"Did you go the Correspondent's Dinner," I ask.

And yes, some people have.  Maybe back in the day.  It was all on closed circuit television, so you could go the particular parties there in the Hilton, and still know what was going on.  I was invited to one and there was William F. Buckley, and he was wearing this beautiful velour purple tuxedo, and he had the perfect velour slippers to go with the tux...

I get interrupted, and have to return to listening.

And ( of course ) someone comes along and scuffs his slipper, and well..

There was a big reaction on his part on behalf of justice.




I once, out of college and drifting, went to visit my brother in Boston.  I went out to the JFK Library.  Many reasons, many things to do.  Hemingway manuscripts--they let me take a peek at some scribblings vaguely related to later sketches, Islands in the Stream...  and of course the Jack and Bobby stuff.   Shuttle to the T, T to one place, switch to another line, and finally I got back to Harvard Square to meet my brother.  But a funny thing happened.  I'm walking up the street, and I see him come by, towards me on his Honda motorcycle, Thunder, with a look I later grasp the coldness of.  And I see my brother like a virile god really, handsome, fun, always kind to me.   Well, hmmm.  Where was he going?  I walk back to toward Somerville, Inman Square.  And when I walk in the house, I get the look.  I had done something horribly wrong dithering over the few documents they reluctantly handed to me, independent scholar of Hemingway, at the JFK library, that and the little sailboat, and admiring the kind of cheesy IM Pei architecture.  I had failed to meet him at a certain time in a certain place, and now he was going to take it out on me, and my own 'but I thought..." were all just more evidence against me.  And I was close.  Did I ever mention how close I was, how I could have almost reached out and touched him as he flung past me on that street that comes from the bridge over the river into Harvard Square, even as I had been there and was sort of patiently waiting for him to appear.