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On displays

The greatest ensemble performance in which I ever participated was for the benefit of this girl I didn’t know from Vermont. She was dating my very good friend Andrew, whom she met at their college, and traveled to visit him at his home over the summer. My five closest male friends and I found ourselves sitting together bored around a kitchen table when Andrew called to say that his girlfriend had arrived and would we like to meet her? 

Of course we want to meet her, we said. Come on over.

Now, I swear that as we sat awaiting their arrival no planning or plotting of any sort occurred, just the standard anticipation one would expect from a group of boys in such a situation. But as Andrew’s girlfriend entered that kitchen some mechanism inside of my assembled friends and me clicked, and without a spoken word or even a tacit signal the atmosphere changed entirely, as if some unseen force pulled the curtain string and cued the lights. 

We were on. 

We were funny. 

We were the coolest, closest friends in the world. 

We were beyond funny, every line a killer and/or a gem. 

We deserved our own laugh track.

After forty-five intense Dockers commercialesque minutes Andrew hailed their departure (undoubtedly to return to his house and have sex) and we were left to marvel at our own impromptu spectacle, which we still discuss to this day, always referring to it as The Friendship Display.

This past weekend I received a visitor of some moderate inconvenience. A girl who currently attends my former high school, and who I knew remotely for a period of no more than one year, arranged to stay with me in order to certify Wesleyan as her first choice school, what with the early decision deadline approaching fast and all. A more evasive man than I might have pawned her off on the pre-frosh program, but I am a superior human being and so decided to allow her a stay on my couch, though I felt a bit uneasy about it. 

The problems of entertaining visitors are well known and can apply even to visits of one’s dearest friends. It was assumed that I would feel a certain pressure to occupy the time of my young guest with activities and experiences, knowing as I did that a two day video game bender was not what this girl needed to affirm Wesleyan as the one and only place she wanted to spend her next four years.

The first challenge facing me on her early Saturday morning arrival, after surmounting the sizeable hangover left fermenting in my skull, was what exactly to do with visitor. Mercifully, she picked up on the painful vibrations fairly pulsating from under my scalp and suggested we take a morning nap–excellent guest empathy.

Two hours later, the puzzle of what do still remained unsolved. I thought, what do I usually do on the early half of Saturday afternoon? and then shot a glance at my unmade bed. Feeling the need for some quick inspiration, I asked myself, what do people I don’t know do during Saturday a.m.? The answer: go to the football game.

One crisis averted, but another encountered. A short survey of the stands and the parking lot reminded me that there was something going on this weekend. We settled in to some seats and I watched visitor look around and seep in the football game scene and I felt a slight panic that this should be her lasting impression of my fair school.

"I don’t usually go to football games," I told her.

"Oh, yeah."

"I mean I’ve been to some, but not a lot."

". . ."

"And it’s never this crowded, but it’s parent’s visiting weekend," I continued.

Some parachutists landed on the field for the halftime show and visitor seemed pleased by the exhibition. I told her that such displays are quite uncommon at Wesleyan.

"Really, they never do stuff like that normally. Highly un-Wesleyan."

". . ."

With three minutes left in the fourth quarter I decided to put this line of thinking to down. There was no way I could construct an emblematic Wesleyan Saturday for this poor girl and all my warped explanations were apt to dement her unnecessarily.

My friends did not help at all. Or maybe they did, but I couldn’t really tell. I sought them out as refuge. I figured that if I could not construct an ideal Wesleyan day for my guest, at least I could demonstrate the properties and qualities of a small cross section of the population.

The element that makes the presence of a visitor highly distinct from the presence of an outsider is the sympathy of the host. With my guest there, I began to see and question everything from her point of view.

For instance, at dinner when Geoff makes a snippy reference to the drunk Middletown resident who habitually badgers my apartment neighbors for cigarettes, often coming into our front rooms and making everyone uncomfortable; and how he (Geoff) claims would boldly tell the drunk off rather than suffer his intrusions, I cannot help but see Geoff how visitor presumably sees him, given this conversation as her sole context. A snob, perhaps. An insensitive privileged college boy. A jerk.

But a quick snap and the curtain’s up. Geoff starts explaining the background of this neighborhood debate. It’s funny, really. We all laugh. Geoff goes on performing throughout the meal, projecting himself and me backward and forwards, telling stories I’ve already heard at least three times, recounting events, putting it all on display.