Jonathan Baumbach - You, or the Invention of Memory

We went for a drink instead of coffee, didn’t we, though at that point we were both already sufficiently besotted. The place we chose — it was more that the place chose us — was too noisy for conversation and so we went to my apartment, which was only a few blocks away, to continue our tenuous connection.

Unless my memory is even more unreliable than I suspect, that was the only time we went to bed together. Its awkwardness was what made it so touching and memorable. An intensity of feeling undermined the elegance of the act itself.

You warned me afterward that what happened between us would never be repeated. Never, you insisted, though not without notable regret. Still, I remained hopeful that a time would come eventually, a sudden change of emotional season, and we would again fall into each other’s despairing embrace as we had that first night. In the mean time, we became friends — at least that’s how it reads in my scenario — better friends no doubt than had we continued as lovers.

I’d like to believe that that’s what you had in mind when you announced with that unwavering certainty so characteristic of your style, moments after our artless grappling on my unmade bed, that this was it, the first and last and only time.

There were other opportunities, other evenings when I sensed you were willing, but you see, and I’m sure you knew this all along, I felt as your friend that it would be a form of betrayal to undermine your resolve.

The sexual afterglow I carried around with me for months, years perhaps, after our near-miraculous improvisatory encounter eventually dissipated or metamorphosed, as I like to think, into a kind of extraordinary sympathy that transcended the need for sexual affirmation.

If none of this meets with your view of how things started between us, it may be because I have a history of confusing the real world with the more compelling narrative of my fantasies. My story, I’m embarrassed to admit, is infinitely revisable. And so — you would be the one to make this determination — our history may be just another fantasy in that baroque chimera I have the dishonor to call my life.

I did, as it happens, write a story based on my subjective experience of our relationship with a very different conclusion from the way things between us actually played out. It seems fitting to me that that story should be a part of this novel you are reading and, in time (and space), it will earn its way into these pages. I don’t want any surprises. I want it all to surprise.

Before I move on, before I get what needs to be behind us filed away, I want to make one last disclaimer. The things I’ve said to you here I’ve also in the past said to others and will, as history repeats itself, say again to others still, which doesn’t make them any the less sincere. At least in your case, I never cease to mean them.

Well, isn’t that the kind of thing every con man says? I am a liar. I freely confess — no knife at my throat — that I make things up and therefore (with expectation of your acceptance) I’m asking for your trust. If you can’t trust me, who has shown you his most disreputable side, who can you trust?

Before we actually met, I said to you in the elevator, muttered it in a way to make it impossible for you to be certain that you heard anything at all — remember we were both looking at our feet at the time — that … Perhaps you heard me and only pretended not to.

In any event, you didn’t respond and I did not repeat my aggressive petition. It is probably a flaw in my nature but I’d rather — perhaps this was not so true when I was younger — be loved than fucked.

So as we became close friends it was a tacit agreement between us that the prospect of sex was outside the equation of our friendship. Whatever sexual feelings came up in our encounters would of necessity be repressed and, for the sake of civility, denied. Sex between us, penis entering vagina (grappling like swans among soiled sheets), prick stabbing cunt, would not be thought about or, if thought about, would not be acknowledged.

Friendship was the be-all and end-all of our relationship.

And you have been a good friend, I’ll give you that, a loving friend who asks for virtually nothing in return. If I need a place to stay in an emergency, I know I can count on you to offer me a bed for the night. Not yours, but the one in your study that has a secret identity during the day as a couch. Nor did you mind, or seem to mind, listening to stories of my wife’s infidelities.

I should confess that there was only one infidelity and that I elaborated for the sake of a better story. I didn’t want to lose your attention. Mostly everything in my life is subordinate to the endlessly variable story that I offer in its place.

An arbitrary last minute decision brings me to a publishing party in a cramped Upper West Side apartment to celebrate a writer I don’t know, have never actually read and would more than likely never get around to reading. The literary agent we happen to share, Marianna Dodson, has wangled me an invitation. Though I have never heard her say so, Marianna believes that no opportunity to further one’s career, however marginal, should be left unexplored. On the other hand, my own checkered history suggests that the only good things that come to you are those you refuse to pursue.

Anyway, the party is not my first choice for the evening (probably not even my second), but out of a conspiracy of circumstances (not worth mentioning here) I find myself weaving my way through the wall-to-wall crowd looking for a familiar face.

My game plan, if you will, is to hang out for an hour or so, make the rounds, and find someone, a woman preferably, to join me for dinner.

So I am holding a flute of champagne above my head like an Olympic torch, eavesdropping on a conversation about the decline of civility in New York City, when I notice over the speaker’s shoulder a tall, self-consciously elegant, silver-haired woman in an all black one of a kind no doubt outfit, observing me with a wry smile. I nod at her in gratuitous acknowledgment, and she winks in return. She is not someone I am likely to know so I assume that she has mistaken me for another. I tend at times to be confused with a sanctimonious, high-profile trial lawyer who specializes in controversial cases.

A moment later, the exquisitely overdressed fiftyish woman appears mysteriously at my side. I offer my name and hold out my hand, which you studiously ignore.

“I know who you are,” you say. “You probably won’t remember — in fact, I’m sure you won’t — but you once promised you would never forget me.”

“Is that right?” I say. “If I gave you a promise, I suppose I’ll have to make good on it.”

“Well,” you say, giving me a skeptical look. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

The moment you appear from nowhere at my side, a name I barely remember knowing elbows itself into mind, but I immediately distrust the perception.

My first impression, I have to admit, is not overwhelmingly favorable. I find myself resenting your self-satisfied poise while I admire despite myself your sangfroid . Of course I know you. It’s just that I can’t, under the duress of the moment, remember your name.

I study your expensive face, which seems almost vulnerable in repose, and the same unlikely perception thrusts itself into consciousness again. So with overcompensating bravura and minimal conviction, I whisper for your attention alone the only name memory allows me.

I await your disappointment.

For an extended moment, you keep me on edge by saying nothing, your face masking your thoughts and then, as if lifting the curtain on a performance, you offer an amused smile. “I was beginning to doubt my own existence,” you say.