I had a party.  And I didn’t invite half of you, but it wasn’t on purpose, I swear.  I had a whole troubling two days with invitations and if any of you know me at all — if you’ve seen me try to snorkel for instance, or wrap presents, or master tasks that most people think simple, then you understand what I’m saying and have no need to read further. 

I waited too long, for one, so couldn’t outsource them.  Then there were struggles with my printer, and postcard paper, and Microsoft Publisher.  There were the labels, and the finding of your address.  [Steve and Dana, by the way, yours came back.  I forgot the stamp.]

Anyway, I got some out and then had to walk away from the whole thing.  I left a big pile of unaddressed / unstamped / unsent invites in my office and went to the liquor store.  That I can master. 

But next year, please come, I’ll just post it big here, so you’ll know. 

My point?  It was fun.  We should all do it more.  There aren’t enough dinners or parties or chamber music in people’s homes, there should be more.  More more more.  I didn’t worry about space and it worked itself out.  We don’t have furniture yet and that worked itself out, too.  There’s no place to park because we currently own 4 used cars, but people found their way in.

A dinner party a month in ’08.  Tell me if you want to come.

Susan Sontag said “great writers are either husbands or lovers,” which means I’m either a lover, or less than great. So for tonight’s dinner party, I’d like her over to clarify. I’ll hand her a draft of The Good Wife to help her along.

I’ll have Nancy Cunard, because she was “beaten, arrested, disinherited and declared insane” (according to the brilliant man behind the capsule summaries at Arts & Letters Daily) — how do you top that?

Then Bud Selig, because I like to have a sports figure for A., and what with drugs and broken records on his watch, he might have a good yarn.

And I think Cary Grant. Because Nancy would be all over him and Susan fascinated but aloof. Grant for his part would consider it a personal goal to score the seemingly unbeddable Sontag, all while Cunard across the table shoots daggars.

For that matter then, Virginia Woolf. I’ll have her come late, after sparks are showered. She famously tolerated but disliked Nancy and yet was too cool, I’m sure, to cause a row at an elegant party. (To overcome that, there’ll be gin and whisky and lots of crushed ice.)

One more, a boy. Let’s say Porfirio Rubirosa, “Rubi”, the last playboy. Rubi can smooth over any troubles that arise with the girls — Ginny, Susie and Nan.

Here’s the seating, starting at A.’s left: Susan Sontag, Bud Selig, Virginia Woolf, Rubi at the other end. Then me, Cary Grant, Nancy Cunard. A. is flanked by Sontag and Cunard, Cunard will be all over him. I’ll serve an oyster course first with crisp white wine. Followed by pitchers of martinis while we await duck confit in Jean-Jacque’s pinot noir sauce. Parsnip mashed potatoes and baby artichokes to go with that. For dessert, something we set fire to.

Yummy. Until then I’ve got strawberry yogurt. More at eleven.

Because it’s raining and dreary today, let’s have a dinner party!

Who will be there? Joe Torre, Gertrude Stein, Elaine May, Herbert Ross. A. and I, of course.

Why? Well, Gertrude because she’s batty. I recently got Poetry on Record, and on Disc 1 she reads her poem “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso.” And I thought how charming it would be to have her mutter for two hours, the same words over and over, the same answers to every question, at the table. There’s nothing like it.

Elaine May because she plays a movie star who plays Gertrude Stein in a skit she did with Mike Nichols a long time ago, I forget the name.

Herbert Ross because I haven’t had a movie director yet and he’s elegant and polished and poised and has 5 million stories but will only pick out three really good ones and his storytelling, not the story, will leave us happy.

What will we eat? Something au gratin — potatoes and leeks and gruyere cheese, I think — will be one of the sides. A big fat juicy prime rib (w/whipped cream, horseradish sauce) will take center stage. Blueberry cobbler for dessert.

Drink? Gertrude will have absinthe, she’ll bring it with her in a small bottle in a bulky handbag, which she’ll keep at the table. Elaine will drink wine with dinner, then vodka with a twist of lemon, Joe will have scotch or bourbon (he’ll nurse one drink all night), and Herbert Ross will drink kir royals, I think, then vodka neat, with Elaine.

After we’ve all drank too much, Gertrude will begin reading, starting in the middle, from Autobiography of Alice B. She’ll read softly and continuously, regardless of what’s going on around her, in the same low dull pitch. Herbert will be engaged with Elaine, they’ll have animated conversation, heads low, at the end of the table and I’ll be jealous and interrupt them constantly with stories of my new puppy Scruffy. A. and Joe will hit it off, wonder how they got stuck with all these cuckoos and the next morning A. will assure me I was witty and charming and loved by all.

Come over, we’ll have some laughs.

Ellen Jenks, the main character in my book, has entomophobia. (Hmm, I wonder where she gets it?) So I have bugs on the brain, more than usual. We’ve had a rash of spiders, lately. And sugar ants. The ants keep popping up out of cracks, in whole colonies, like geysers. And the spiders …

Junior told me you’re never more than 3 feet away from a spider. Ever. For the past two days, though, they’ve been moving in closer. I’m catching them, scuttling down walls, sneaking across carpets, closer to the two foot range, sometimes one. Ellen (my character) hates them. She becomes frozen with fear, she becomes ill at the thought of them. I’m afraid of heights — which means I get those same feelings in tall buildings, which fortunately I’m not in very much, so I feel for her. She’s got to confront her terror every day. Well I guess she doesn’t. I could have put her in a nice bug-free house/yard, but that’s not interesting, I loaded her up.

And in return, now they’re cropping up all over my life. A giant bird-sized dragonfly spent the night batting around in the skylight in the only room of the house not torn up. It’s a small room with one couch, and the four of us squished onto it every night like The Simpsons — last night watching the giant dragonfly bang its head, smash its wings, carrying on and on with the drama.

Okay, let’s play dinner party.

To my imaginary dinner party tonight, I’m having the following:

Katherine Dunne. I’m reading Geek Love right now, thanks to a tip from a friend, and I’m stunned. I imagine her a bit crotchety and unafraid to burp. She’ll be sullen and bored out of her mind and she’ll drop a stark story on us right at the end when we’ve all given up on hearing her speak and it will frighten the daylight out of us for weeks. She’ll drive away laughing.

Lenny Bruce. I just read Michael Leonard’s (or Leonard Michael’s?) memoir Sylvia and there’s a scene where Michael/Leonard is watching Lenny Bruce perform at The Village Vanguard and the waiters are slow with the drinks because they’re laughing so hard, doubled over. I think Katherine and Lenny might hit it off.

Johanna Pfister. My exchange student in junior-high school (three different times), because I haven’t been to Guatemala in 20 years and we have things to catch up on.

Thelonius Monk. I don’t want him to sit at the table, though. I’ll have him hunched over my small white piano (I’ll set out food nearby), plinking out his odd little chords in scattershot beat.

Then A., of course, and the kids will run in and out, and M., you and D., too, because I think you’d like this crowd and we could all sort of exchange looks while they amused us.

I’ll serve Chicken Marbella because it’s got a beautiful name and because the Silver Palate Cookbook, which made it famous, is back in vogue. And I’ll have scotch on the table — I see Lenny and Katherine drinking scotch — but also a few bottles of a simple red table wine. Ashtrays, of course. Some sort of baked thing for dessert which I’ll forget about and burn and no one will care by then anyway.

There’s a movie tomorrow night, come watch.

Friday night’s my new imaginary dinner party night. Here is who’s coming:

Reese Erlich (because he’s cool)
Sigmund Freud (because the shrinks in my novel are Freudian)
Miranda July (to ignore, so she knows I’m not impressed)
Derek Jones (from 5th grade, to see if he still picks his nose)
Ma Rainey (why not?)
Vita Sackville-West (to help with my garden)
Fr. Beegan (because I found the old songbook he used to make me play out of and after dinner we can all sing Scarlet Ribbons)

I’ll serve an overdone prime rib and dry martinis; green beens with garlic, some fluffy meringuey thing for dessert. A cheese course, too. Bottles and bottles of red wine, of course, and cigars passed ’round at the end.

Come by if you want (imaginarily). Bring flowers.

I’m drinking a coffee called “Wild Blueberry”. Damn you, A. Ha, ha, just kidding. I told him, I insisted, “No go ahead, really. You take the last Extra Bold Sumatran Reserve.” Then I watched, incredulous, as he took it and cursed him. It’s 6:15.

This is creeping me out. I have the kids in earmuffs. I may get them surgically attached.

Saturday I had a dinner. It was fun and outside under the grape vines, with wine and cigarettes at the end, so devil-may-care. There were good one-liners, political jokes, and everyone had a road rage story and/or bad episode of religion. Top that off with Marcie’s rhubarb pie and you’ve got a night.

Leanne had pictures from Venezia, Gregg had an art idea for the front room, Steve declared us nuts and Betty brought a pile of stories (it’s all I asked.) I wish they’d stayed forever. Larry left his sugar-free candy bars, I’m holding them hostage.

Next up: Red Tuesday on Tuesday. It’s open, you’re all invited. First Tuesday of the month (though this month, second) Jean-Jacques grills great big huge burgers and we eat them with great big huge red wines plus an all-star cast.

Life is good. Lose your marbles.

(We will miss you dearly, Bill. 1928-2007)

A. forgot to take the kids this morning. Don’t worry, don’t worry, I remembered. They’re okay. Everyone’s a little rattled but we’ll all be fine.

Today is Anthony Trollope’s birthday and if I were having a dinner party, you know a “who I’d have to dinner” party, the kind where no one in the world is dead so I can invite anyone? I’d invite him.

I’d pour him a drink, put him in a big cushy chair, listen to him prattle on because he seems the type. I’d light his pipe, get his slippers, nod and agree and smile. Then when conversation lapsed a bit and he was leaned back and puffing I’d ask him how the hell he put out 3,000 words a day, every day. I’d fill up his drink, lean in with wink and nudge and say, “Tony. Come on buddy, come clean. You had a ghostwriter, didn’t ya?” Then I’d ask him what he thought of the Yankees this year.

Hey, Mambo. Mambo Italiano. Hey Mambo, don’t want to tarantella.

Be good. Do less work. Stop cutting people off in the left lane.

Buon Venerdi.

My outrageously clever friend Mark offers some guidelines for the season’s new hot thing — hosting your own Iraq study group, beyond the bellinis and canapes.

“First, don’t worry about your lack of experience in Iraq or even about military affairs. Hardly anyone in the Baker-Hamilton group has spent much time in Iraq. (James Baker used to pal around with Saddam Hussein, but don’t let that deter you.) Remember this is a study group — you’ll learn as you go along.”

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I’m tired and uninspired (and can rhyme on a dime), send me your fad energy pills or too-big condoms. (That is really just so mean!)

.. Keys to a smash-up dinner party: Hearty casserole, full glass, stay sober until the cheese.

Ellen Willis died. She was director of NYU’s cultural and reporting program and I’d never heard of her until today when Maud Newton said she died. Maud links to a Willis critique of Joan Didion’s Political Fictions, and also her “Freedom From Religion” essay in The Nation, 2001; Willis’ argument about the critical importance to our democracy of preserving a secular state:

one that does not fun or otherwise sponsor religious institutions or activities; that does not display religious symbols; that outlaws discrimination based on religious belief, whether by government or by private employers, landlords or proprieters — that does, in short, guarantee freedom from as well as freedom of religion. Furthermore, a genuinely democratic society requires a secular ethos: one that does not equate morality with religion, stigmatize atheists, defer to religious interests and aims over others or make religious belief an informal qualification for public office.

(Italics mine.)

I’d argue the same of the church. Quit talking about politics during the homily, Fr. Tom, I mean it. I’m there to hear about Luke and John and and sit in a room for an hour without talking to anyone. Also, I do not have nearly enough cocaine.

Okay, now off with you, I’ve a tea party to plan: jam sandwiches, cherry Kool-aid, rainbow-colored goldfish and Teddy Grahams. I’m trying to stay sober ’til the cheese.