5. Incline

Life might be just one long party but, after you’ve factored in work, shopping, household chores, getting round town and personal finance you’re normally too beaten down to accept your invite. Add in the occasional relationship catastrophe however, and, well, you’ll go anywhere rather than spend another dismal night at home.
It was a dismal night and I was lying on the sofa recounting memorable parties witnessed from the kitchen of several nice apartments. Nancy Kazowski’s Superbowl veggie barbecue had been tremendously exciting, despite not knowing a Cleveland Indian from a Dallas Cowboy. The impromptu cheerleading display by five UCLA Humanities students, each as graceful and as fit as anyone twirling a baton in the Houston Astrodome that night probably fixed the party in my memory. Then there was Portia and Dave Flackstone’s fortieth birthday/first novel launch, where Jane got gloriously drunk and fell fully-clothed into their jacuzzi. Kevin's charity sherry morning was pretty special too, with a pledge of five dollars for every empty. By midday everyone was too blitzed to remember the name of the charity or that the money had been collected. Then there was Professor Marv Baum's Moghul Art evening, blessed with a guest appearance by an alleged great nephew of Ravi Shankar. The whole night laboured under such severe artistic pretensions that it was just grotesquely funny, not unlike the cocktail party at the Westwood gallery opening of Evana Zender's exhibition of photographs taken on a trip to Kenya (which, as it was a vacation meant we called them her holiday snaps all night).
I was roused from my hazed recollection by the phone. The ringtone caused a flutter of hope and delirious expectation. Could it be? I answered. It was fucking Lyall Sorensen.
"Hey, is Jane there?" he asked jauntily.
"No, she’s not,” I replied tersely. There was silence at the other end, like Lyall was taken aback. "Why?" I eventually asked, unnerved by the pause.
"Well Adam, I just wanted to talk over my book project. Jane said at the 'puppies gig that it would be fine for me to come over as she might have some ideas about it - and I haven't seen her on campus so..." he left his sentence hanging waiting for me to cut it down.
"She's on vacation actually. I'm not sure when she'll be back, sorry.”
"Oh, she never told me.” Lyall sounded hurt: Jane had not taken him into her confidence. This was good, in that I would have resented being told by the likes of Lyall where my partner was, but bad in that he wouldn’t be able to tell me where she was hiding out or why. He continued.
“Perhaps I should have checked with our Admin. That's really too bad. I figure it’ll just have to wait till she’s back." He was genuinely surprised, too surprised in fact to delve any deeper into the reasons for this sudden departure.
"Oh, well, I'll see on her some time soon I guess. When she's..." (pause) "...when she returns. I've got to run, though, I'm in the middle of a real creative period so its back to the Mac. I guess I'll seeyah round Adam".
Sure. I was so glad for Lyall, that he was experiencing "a real creative period" right now when I was feeling particularly destructive. The short conversation got me thinking. Maybe Jane wouldn’t tell Lyall everything but what about her girlfriends? What about those girlfriends who were part of mutual, couple-y friends? Wouldn’t they blab to their partner and, if they did, wouldn’t he feel honour-bound to blab to me?
Actually that was a point. Where were our friends? Expecting nothing but polite silence from Jane’s friends, I was hoping for something from our friends if they had been fully briefed on the planned departure. Our friends: Esme and Dan, Lavell and Sara, Jack and Helen. Where were they? Even the men hadn’t phoned. They were mates, weren’t they?

Maybe not. I remember once being told at a party that you could fall a long way in this town. Lose something substantial, like a lover or your job, and suddenly you weren’t quite as popular as you thought. Friends would suddenly melt away and you’d be left without any support structures to keep your social and economic place. Course, there was always welfare if it got too bad. I was already too scared to check my balance at the ATM. I felt like I was standing on a scaffold with a noose round my neck. The bad news is that the trapdoor is about open plunging me towards the earth. The good news is there’s a noose round my neck ready to break the fall.

Later that night the slip of mind I’d experienced about these “mates” came back. Jane led the way in cultivating these coupling-ups, not I. I'd just gone along with them and the element of pally-ness was all surface. In terms of getting on with the male halves, I probably hadn't a great deal in common with Jack, the faux-adolescent games designer, or Lavell the serious muso-ish music company marketing man, or Dan, the only straight make up artist in Hollywood. If I was expecting a call from any of this lot, even if they knew about Jane, then I was a fool. There was no connection now that I was no longer part of a “we”.

Also that night, Judy McKimmie, the third wife not yet removed, of Professor Jack McKimmie, the self-billed Wild Man of Comparative Literature (or, alternatively, the Comparative Wild Man of Literature) had called. She was also closer to Jane than I, as Jane was defending her dissertation to the Wild Man.
"Hi Adam. I just rang to ask if you and Jane wanted to come out to our place tomorrow night. Its Jack's fifty-seventh birthday and we're just having a little impromptu gathering of his nearest friends How about it?"
Having felt like a social pariah the idea of going to a party should have filled me with joy, but I hesitated. Shouldn’t I wallow in my own self-pity for at least a few more days?
"I'd love to but", I replied, then remembering what Lyall’s had said, I improvised a lie, "but Jane's gone off on holiday for a couple of weeks, you know, just to get away from it all and think about her thesis. And I'm”, I paused briefly to let the excuse have its own space, "well, I'm going through a real creative period right now, tremendously creative, so I'm caught up in my work really."
"Oh that's great. But still, can't you just break it for a couple of hours? Jack would really like to see you. Besides, Bill Varrell and Susee Tomar are coming, Irving Pirm and Quinn Pfarb - you know, Professor Wolf's ex-wife - too. Irving spent three years teaching at Oxford in the sixties and is such a big fan of Carry On movies. I’ve told him all about you." There was no need to go on. My ego had been personally invited. I could not pass it up.
"I haven't got the car,” I replied, pathetically aware that this would not be a good enough excuse for the preternaturally cheerful and upbeat Dr McKimmie.
"Don't worry, I'll get someone to pick you up. About nine, okay?"
That someone turned out to be fucking Lyall Sorensen. He pulled up in a newish-looking Chevy, the aquamarine colouring its only distinction. As I answered the door, he opened a huge smile, a big shit-eating grin.
"Hi, Adam. It’s great you could make it. Jude said you needed a lift, although it didn't sound much like you wanted to go out tonight."
"Well," swinging my shoulder and scrunching my face in a show of bravura, "I was just kidding. I'm glad to get out of the place really."
"Yeah, must be lonely without Jane around."
I looked at him intently, hoping his face would give away some superior knowledge about Jane’s whereabouts.
"Yeah, but its not for long", I replied, trying to trigger some facial tic. Nothing happened. His open face, all smiling sincerity, retained its infuriating guilelessness. I let the moment go.
The ride over to West Hollywood was fairly short but seemed longer as Lyall spent most of it outlining some dumb thesis to do with sexual repression, the abstinence movement, the closing of the frontier and the late nineteenth century novel. I managed to nod agreeably at all the important, signally important moments in Lyall's monologue, but my eyes were leading my brain across the freeway to the cars streaming east. They were moving back towards something, not hurtling west like we towards the sea, towards continent’s end. Maybe, just maybe, Jane made that journey. And maybe, just maybe, she made it with someone else (Jane writhing conscientiously beneath 180 pounds of over-sculpted American meat, screaming harder, harder). I now saw that I was gripping the glove compartment with the brutal caress of a convicted strangler.
When we got to the McKimmie house I was impressed. An imposing three-storey structure painted an intense salmon pink, the pad came a high, glass gable structure jutting out from the flat roof. The whole effect was akin to a camp, modern cathedral. It turned out that the McKimmie’s didn't own the whole house, but of the sub-divided three apartments, the McKimmie's were in the best one, the penthouse. As we were shortly to find out, this allowed an exceptional view skyward from the living room of the twinkly stars of the rest of the known universe. They also possessed a magnificent roof terrace commanding another rich vista of the sparkly lights of those other known stars, the ones quietly sparkling in the Hollywood Hills.
And so, to party: twenty or so earnest people crammed into a two-bed apartment. In this town, it was well known that, if you weren't directly connected to the entertainment industry, you were either an artist or a writer. Nothing as mundane as a neurosurgeon, or a lawyer, or a baseball player for these parties. You either wrote or painted or sculpted which, if you were a neurosurgeon, lawyer or baseball player was far more important than your day job. In short, you created and if you didn't actually create ART at this precise moment, you could always create yourself and mark yourself up as an aspirant. It would certainly make it easier for me to introduce myself to women. Forget the cute chat-up lines or flirtatious eye contact: give them high status and they’ll be begging for you. How I wished I could say “I’m an artist” as a way of compensating for my lack of stunning good looks. Sculptor’s probably best: implies I’m very good with my hands. “Writer” might work, but everyone says that, even if they’re in marketing or advertising. No, scrub that. Everyone here will say “I’m a writer” (possibly using the qualification of “actually” at the end, or “aspirant” at the start) and show you their CV they happen to have in their jacket pocket to prove it. What about “I’m a philosopher”? That might work. Or even “I’m a professor” would do. But I’m not. I’m a lecturer. It just sounds so small.
On a skim of the eye, I put the artist/writer ratio at 40:60, given the zero tolerance for non-participants in the creative process. From that I knew it was going to be a dull night. No normal people. No one genuinely interested in current affairs or your occupation. Or wanting a general discussion about literature or art or history. Or taking a guess that the initials MLA stood for the new tourist marketing slogan, Mmmmm, Los Angeles (which was supposed to make it sound appetising but only made me think of King Kong or Godzilla contemplating eating the city). No, just twenty or so people aiming to plug themselves and their potential for enriching your life with their life story. Why was it that I couldn't go to parties where chemically-emboldened slatterns would come up, drag me to the bedroom and let me take them right there, writhing and thrusting with insane lust and total abandonment? Damn conversation and dating, give me immediate gratuitous sex now!
These conflicting thoughts were just about to form themselves into a Tourette howl in the middle of the living room when Lyall pointed out to me Professor Pirm who, he assured me was the kind of person who judged, half-euphemistically every book by his or her book. If you hadn't published, you were to be good-naturedly condescended to as an inferior. If you had published and received mixed reviews, the Professor tended to become intentionally esoteric and try to push the conversation just that little bit further above your head. If you had published to great smash reviews, then you were Professor Pirm and you need not speak, only think.
"Hey Adam", Judy called over enthusiastically as we entered, "do you know Irving?" A slight man, with a broad sweep of brown wavy hair and heavy spectacles, turned to look my way. Judy introduced us. The Professor was indeterminately aged, but carried himself like a man of great age and distinction.
"I understand you know Jane Temple rather well", Irving Pirm enquired civilly after we stood around for a few seconds in social embarrassment. This was not the time, I thought to myself, to get into a conversation about my recently departed lover. My heart pounding, I swayed involuntarily towards the great man.
"Oh dear. Are you unwell?" the Professor enquired. “Shall I see if there’s a medic here?”
"No, it’s fine. It's nothing much”, then, under my breath “well, nothing that you can do anything about.” Steadying, I asked him to go on with what he was saying.
"I've been thinking", Pirm continued "after Jane defends next spring, I may have a position lined up for her on my staff. If I can get her away from Le Roi, of course. Luckily, he’s firmly ensconced this semester up at Berkeley on a working vacation. So, now is my chance. She's bright, charming and a hard worker and I need someone with her depth of knowledge of post-colonial literature. It would have to be advertised of course, but if you could pass that onto I'd be most grateful. Would that be okay?”
I was wincing as he described Jane’s qualities, aware how little chance there was for me to pass any of this on. I felt I had as much chance of seeing her again as he did but I nodded all the same. He continued.
“If she could call me sometime, I'll go over my plans for her. Thanks. What was your name again?"
"Oh, its Adam, Adam Ramage. I'm her…" as I choked over the words, Professor Pirm is scouring the room for more important fare, "her boyfriend. She's out of town at the moment hence I'm on my own". He looked at me quizzically. It was now that I was obliged to tell him whether I was an artist or a writer. I plumped for the latter.
"I'm a writer, actually. I'm in school still, a grad student, so I get Thematic Options, Creative Writing, that sort of thing."
"Oh. You do them or teach them?"
"Teach I hope", the conversation was going well, or so I thought, but Pirm had other ideas.
"Do you know many people here?" he asked.
"Oh, quite a few,” I lied. The few I knew were nodding acquaintances. I felt entirely isolated and alone. I was missing Jane, my social crutch. Without her support, I was lost. For Pirm’s benefit, I attempted to name some of my “friends”.
“There's Judy and Jack, Lyall, a few more over there, and er.."
"Oh, look, there's Beeston Sinclair,” he interjected, turning ninety degrees as he did so. “You know,” he continued, standing in the same direction and speaking into the middle distance, “he’s sorta famous.”
“I’ve never heard of him”.
“Maybe you haven’t,” he said arching his eyebrows, “but in the poetry world he’s a major-minor poet.”
“Major-minor?”
“Yeah. Major in terms of reputation – you could say almost say semi-legendary. Minor in terms of, well, perhaps it is his extra-curricular activities that count for most. They call him the Beest, you know, and with good reason by all accounts. I haven't spoken to him since he published his last collection, Intuititis. Personally I found it all rather trite and passé compared to his earlier work – Beest-ings, Tattooed Notes on a Lonely Boy, Hot Dogs in Filth. Anyway, I must speak to him. Speak to you soon Alan, remember to tell Jane..." and he was off to grander things. I meanwhile felt entirely alone and socially isolated. None of these people mattered to me, not one. I wanted someone to confide in, someone who cared, not idle chitter-chat with someone who couldn’t remember my name or saw me as a simply a conduit for information.
That got me brooding. I perched on the arm of pristine, red leather Chesterfield and looked moodily into the middle-distance nonchalantly nursing my wineglass. Perhaps this resigned loneliness and the resulting impossibility of explaining even the barest minimum of our separation came from my lack of candidness. Lyall might have understood; Judy might have driven over and held my hand. Perhaps I liked self-pity - it was like I’d given myself a present of self-righteous suffering. The same criticisms heard before in Jane's voice, "why do you cut yourself off from me?" - "what am I here for if not to share your thoughts with?" - "stop sulking and coming on hard done by and tell me what's wrong!" Those criticisms I always managed to slough off eventually, but a residue must have remained, building up to an overwhelming critique. I should of thought about this earlier, I realised, but my introspective party moment was to be short-lived.

Lyall was talking to Kim Ferry, a brittle-looking ash blonde from somewhere on the American steppes (extreme weather, very flat, way back east, maybe Iowa), when I heard a booming “farkin’ hell” over my right shoulder. I looked over and, sure as ever, it was a claque of English public school types who I recognised as Miles Bastable, Anthony Portland-Jones and Ophelia Spearwright. God, I thought to myself, anybody but them. They were worse than the roast beef set that hung out down ye olde pubbes of Santa Monica.

“Fark,” the voice boomed again, “if isn’t old Adam Ramage.”

“Hi Tony,” I said in the general direction of the RP cacophony blowing across the room, “didn’t see you guys there.”

“Rampers! How are you old fella?” Portland-Jones continued at the top of his voice.

“Fine,” I replied weakly. “Never better.”

“That’s great, because we heard from your pal Sorensen that you might be having a few domestic diffs,” he thundered, thus informing the whole room. Several people turned towards me, as if in expectation of a confessional breakdown. Flustered, I automatically glanced at Lyall to counter the suggestion. Lyall though, indifferent to the hubbub around him, was resolutely stuck in his conversation with the wan-faced Kimberley.

I cringed, momentarily closing my eyelids to draw strength from somewhere inside. Taking a deep breath, I redoubled my efforts to maintain both an insouciant front and a requisite level of false bonhomie.

“I think he must have the wrong end of the stick,” I replied nonchalantly, as Tony Portland-Jones began approaching as rapidly as an eighteen-stone sybarite can. “Nothing’s wrong as far as I know. Maybe he was thinking about our cleaner?” I searched for his agreement. Nothing came. Portland-Jones, now up-close and personal, kept smiling and nodding at me. Miles Bastable and the Simpson woman had followed him and the three were forming an unbreakable circle around me. It felt like they were a gaggle of overfed vultures, weighing up the situation before descending to eat up their social prey, just for kicks. They were neither amused nor convinced, though they were all smiling aggressively.

I was thinking fast. The only way out was to meet rictus grin with rictus grin. I pulled back my lips, narrowed my eyes and pushed my teeth forward. “Take that, poshies,” I thought as we High Nooned it with our frighteningly British teeth (lucky no Americans were involved, or they might have thrown up).

This carried on wordlessly for a considerable passage of time, including the odd bout of non-specific laughter from Portland-Jones. Tiring, my face dropped into wryness but Ophelia Spearwright was keeping hers going. Miles Bastable contented himself by occasional swishing movements with his tongue, trying to remove a piece of spinach wrapped round an upper canine. Despite my smile I was mad at hell with Lyall. Thanks to his big mouth everyone at the party knew about my relationship “difficulties”, even if they were sketchy on the detail. However, after a quick once-over round the room, I soon realised the social options were slim. The poshies had formed into a talking circle and, ever so politely, were squeezing me out with conversations about places in England I had never been and Oxbridge connections I had never imagined. I swallowed my bile and started attempting to nudge my way into Lyall’s group, Kim having been joined by another couple of bland nonentities from the faculty whose names I had never caught. It was either that or be left standing on my own in the middle of a party, emphasising exactly what the rumour was about my failing, and not so private, single life. After five minutes in Lyall’s gang though, the inanity of his profundity was pushing me out. I couldn’t take anymore. Socially idle and conscious of my aloneness, I stumbled through to the kitchen to pick over the nibbles.

Cradling a small scoop of peanuts in one hand, with a slice of raw carrot held like a cigarette between my smoking fingers, I reached out towards the cashew nuts while carefully cupping my plastic beaker between thumb and forefinger. As I was executing this dangerous manoeuvre a small weight nudged my outstretched left hand spilling half a cup of Chardonnay over a big-boy's tub of low-cal salsa dip.

It was Ophelia Spearwright. She must have followed straight behind me, having left Miles and Tony nattering. She looked me over without speaking, her eyes managing to both peer over the top of her glasses and look down at me at the same time. I took in her mousy, corkscrew-curled mop-top, the slim, verging on scrawny, body, and the lily-whiteness of her skin lying starkly beneath her cerise dress. The nervous tic in the corner of her mouth pulled, before she opened her mouth to speak. Mentally I sighed, anticipating condescension.

"Ah, Adam," she began in her slightly nasal, middle-English accent “so, what do you think of the party? Bit of a crashbore, isn’t it?"

"Well,” I began, with an air of resentment, “it has alcohol, nibbles and..."

"But are they enough though?" she interrupted before I could reach the weary end of my weary sentence.

"I guess so.”

“Yes, I always feel that a party should offer something that one wouldn’t get elsewhere. I don’t know – a moment of intelligence, or of clarity. Something just that little bit special.”

“Well yes, but I think we may have to make do with the creation of an alcoholic salsa dip.”

“Oh yes. Sorry about that, making you spill your drink.”

“That’s okay. Anyway, this party might have something to offer. Lyall Sorensen has assured me there are some interesting people here."

"Yes I know. Miles and Tony are terribly clever. We were just were sharing a Barridean moment. Actually their critical insights simply sparkle. I was just so amused by their foregrounding of the humorous subtexts in Feutussel. He’s just so playful, don’t you think? Very funny, but, then again, is that enough though?"

“Being funny is never enough.”

“I quite agree. You can never truly connect.”

I hoisted a tired smile that she took mean agreement rather than bemusement.

“I suppose you’ve read L’homme, La mama, L’amour by Gauze and Detriti?” she continued, though seemingly changing the subject. I hadn’t, but I was damned if Ophelia Spearwright was going to know. I nodded sagely, but it didn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t expecting me to speak, only her.

“Yes, I don't know why Adam, but it really opens up some of the qualities of contemporary relationships. It just continues to appeal every time I read it, particularly their main thematic?”
“Their main thematic?” I said as a question, though Ophelia took it as a statement.
"The Gauzian Rhomboid.”
“Oh yeah. What’s that again?”
“Well, you know what a rhomboid is don’t you? A parallelogram with adjacent sides but with unequal length. Parallelality, but unequal, running along without bisecting or intersecting but remaining trapped in a structure which they both maintain, as a function of its whole, and define by their participation. But then, again, I suppose the old rhizome might be equally valid, where a rhizome isn't like a tree and its roots in that it connects any point to any point, but is constructed from lines only. How it relates to a map that must always be produced and constructed, that's always detachable, connectable with multiple entry and exits and that, 'the locus of a plateau is at the midpoint and neither at its start or at its end'. There’s something in that, I think. What was it that Altschuh said: “the middle is also like an end, but as a succession of endings, like one door opening into another.” Don’t you agree?"
“Shit!” I yelled.
“I’m sorry Adam, but I’m not sure if I understand that critique.”
“I’ve just knocked over the salsa again.” I was so disorientated by Ophelia that, in placing my drink down on the table, the salsa container was nudged. Ophelia went off to get a cloth to wipe the red goo off the floor and I relaxed up after having my brain pounded. What really would you want from a party I thought: some half-decent conversation or a fucking pompous lecture by a couple of Oxbridge goof-offs? Foregrounding Feutussel? A Barridean moment? Fucking Rhomboids? Sure it’s profound, about as profound as a kick in the tits. God I hate it when the posh lot get going with their clever comments and literary “wit”. One of them’s bound to tell the joke about a post-structuralist, a post-modernist and a post-man on a celebrity house tour around Beverly Hills, which the Americans won’t get because it’s a mailman here, and they’ve all heard it before, but they’ll still laugh. That, or play “name that philosopher”. Quote, bloody unquote. Nauseating bastards. It just makes me feel all horny-handed and base, like I’m the son of a blacksmith rather than two teachers. Then again, at least Ophelia Spearwright does have one saving grace: she is female. Come on Ophelia liven up a bit, take a look at what’s happening around you. Maybe partake of some of that recreational drug taking on the porch? Or take a gander at the porn-surfing going on in Jack’s office? Or hadn’t you noticed they’re playing strip Jenga in the master bedroom?

Oh hell, I made it all up. This was going to be a typically dull academic party, all shoptalk, one-upmanship and moderation. I felt like I was suffocating. I waited for words to come.

“Well,” I said eventually, “"you could pour me another drink and I’ll think of something interesting to say."

"If that’s a promise, Adam. Yes of course."

"Thanks. Another glass of the Zinjolais Rose then."

"Aren't you white?"

"Well, Ophelia I was. But now I fancy something else, you know it gives you that warm, pinky feeling inside."

"Oh, of course. A Rosee glow, hah hah.”

“Hi, guys, what’s so funny?” Anthony Portland-Jones moved in from behind my right shoulder to poke his pasty face and floppy fringe between Ophelia and I.

“Oh nothing much, Peejay”, replied Ophelia, “just Adam here, tickling my funny bone.”

“I see,” he ventured, avoiding eye contact with me, “I had no idea that Mister Ramarrgge” (he pronounced this with a French accent for no discernable reason) “was a comedian of note, but then again, I’ve never been subjected to his charm. Have you any other jokes you might tell?”

“I wasn’t telling jokes”, I replied, without mentioning that I thought he was a bumheaded twat. “We was just talking.”

“Oh you wuz, wuz you?” Cue for more laughter, this time from the pair of them.

“Oh Peejay, you’re such a scream”, snorted Ophelia. “Tell Adam what you told me just now. That tasty piece of gossip you picked up from your cousin Alexander.”

“Which bit? The one from the Palace or about the PM?” As instructed by Ophelia, Portland-Jones proceeded to tell me several salacious factoids about the Royal Family, several ex-cabinet ministers and a veritable “who’s he?” of London society. I nodded along to all of this, but inwardly, I despaired. You go halfway round the world hoping to experience new cultures, find out new and exciting things and meet exotic and adventurous people only to end up stuck in a conversation like this.

“That is fascinating,” I commented blandly, at a point in the monologue where Portland-Jones momentarily paused to snort in oxygen through his enormous, equine hooter.

“Thank you. You can always rely on cousin Xander to get the inside gen. It’s all about connections, isn’t it?" I knew that he didn’t expect an answer: the raised eyebrows and supercilious smirk said it all. “You, boy, are a nobody. You come of nothing, relate to nothing, are nothing.” It was a message I really did not want to hear.

“Quite,” I said, feeling that I needed to at least say something. I searched for a witty retort, a subject change, anything. Instead, a cop-out:

“Oh look, I’m right out of drink. Anyone fancy a top-up?”

Both Ophelia and “Peejay” passed on my offer and drew away into their own private huddle.