Thursday Dinner with Friends

We drove to the outskirts of town to visit our friends M & G in their home.

They live in a hilly section of Vienna, the 14th District. It was raining again, as usual, and the sound of the rain against the window as we sat chatting in their dining room added to the atmosphere. Cozy. M poured champagne for us to celebrate our marriage. Good stuff. Lots of bubbles.

Our friend Sissy joined us soon after, so the five of us sat around jabbering about various things. There were some personal tales of travels or the comings and goings of mutual friends, but mostly we talked about concepts and current events and ideas.

Which makes for a more interesting evening. Pro tip for interesting conversation: after a few minutes, we've heard all we want to hear about your kids or grandkids or what Aunt Mabel did after she got out of the hospital. If Aunt Mabel beat the shit out of a mugger in a dark alley with her bedpan, that's interesting. If your kids applied to become astronauts and got accepted---or washed out because they don't accept hermaphrodites in NASA---that's interesting. Otherwise, skim past the family shit quickly and let's get on with interesting stuff, shall we? And by interesting, I mean stuff other than your family, like quadratic equations or the subtext of midgets in a Fellini film.

Dinner: an appetizer of melon slices wrapped with prosciutto. Main course: salmon with carrots, squash, potatoes, and a dill creme sauce. Dessert: ice cream with little wafers and blueberries. Drinks: a good Austrian white wine.

Everyone speaks excellent English (except maybe me) so I followed along. Every so often they'd switch to German because, despite their excellent English, ideas just flow faster in your native language and after awhile you want a break. I followed along as best I could but only got the barest gist of the German jibber-jabber.

Talk turned to the economy---will the US default on its obligations, and if so, what does that mean?

Somebody asked me what I thought about these various gathering thunderclouds of doom, being an Ami (American), and I had to take a deep breath and think about it before answering, but here's an abbreviated version:

"America has a lot of problems. There have been more frightening times in American history, but the math is adding up to a real disaster. It's like watching a good friend who's alcoholic drink himself to death. You hope for the best but you've seen how these things can go...

"Philosophically, I'm neutral about it. Everything that comes into being eventually ceases to exist, and that includes us as individuals, nations, and eventually this planet and our solar system. We just think it's important because we're alive now and we're the most important thing in our little Universe. But what's one more failed experiment out of the thousands that have failed before?

"America has horrible fiscal and social problems that can't be solved with our antiquated form of government. We have representatives who don't represent us. They represent millionaires, because they ARE millionaires for the most part, and they want to become even richer. So who do you think they care about---guys like me, or guys like Rupert fuckin' Murdoch? Democrats and Republicans work for the same employer: corporations and billionaires.

"They're also plugged into the silly idea that unsustainable concepts like constant growth and consumerism uber alles is the only way to have a successful, happy society. They think the way to interact with foreigners is to threaten to kick ass, via their grossly bloated military.

"America operates like Amy Winehouse: they need to go to rehab but they say no, no, no. Too much pain.

"I voted for Obama but my voting days are officially finished. Except maybe to vote for a hard-right Republican candidate like Rick Perry, or a unspeakably vapid shell of a human being like Sarah Palin, because the US is going to have to fall off the stairs face-first before it either dies, or decides it needs to go to rehab, yes, yes, yes. And voting for someone like Perry or Palin will accelerate this unfortunately very neccessary process. Neccessary, because the US refuses to do it the easier way, and instead seems to insist on burning itself to the ground first. Maybe something will rise from the ashes, who knows?

"After all, Western Europe rose from the ashes of WW II...

"I hope I'm absolutely wrong about all this. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for a sudden gust of intelligence from my 'leaders.'"

Pause. Everyone looked at me. I couldn't tell if they wanted me to go on, or wanted me to STFU.

So I said: "Can I get another glass of wine?"

We drove home in the rain. It had been a good evening.