The Great Bores
For a moment I had an illusion
I’d thought I’d lost, which one never entirely loses
about television, any more than about life: that *this show
would be different, snide in the way I’m snide. The strobes,
the Expressionist tilt of the stage, the self-parodying music –
all promising: nothing, I thought, could be this vulgar
naively. And the host sounded Brit,
which means class, i.e., a license to be snide.
The contestants stood clueless and graceless, shot
from below, like rubber monoliths, the camera angle
emphasizing hands and smiles and nostrils.
One was a guy I had met at an interminable,
inescapable dinner, who enunciated
each phase of his drive there, uninformed
political stand, unexceptionable
bromide, and stop on his and his equally
horrible wife’s latest vacation with
the same toneless solemnity. Another
was a woman I knew who knew everyone,
threw parties for everyone to which you
(i.e., I) couldn’t avoid going, and
whenever you said something starting with “I,”
I went, I want, I saw, I feel, would immediately
herself say something starting with “I”
about what *she had done or seen, having nothing
to do with what you’d said. There was also
a woman who trolled conversations
for opportunities to make breathy, sensitive,
“spiritual” remarks; and if one tried to dispute them
or get her to define her terms, became lost,
almost comatose in an uncomprehending
martyrdom. I wasn’t sure
of the rules; the host was being too sardonic,
the lights too weird, the crowd too loud.
Does a *compulsive talker* count
as a bore? That would be cruel, exploitative … Then
(for one always has these moments of
awakening, except perhaps on television) I realized
I wasn’t watching – I was one
of the contestants. My relentless, pissy
judgmentality qualified me. I tried to explain
my standards; the music swelled. I insulted the audience;
they laughed all the more. I suddenly noticed the prizes
and thought: maybe I’ll win.
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