book to them, only we weren’t speaking at the time—happens in the best of families—and anyway my friend John Tierney had been such a help it only seemed right to dedicate it to him. There was also a play I wrote with James MacGuire about Edmund Campion that was published as a book. I was going to dedicate that to them, too, but then seven Jesuit priests were murdered in El Salvador, so we dedicated it to them.
But this time it really is for my parents, with thanks and love, no matter who, between now and publication date, gets shot or comes down with cancer. It was with them that I had my first laughs.
Washington, D.C.
May 15, 1996
POSTSCRIPT
: A few hours after I FedExed this book off to the publisher, my good friend Richard M. Clurman died. I’ve postponed dedicating a book to my parents for too long, so I’ll stick to the original plan. But this book would otherwise be dedicated to Dick, and to his wife, Shirley, my extra set of parents.
Hell
Since my wife and I live in Washington, D.C., where summers are bummers, we and the kids and the dog go to Maine. This insures two things: taunts about being idle Republicans, and house guests. This season’s triple-digit temperatures have provided a bumper crop of calls from friends old and new, and what I have learned is that, just as the most beautiful words in the English language are “You’ve lost weight,” the most dreaded surely are “We can only stay for a week.”
I want to apologize in advance for the hasty quality of this article. I don’t have time to make it very good, because I have to leave for the Bangor airport in one hour to pick up the new arrivals, and on the way I have to stop at the laundromat and drop off the twenty pounds of dirty bed linen left by the ones who’ve just left. Lucy, my wife, would drop them off, except she’s already in Ellsworth, shopping for the hypoallergenic foodstuffs required by the incoming house guests. I’m sorry about this. For now, then, here are my notes toward a
Field Guide to the North American House Guest.
1. The Foreign House Guest from a Non-English-Speaking Country (
Domesticus aeternus helveticus
). A visitation by this variety generally coincides with an entire week of rain and fog, forcing a cancellation of all outdoor activities and necessitating uninterrupted togetherness in one living room. Indications of ennui generally begin toward the end of the fourth day indoors, with conversation taking the form of “How many brothers and sisters does your brother’s new wife have?” followed by “And what are their ages?”
Alternatively, “What is the principal industry of Appenzell Inner Rhodes?”
2. The House Guest Who Injures Him/Herself (
Domesticus aeternus calamitosus
). This variety is particularly prevalent among the sports-minded house guests. One
calamitosus
, having visited a host we know for a weekend, broke his ankle during a distinctly unvigorous round of Frisbee-catching. Togetherness was extended for eight days. This required a number of adjustments, including turning the master bedroom, on the first floor, into a hospital room, and attending to his every need twenty-four hours a day.
Suggested protocol for coping with
calamitosus:
As you will be providing the injured party with all meals, and most likely in bed, you will have unobserved access to his/her foodstuffs. Halcion .25 mgs. (a.k.a. triazolam or “the blue oval ones”) crushed into powder and added to food can significantly reduce the house guest’s demands, but hosts are advised to check with doctors for possible contraindications.
3. The Cash-Challenged House Guest (
Domesticus aeternus britannicus-journalisticus
). Easily recognized by his distinctive warble “Bloody hell, I must have left my wallet in the city.”
Britannicus
is common along the eastern seaboard during the summer months, but is also apt to appear at any time of the year, anywhere, usually with little notice. Another distinctive cry is “Could I ask you to cash a cheque?” However, caution should be exercised, as the “cheques” are often drawn on unrecognizable banks, such as the Second Bank of Aran, or Unión de Crédito Agrícola de Uruguay.
4. The Telephone-Dependent House Guest (
Domesticus aeternus fiberopticus-praeferrissimus
). Closely related to
britannicus
, above,
fiber-opticus
is identifiable by the telltale question—usually asked within moments of arrival—“Could I use the phone?” and, thereafter, by his habit of cheerfully miming the words “Be off in
two
seconds” as his host approaches, scowling. Tying up the telephone is not the only pitfall associated with this variety. One host reported feeling physically ill upon hearing his guest shout loudly into the telephone, as if
to an overseas operator, “
Vladimir? Da. Da. Yes, I accept collect
,” and on another occasion overhearing a conversation in which occurred the words “Myanmar” and “That’s ridiculous, I’ve only been on for an hour and forty minutes.”
5. The Laptopless House Guest (
Domesticus aeternus lotus
). Key identifying phrases are “I didn’t feel like lugging mine all the way here” followed by “How many megs does yours have? I’m going to need all you’ve got.” (Important warning:
lotus
has been known to reemerge after an hour with his host’s computer, frowning and saying, “I don’t understand. Your hard drive seems to be completely empty.”)
I should say that we like our house guests. They are good people. So if any of them should read this, do understand that this is not about you. It is about the people who came the week after you did.
—
The New Yorker
, 1995
Three-Martíní
Debate
“They both come to my house. We serve them a Martini.
And we have an exchange between the two.”
—Tom Brokaw in
The New York Times
,
proposing an alternative presidential-debate format
