The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 37: June 28

Today I had a dinner party. I did not tell the people I’d invited who else was coming. I didn’t want anyone to pre-Google anyone. I don’t know why I wanted to control what my friends did or did not know before they arrived to my house. I do know that I treat the Internet as an oracle that one consults, like Laius, father of Oedipus, at his peril. Must I know my son will grow up to kill me? Or that my Amazon star ranking is on the wane? For this reason I limit my visits. I don’t ask questions I feel I cannot handle the answers to.

I feel others should exercise similar caution.

A few years ago, when my son was in day care, I met the father of one of his playmates. I did not know at the time, but I would soon learn via parental gossip, that the man’s wife had died when his daughter was two months old. “Gossip” is maybe the wrong word to describe how I came to know his history. No malice was intended. The chatter was in the service of protection. It prevented the unwitting from asking the father, “Do you and your wife live around here?” or asking the little girl, “Is your mother picking you up today?”

The gossip gave rise to further curiosity and speculation on my part, especially since I’d become somewhat acquainted with the man. I so badly wanted to know how his wife had died. Had she committed suicide? Had she been killed in a car accident? The man is an actor and his wife was a director of documentary films; they were, in other words, slightly more Googleable than other people. But Googling him seemed invasive; also, to learn the details about his wife would put me in the position, when he eventually told me these details, of pretending I didn’t already know them. Unlike him, I am no actor.

I did not Google him. After a few more weeks of walking together and spending time in playgrounds, during which time he still hadn’t told me about his wife, I considered that he possibly hoped I’d look him up online (as my friend having the affair with her married coworker had possibly hoped I’d look up her lover’s identity online), as this would remove the burden of his having to tell me. He’d let the Internet do the disclosing for him.

I still did not Google him. My loyalty paid off. Finally, six months into knowing him, he told me what had happened to his wife. We were at a party. The ambient noise was such, however, that I couldn’t hear him. What he was telling me was no doubt extremely heartrending, and so it seemed rude to say, repeatedly, “Sorry, what?” I pretended, for politeness’ sake, to understand. I expressed regret and sadness and said, repeatedly, “Wow,” and, “Oh my God.” Then I went home and Googled him.

The Googling that might occur before dinner parties, however, confuses me more than the Googling of dead wives, especially since I prefer to have dinner parties where nobody talks about their careers. Isn’t that the mark of a failed dinner party? When the conversations resemble job interviews? Wouldn’t it actually be preferable, thus, to request that everyone Google the other guests beforehand so our tedious biographies won’t need teasing out in person?

At my dinner party, however, I quite purposefully prevented any pre-Googling. To this dinner I’d invited a couple I didn’t know very well along with some close friends, one of whom is a well-known writer. I didn’t tell the new couple that this writer would be at the dinner. I thought I was omitting this fact as a means of showing how unimpressed I was by literary celebrity. I’m so unimpressed that when the new couple arrived to the party, I didn’t disclose his identity, not even when I introduced him. (I said, “This is my neighbor.”) To state his name, or so my thinking went, might be seen as name-dropping; there is little else in the world that I hate more. I went so far out of my way not to name-drop that I accomplished something even more pretentious. I also told myself that I was doing the new couple a favor. Fame basically prohibits casual conversation. What’s your opening gambit with George Clooney? It’s all so fucking awkward.

I also viewed my act of nondisclosure as an experiment. I wanted to see how many minutes or hours would pass before the new couple figured out who this writer was. What if they never did? What a great party that would be if we all just made jokes and shared no personal information, not even our names.

Predictably, there was much awkwardness. A lot of confused small talk eventually led to the writer’s occupation and then his identity being revealed. By the end of the night, it was still unclear whether I’d done the couple a favor or a disservice. It was unclear whether they left that evening thinking that I was merely an eccentric hostess or a deeply messed-up person.