Monday, October 07, 2002

The Night I lost my

The Night I lost my Balls to Kissinger

Growing up I liked to meet new people and looked everybody in the eye.  I would watch them, how their gaze would hold my own; they’d see me looking at them and then almost always they would glance away or down or, at the most, grin sheepishly.  I tracked reactions to my staring.  I saw myself as quite the little social scientist. 

I’d been living in LA about since I was born, and was accustomed to the presence of big stars.  I’d look them in the eye, like anybody else I saw, just to see how they reacted. Oftentimes they didn’t notice.  On occasions when they did, they’d usually acknowledge me in some impersonal but pseudo-charismatic way, and then I’d wallow in a misbegotten aura of referred assumed charisma, as if what I’d elicited had been charisma, and that it had left a sheen on me. But it had only been a jaunty nod from Morgan Fairchild or a gruff but cheerful half-salute from Larry Hagman.  These really didn’t count. 

Then I got an invitation to have dinner at the city’s most star-riddled restaurant.  The food was also very good so I was happy to go.  The place was packed.  We saw Lee Grant and Vanna White and stars whose names I cannot presently recall.  After dinner (which was perfect) we repaired outside.  I was sitting on a deck, just waiting for the night to end so I could go on home, when my inquiring gaze encountered eyes that did not waver when they met my own. There was no smirk or grin or toss of hair – just two eyes looking back at mine, unblinking. There was no expression on his face.  He was a bit more portly than I’d have expected, and a little greyer than I recollected from the news. He was unmistakable.  For only a second he looked at me and I looked back at him.  I thought: This guy stared down people who controlled the fate of millions.  Kissinger was watching me.  What was he thinking?  How could I justify his interest?  I was just a nosy kid.  With that, I dropped my gaze. 

When the restaurateur came by to gush his charm and garlic over us, I found him tired and transparent. Once he scurried off I was still thinking about Henry Kissinger, that I had been the one who’d looked away, that I could set my eye upon another human being and become so insecure, so conscious of myself that I was overwhelmingly compelled to look at something else, at anything that did not ask me questions with its eyes. I was no longer someone who looked at people in the eye.  What that then made me, I was not prepared to say.