LATE AS USUAL

I have been trying to find someone to talk to about my experience at the recent Shakespeare Association conference gathering, because God knows I wasn't able to talk to anyone about it there, and a colleague of mine recently forwarded me the Chaucer web-logs (which I confess I don't think I understood), which led me to some other web-logs apparently written by people “of our profession,” including the one whose name I have all too cleverly pinched. I was pleased to see that the urge toward something like really genuine scholarly community is expressed on these websites, and that there were some similar expressions of frustration or marginalization to my own with respect to the annual gathering of Shakespeareans. Forthwith, I began wrestling with the counterintuitive mechanics of “BLOGGER,” which has as you see taken me some time, or else this little essay might have come forth sooner. Well, you know, “as birdlime oozes through my pate” (Iago).

I have a story about my experience at the Shakespeare Association meeting conglomeration, well, in fact I have a number of stories, that I think exemplify a number of things wrong with Our Profession, or at least the Shakespearean side of it, but I suppose I might just be speaking from a rather naïve position as this was after all my first time there. It is not a happy story for me or the other parties involved, though I suppose there’s no getting away from the fact that it's somewhat amusing, or will be to those who were not involved (MOST, that is).

My usual traveling companion was unable to accompany me on this trip for reasons that are actually quite interesting but not “for general discussion,” and I am not extremely well-connected (yet) so I generally found myself alone at the eating and drinking activities that seem to constitute the bulk of conference life, and the REception was no EXception. (I am sorry this is taking rather a long while getting going.) I was initially unable to locate the departure area for the reception buses, and so ended up being on perhaps the last one from the hotel, with the result that the lines at the bar and the buffet tables were rather long, and there was somewhat of a crush all around me and, whether he knew it or not, a fairly tawdry looking young man, whom I assume was a graduate student, kept pressing his thigh against my posterior while gesticulating wildly to his in-line-companions, with the result that I was pushed forward into the man in front of me. I am not the tallest Shakespearean, so it was my face that kept coming into contact with the back of his head, more particularly his pony-tail.

We did eventually reach the front of the line and the graduate student was able to spread out to one side with his friends, and I followed the pony-tail around the table, taking my cue from the three plates he had lined up along his arm that “STOCKING UP” was de rigueur. I found my way to an empty chair, and put my three plates down on the table, then turned sideways in the seat to face what seemed to be a high-school auditorium stage, and was enjoying one of the many vegetable and/or shellfish dips that had been so generously laid out by the powers that be, when I noticed the pony-tailed man was now sitting next to me, slightly turned away from me so that I could not see his nametag, and talking to someone else.

Almost simultaneous with this realization, I was putting into my mouth a cracker that bore the whole amount of (now somewhat melted) brie cheese I had been able to take before being moved along by the force of the line behind me. This was a considerable amount of brie cheese, and the cracker was small, and my hands are somewhat large, so my thumb and forefinger were pressed into the creamy mass as it entered my mouth. And as I began to pull them away from my mouth, I noticed that they maintained a kind of sensational continuity with it. Something, that is, was connected to my thumb and forefinger as well as my lips, my tongue, the roof of my mouth, and the already partially masticated melted brie cheese. I pulled my hand further and further away from my face, but the continuity did not cease. What I had got hold of, or what my mouth or my cheese had got hold of, was one of the coarse and serpentine hairs from the pony-tail into which I had been so unceremoniously and repeatedly jostled.

For what seemed to be an eternity, I worked with my right hand at removing this excrescence from my body, all the while turned somewhat sideways in my chair, my left elbow supporting me on the table. I cannot exactly explain why, but I was moved to a kind of fury by this experience, and thought I might relieve it “with laughter,” by apprising my pony-tailed neighbor of our new closeness. “Excuse me, I said,” leaning forward, hoping to see around his body to his name tag and call him by name, to follow this with some bluff remark such as “I seem to have eaten your HAIR”; but as I did this, I lifted my left elbow up slightly, and then put it back down, just exactly enough inches further in that it found its way into some kind of salmon mousse, the squishy feeling of which made me recoil, with the result that the plate actually stuck to my elbow for a brief moment, but a moment not brief enough to prevent me from conveying it over the edge of the table, where the forces of gravity took over and sent it falling to the floor. I was now in a state of what can only be described as suspended animation, and my nameless pony-tailed adversary (I saw his nametag briefly. Gene? Garth? Travis?), hearing the dish clatter to the floor, had turned toward me, only to see, with visible disgust, the cheese-and-saliva-begrimed hair I was flailing in his direction, and reflexively recoiled, the force of his sudden awkward arm movement causing his glass to spasm wildly, spilling up to if not more than half of what I took, with a great deal of panic, to be his mojito onto my lap.

What is perhaps the most hideous part of this memory is that the look of alarm from Garth Travis did not lead him to a nearby bathroom where he might have secured a handful of paper towels, but rather preceded the calmly urgent remark, as he turned briefly to his dining companion: “I'd better get another one. I think the bar is closing in a minute.” I am relieved to say that I had a bit of cold comfort at the end of all this, discovering in the Men’s that the mojito was virgin, seeming to consist merely of club soda and mint, but not, as I had feared, any quantity of sticky sweet rum.