Do you know what to say?
Dog Henry does. I used to. But more and more, talking face to face, I find myself stumped, stymied, taciturn, gasping for the least gab. It’s not that I’m losing words – not yet – no stampede, anyway – that will come – but that I can’t think of anything worth saying. Weather, food, traffic, streamed entertainment, bromidic pleasantries, none slips past the censorious editor in my throat. Why contribute another vacuity to a moment already blizzarded? Let others disarm disquiet with well-meaning meaninglessness. Where’s the crime in silence!
My mother blanches in her grave. The seven deadly sins to her were less culpable than social taciturnity. In company one kept one’s end up, no matter what. A good person – who knew what that was? – opinions varied; but a good host or hostess? There acclaim was unequivocal. Etiquette dictated manners, garb, cuisine, but most emphatically a lubricating word. “Silent Sam” and “cat got your tongue?” seared as shameful verdicts. No matter how comely, a tongue-tied debutante would never collar her man. As for gentlemen without gentility – Heaven forbid!
Bred to please, I aced glib at an early age. My volubility delighted perfumed onlookers. There is something cute, gotta say, about a tot lisping grammar precisely. Precocity ignites hope: our naughty world may yet right itself!
How readily I could talk my way into adult plaudits and out of scrapes. In business and philanthropy, I got good at raising money. Classmates sneered at my knack. Tuck rhymed with suck.
I’m unsure how I outgrew garrulity, my cocky confidence saw no harm in charm. My parents died and their pals, thinning my ranks of auditors. Outcomes defied explanations, no matter how glib. The more time I spent with words, the more they stared back at me, in mute reproach. Do you mean what you’re saying, they inquired gently; are you saying what you mean?
More and more insipidities exhausted me, my own especially. It’s like noticing a pimple on your chin. Until glanced, it doesn’t worry you, you look fine; but once noticed, that red dot becomes a cynosure for all eyes. The tittering world can see nothing of you but that!
Scanning transcriptions of my sociable palaver, I cringed. What a bullshitter! Misdirected jests – in my cups especially – returned in the dark to mock me. “Silent Cal” Coolidge’s homely homilies mutilated my magniloquence. “I have never been hurt by what I have not said,” he said. And: “If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called upon to repeat it.” And: “No man ever listened himself out of a job.”
My jaws clamped like a portcullis. I sighed for the good old days of facile chat. Folks with an ample store of repartee dazzled me. Why couldn’t I be smart and quick like that!
The less I spoke in person, the more in print. These daily jaunts compensate for what I might have said aloud. They italicize the subtext of any conversation: “Listen up.”
I dread my reticence will be misread as sullenness. Trust me, it’s not. I’m just sick of spouting nonsense. One cannot use words scrupulously in one context and sloppily in another. No more could I slap the Pope on the back, should we meet. Words are my radiance, godhead, purpose, never to be sloshed or scuffed.
Pal Henry’s eloquence is infallible – because he does not use words. He expresses himself – unmistakably – by gestures, actions, wagging, barking, sniffing, grunts. Though we may differ, he never contradicts or quips; never ensnares with arguments or entangles with clarifications, like Laocoon with his snakes.