Rebel Prince

A new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style is out. No kids, not Dolce-and-Gabbana kind of style; I’m talking grammar-and-punctuation kind of style. How geeky is my excitement over this? I think the part of my brain at work here is the same one that made me so interested in reading etiquette books as a kid. I couldn’t catch a baseball to save my life, but boy, did I know which fork to use at dinner. Interesting to see I was cultivating my inner snob early on. Not that I ever had occasions to display my learned social graces. Even now, I love the immediacy of the internet, but instead of firing off e-mails, I long to write hand-written notes on fine stationery. “Mr. J. T— regrets that he is unable to accept the kind invitation of…”

A related note: is there a word out there meaning nostalgia for a time period in which one never lived? I was looking at a photo on the Library of Congress website, of the 1925 Big Game (the annual football game between Stanford and Berkeley), and it occurred to me that practically everyone is wearing a hat (American Memory Collection link via LYD). I’ve often said that I miss those days when everyone wore hats. And often I am reminded, oh wait, I wasn’t around then.

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A couple weeks ago, Subarna and I have dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, and it’s time for the debauchery to begin. I’ve already had a glass of wine, but then I decide to have an amaretto too. That stuff is intense. The fumes alone are enough to send one reeling. Suitably buzzing, we walk to the gas station and buy a pack of Marlboro Lights—the Rebel Prince readership gasps to learn that its author does enjoy a smoke now and then—and wander along Woodmont Avenue. Lots of people out and about. Subarna and I are smoking, sitting on the bench at the street corner like a couple of hoodlums.

A woman—an attractive one, at that—comes up and asks for a cigarette, and even gives me a quarter for one. (Subarna was to remark later that I’m like, a dealer now.) The woman says, “Yeah, I’m trying to quit.”

I say, “I hear ya,” in a disaffected, world-weary voice, as if I’ve been down that road and back again, yes, ma’am. When in fact, just one cigarette is usually enough to render me stupefied. I keep a straight face, but on the inside I’m laughing at my put-upon insouciance.

“It’s like my boyfriend won’t even kiss me anymore,” she says.

In hindsight I figure there are only two appropriate responses to this, depending on one’s, shall we say, outlook: “Honey, I’ll kiss you” or “Can I get his number, then?” Neither comes to me at the moment. I give a sympathetic “aww.”

With the transaction complete and pleasantries exchanged, the woman walks about five paces away, towards the crosswalk. But she does a one-eighty and comes back to us. We’d all suddenly realized she needs a light, which I am glad to provide. The gas station didn’t have lighters, just matchbooks. I feel very old-school, as I strike a match and hold the flame to her, careful to shield it from the breeze.

“Got it?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Mm hm,” I say, basking in some kind of perversely altruistic afterglow, but knowing all I’ve done is keep alive a stranger’s vice. I shrug it off and take a drag, momentarily wondering about the non-kissing boyfriend. The woman crosses the street and turns the corner and is gone.

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