“Self-Portrait, Yawning” by Joseph Ducreux (Wikimedia and the Google Art Project)
On Friday I self-diagnosed myself as “suffering from a mild case of Scribe’s Fever, a form of neurasthenia common among the intelligentsia of [our] time.” I had just watched Wes Anderson’s film Grand Budapest Hotel, twice in a row. It has been an active season in Essayland.
Everyone—the whole town—was out of town, so I decided to take myself on a date. That is what they call it now, in the age of self-care. In my day we said we were “going to go do something.” You felt like seeing a movie, you went to see a movie. People now talking about how they feel weird reading a book alone in a restaurant. Pfffft. I determined to show myself a real good time.
Saturday I got up very late, then took a nap to prepare myself. The Hi-Pointe Theatre, one of the few old movie palaces left, was running a “Corey Feldman Movie Fest-Spectacular” to benefit a children’s charity: Goonies followed by Lost Boys. There was a dangerous moment in the concession line when an unlikely-looking man turned to ask if my emergency book was a New York Review of Books edition. Yes, I said; Stefan Zweig’s The Post-Office Girl, which Wes Anderson lists as a source for his Grand Budapest. The man and I agreed we did not listen to podcasts and parted ways.
Unencumbered with social obligations, I was free to order a large Coke and their largest, extra-buttery popcorn all for myself, which I did not know was heavily salted when I heavily salted it. The sodium headache may have influenced my belief that Goonies is, apart from the terrific Anne Ramsey, one of the worst movies ever made, its characters clichés about people living with disabilities and obesity and those of Asian heritage. I wondered if the director, Spielberg, had ever been allowed to work again. I finished the popcorn and between movies went back to the concession stand. A water, this time, with Junior Mints, chilled, because I am a sophisticate. Lost Boys holds up remarkably well, to its final shot, which keeps us concerned about Barnard Hughes, who might be mistaken for Art Carney.
My car, which I had parked by the dumpsters behind the weed café, was still there. If I had had to catch an Uber to go pay my way out of an impound lot, it would have been the most expensive date I had ever taken myself on. Riding high on the thrill I drove straight to a McDonald’s and ordered a Chicken Big Mac. No low culture, as they say. I sent a text to my sons, one of whom had alerted me to the sandwich, warning them that the sandwich’s slime layers spit out the chicken patties from between its buns, and that eating it all as quickly as I did could lead to bubble-gut, chills, and the need to double-up on reflux lozenges.
Need I go on? Sunday I continued my orgy of self-care by going to a commemoration at a historical labor site, a piano recital by Ingrid Jacoby (Bach, Debussey, Mussorgsky, and an encore of Prokofiev), and a restaurant on Delmar for handmade bao.
By 6 p.m. Sunday I had cured myself of neurasthenia, said to be a particularly American disorder, by overloading my Self with events—a treatment I have always found effective.
