Character Sketch

Once you get to know me you real­ize there just isn’t a lot there. It’s not that I’m shal­low — it’s just that I’m a three trick pony. Hang around me for any length of time and you’ll get the idea. You’ll start to notice that you heard me tell this joke before, were struck by that witty com­ment some­time last month, saw the same ner­vous tick last week when I got upset about the state of base­ball in America. And that’s when it hits you. I’m bor­ing. Nice, but really bor­ing. Oh, I don’t blame you. You think it’s bad for you, imag­ine being me. I’ve been liv­ing with myself for over thirty years now. It’s no walk in the park.

The strangest thing is, how you’ll come to be friends with me in the first place. You’ll think I am so clever and inter­est­ing. Because I can carry on a pass­able din­ner con­ver­sa­tion about Lear.

“That’s amaz­ing,” you’ll think when we first meet at a din­ner party hosted by a mutual friend. What a grasp of intri­cate con­cep­tual twist­ings and turn­ings he has. Which is, of course, true. Because I’m not a phony. So we talk for a while and you find out I like jazz. And know how to tell my Bird from my Coltrane. Wow, what a con­nec­tion; you’re start­ing to think this could turn into some­thing; but, being the nat­ural skep­tic that you are, turn the con­ver­sa­tion to a sub­ject about which you are pos­i­tive I’ll have noth­ing to say.

“As a mat­ter of fact, I think that, soci­o­log­i­cally speak­ing, the Samoan peo­ples are far more advanced than the ancient Polynesians,” I retort, as your jaw drops into your soup bowl.

So we exchange cards that night and I call you up for cof­fee in a few days. It’s sub­tle, but you feel slightly uncom­fort­able when you walk into the restau­rant and see me sit­ting at the table wear­ing an almost exact replica of the out­fit I wore to the din­ner where we met.

The con­ver­sa­tion goes way bet­ter than you had even imag­ined it would. Not only do I know jazz and Lear, but I can hold forth for a decent amount of time about the plight of Tibet and the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a Zen garden.

This will con­tinue for about four weeks. Then the other shoe will drop. We’ll be at a party together and it will hap­pen. You’ll intro­duce me to your friend the English pro­fes­sor (the local uni­ver­sity chap who just fin­ished a book on Lear). And I’ll start in. It’s beau­ti­ful, charm­ing, well researched, per­fectly rehearsed and exactly what I said on the night we first met. That’s when it will all come into focus and you’ll see exactly why you’ve been slightly irri­tated all the time for the past week and a half.

I’m a three trick pony.