A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors

Almost

159 Almost I don’t do well in groups—never have, never will. Set me down in the middle of a room full of people, and I will immediately begin to edge toward the door. I will edge as inconspicuously as possible , but take my word for it, I will edge. I have no need to offend anyone. There is only that overwhelming need to slip out, jerk my necktie loose, unbutton my collar, and run. All those people interacting, talking, mingling, drive me ever deeper into myself, where I become my own voyeur, at once fascinated and horrified by my dilemma and my many social ineptitudes . Some people thrive in crowds. They move through the room effortlessly, pausing to talk with an individual here, melding into a small group there, listening, laughing, shaking a hand, slapping a back, fitting in flawlessly. My wife is like that. She has her own warm, confident gravitational pull. People are drawn to her. She radiates. Meanwhile, if you look across the room, you will see me edge ever closer to the door. I have edged toward the door at high school dances and college mixers. I have edged toward the door at religious services and precinct caucuses, at weddings and funerals. Long ago, when I was single, I edged toward the door on dates. I’ve edged toward conference room doors in business meetings in swanky Manhattan skyscrapers. Naked as the day the Great Spirit created me, 160 ALMOST I’ve edged toward the door—a blanket flap actually—in a Native American sweat lodge in Montana. When I run into neighbors at the local post office, even as I say hello, I start saying goodbye and edging toward the door. I just don’t do well in groups, no matter how good or pleasant or holy or noble the cause. I would start a group devoted to distrusting the dynamics of groups, but we can all see where that would lead, can’t we? Consider the evening I spent alone and in anguish in the middle of a big group in a ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria—a group of advertising people from prestigious advertising agencies all over the country. The Magazine Publishers Association of America was honoring the twenty-five most creative magazine advertising campaigns of the year. They were going to award $100,000 to the writer and art director who’d created the best campaign. It was shameless on the Magazine Publishers’part.A gimmick, a perverse, masturbatory, reflexive verb of a promotion intended to get the entire American advertising community to think about magazine advertising. I didn’t want to attend—not even when one of the campaigns I’d written had been named to the top twenty- five. Three weeks and two thousand miles from the Waldorf, I had already started to edge toward the door. But then a young woman from the Magazine Publishers called and urged my art director partner and me to attend. She said she thought we really ought to be there. In the social conventions that attend advertising award shows, a call from the committee suggesting you should attend is often a coded message to the winner: “Be there to pick up the swag. Don’t stiff us.” My art director partner and I were skeptical but vain enough to take the bait, go to the strip mall, rent tuxedos, head for New York, and check into the Waldorf. Cocktails were at six, and as we registered for the fete, someone handed us our seating assignment. We were at table 1, seats 1 and 2. A good omen? Maybe, we thought, and we wandered off to ALMOST 161 find a cocktail hour bottle of beer. Before we could shoulder our way to the cash bar, however, someone from the Magazine Publishers swept us up and took us to meet a couple of the judges. “I voted for your campaign,” one of the judges gushed. “I thought it was the best thing I’ve ever seen.” My buddy and I toted up the omens. They called and urged us to be there. Table 1, seats 1 and 2. At least one judge voted for our campaign. So what if we were standing there in a couple of tuxes that had spent last Saturday night at the head table at a Holiday Inn wedding dinner in Fridley, Minnesota...