by John Irving
I don't lead a hectic life. It's not every night, or every week -- or even every month -- that I feel the need to "clear the air." Most nights, I don't even look at the telephone. Other times, the unringing phone seems to summon all the unreachable people in the past. I think of that poem of Rilke's, about the corpse: "Und einer ohne Namen/lag bar und reinlich da und gab Gesetze" ("And one without a name/ lay clean and naked there, and gave commands"). That is the telephone on certain nights: it is the unreachable past -- the dead demanding to give us advice. On those nights, I'm sorry I can't talk to Ted.
MY DINNER AT THE WHITE HOUSE
Here's what happened when Dan Quayle invited me to dinner. My wife accused me of covert right-wing activities; Janet speculated that she'd married a closet Republican, or a secret golfer. I promised her that I didn't know Dan -- I'd never even met him. Then we both calmed down and read the rest of Mr. Quayle's letter. Everything was correctly spelled, which was both a shock and a disappointment, but it was only a pro forma invitation -- not nearly as "personal" a letter as it had appeared at first glance. It was also an embarrassing mistake: I'm a registered Democrat and Janet is a Canadian citizen; here we were being invited to become members of something called the Republican Inner Circle. We understand it's easy to get on the wrong mailing list; nevertheless, we were tempted to join. Since we moved to Vermont (in 1990), neither the Democrats nor the Canadians have invited us to be members of anything.
But, alas, Janet questioned my motivation for accepting a dinner invitation from the Vice President. I do admit that the letter from Dan Quayle was a trifle vague. We weren't sure if money or celebrity was the desired result; yet it appeared that we would get to dine at the White House -- at no charge. Furthermore, it was implied that the Republican Inner Circle was of an intimate size, suggesting that we might even expect close conversation with the Vice President and the President.
After the President's puking incident in Japan, we knew it was dangerous to be seated too close to Mr. Bush while he was eating; we wanted no part of that. Nevertheless, it's about a 10-hour drive to Washington from Vermont; to eschew eating in proximity to the President, for fear of projectile vomiting, was weighed against the potential boredom of dining near the Vice President. Coming all the way from Vermont, we wondered if the level of Mr. Quayle's "close conversation" would be a just reward. My repertoire of golfing tales is somewhat small; a night comparing greens fees struck me as less than exciting. On the other hand, Janet and I wouldn't have minded an evening's chat with Mrs. Quayle, but we didn't think it was our place to suggest a seating plan that would land us next to Marilyn.
In light of what's happened -- I mean that there are Democrats at least temporarily occupying the White House -- you can imagine how much Janet and I regret that we turned down Dan Quayle's invitation to dine at the White House with the Republican Inner Circle. What a blown opportunity! But I'd had a funny evening at the White House before; I wasn't sure I had the stamina to repeat it.
President Reagan invited me to dinner, several times. At first I declined -- I'm sorry to say, with childish bad manners. I said stupid, rude things. ("No thanks. I'm eating with the homeless that night." Juvenilia like that.) Then, after the third invitation, it occurred to me that the Republicans were obdurate in their sense of who their friends were, or who they wanted for friends; I also realized that if the Democrats were ever in office, they might be too busy invigorating the economy to invite me to dinner. If I wanted to go to dinner at the White House, I thought I'd better accept Mr. Reagan's invitation. How was I to know I'd get another?
So I went. The occasion was your usual state dinner, about 200 people -- this one for Mr. and Mrs. Algeria. To my surprise, I was seated at the President's table with only five other stunned individuals. There was a nervous lady from Ohio; she'd written Mr. Reagan his favorite fan letter of the week, although neither the President nor his fan would tell the rest of us what the letter had said. Also among us was a Rhode Island woman they called Attila the Nun (in a very attractive, all-gray outfit) and the former New York Jets quarterback -- and a personal hero of mine--Joe Namath. Mr. Namath enlivened the conversation by stating that "only in the United States" could such a thing be happening to him -- namely, that he was having dinner with the President of the United States. I let it pass.
But, throughout our dinner, Mr. Namath repeated and repeated his observation, until I finally said, "Well, of course, it's highly unlikely that you'd be having dinner with the President of the United States in any country other than the United States." Everyone looked at me as if I were a real jerk; only Mr. Reagan got the joke, and he was also kind enough to point out why my effort at humor had failed.
"It's your timing and your delivery," the President said.
Then the fan of the week from Ohio asked the President to tell us the "funniest thing" that ever happened to him. Mr. Reagan didn't hesitate.
"We were at the Brown Derby," the President said. But suddenly Mr. Reagan realized that Mrs. Algeria, and her interpreter, were also at our small dinner table. (Actually, the interpreter sat in a less comfortable chair behind Mrs. Algeria; it seemed incredibly impolite that he wasn't served any food.) Mr. Reagan was worried that Mrs. Algeria might not be well schooled in California entertainment spots. Thus the President explained: "The Brown Derby is a famous restaurant where movie people go." This was communicated to Mrs. Algeria through her interpreter.
After a brief exchange, the interpreter said, "She knows."
Mr. Reagan continued. He said he was at the Brown Derby one night with his friend Bing Crosby and a comedian named Bishop (not Frank Sinatra's pal) -- and here the President paused to tell Mrs. Algeria that Bing Crosby was a famous American singer, "dead now."
As one might expect, the interpreter -- after another brief exchange -- said, "She knows."
And so it continued, with Mr. Reagan moving ahead to the part about the dwarf. Apparently, there often was a dwarf at the Brown Derby -- and an objectionable little person he was. It was also true that the comedian named Bishop, who was dining with Mr. Crosby and Mr. Reagan, suffered a slight speech defect, which the President said was a contributing factor to Bishop's lack of fame and fortune. Bishop was a stutterer.
Thus it came to pass that the dwarf, who was obnoxious, presented himself at the Reagan-Crosby-Bishop gathering by placing his head on their dinner table. The table was about the right height, level to the dwarf's head, and thereupon Bishop (with the stutter) asked: "Did some-some-some-someone order John-John-John the Baptist?"
No one at our White House table reacted, and so the President explained his joke to Mrs. Algeria.
"John the Baptist? The Bible? Got his head cut off? Had it served on a platter? You get it?"
Whereupon, without a word to Mrs. Algeria, the interpreter said, "She knows."
That was the kind of evening it was. When I had to go to the men's room, a U.S. Marine escorted me there, and he stayed to watch me pee -- to make sure that was all I was going to do, I guess. I was feeling disappointed in myself for failing to represent the literary community with the sort of rebellious spirit that I imagine this community prefers. My very faint rebellion was indicated only by the fact that I wore a silver tie; all the other men had interpreted the "black tie" announcement on the invitation literally. And in my case, I must confess, I'd packed in the early morning, not in very good light; I'd actually thought my tie was black until I saw it in the well-lit hotel room where I dressed for dinner. I never would have chosen that tie if I'd been able to see it properly; it was the sort of unnatural silver of a fish's underbelly, the kind of tie an oafish high-school student might wear to his first prom.
And as at a prom, on my night at the White House -- and befitting a Hollywood party -- there was dancing after dinner. I was standing as close as possible to a very attractive young actress; it's an indication of my age that I'm doomed to remember her as Alan Ladd's beautiful daughter. I'm sure she has a first name, and I'm not at all sure that she
really is Alan Ladd's daughter; that's just how I think of her. Now that I'm creeping past 50, it occurs to me that she might even be his granddaughter, or no relation to him at all. Anyway, she was Alan Ladd's daughter to me, and she was wearing the kind of dress that made most of the men want to stand as close to her as possible. When her dress fell the rest of the way off, you just wanted to be there. Naturally, there wasn't another woman within 25 yards of her -- Ms. Ladd looked absolutely terrific. And then the music started, and George P. Shultz, who (like the rest of us) had his eye on Ms. Ladd, began to walk very rapidly and purposefully in her direction.
"Oh, God -- who's this old coot coming at me?" Ms. Ladd asked. (Or words to that effect.)
With just a hint of indignation that implied to Ms. Ladd that she should be honored, a gray-haired gentleman said, "That, my dear, is the Secretary of State."
I was determined to stick up for Ms. Ladd, so I said to the gray-haired gentleman, "Well, he's not going to ask you to dance, is he?" But this was no better received than my witty remark to Joe Namath. The Secretary of State danced away with Ms. Ladd, and I never saw her again; it must have been my tacky silver tie.
Like a typical country boy, I went home early. When I left, the President and Mrs. Reagan were still dancing; they're simply fabulous dancers. Back in my hotel, I realized I'd not seen Joe Namath dance all night -- probably because of his football knees.
This is the full extent of my White House history, and while my wife and I were weighing the pros and cons of Dan Quayle's invitation, we saw the news in USA Today -- Dan Quayle had also invited the late Leonard Bernstein. We were floored. We don't know for sure, but we're inclined to believe that, when he was alive, Leonard Bernstein generally preferred Democrats. Now that he was dead, it was true that Mr. Bernstein's absolute party preference could not be ascertained. But how did we feel about being invited to drinks and dinner with a bunch of dead people? (We presume that Mr. Bernstein wasn't the only dead person who was asked.) I said to Janet that, more and more, this was shaping up to be not our kind of party.
So we declined. We hope we were polite, but we couldn't resist saying that Mr. Irving was a Democrat and his wife wasn't a U.S. citizen, and that, furthermore, we were both alive. If that doesn't disqualify us from the Republican Inner Circle, nothing will.
My Dinner at the White House (1992)
AUTHOR'S NOTES
For reasons I can't remember -- possibly I developed a compelling interest in a moral showdown between two men of wavering principles -- I kept a kind of election diary in the months leading up to and including the 1992 presidential election. Here's an excerpt from that diary: "With only 12 days to go before the election, President Bush was photographed walking toward his helicopter in Atlantic City. The picture, which appeared on the front page of The New York Times, shows the President walking backward; we presume he's giving one last wave to his supporters. The white of his raincoat stands out against the gray of the tarmac. Six Secret Servicemen surround him, all in dark suits, all walking forward, but -- in Secret Service fashion -- two of the men are looking over their shoulders. The shadows of the men are slanted to the left, as if giving further evidence to the President's allegations that the press is biased in a liberal direction -- against him."
Well, this is old news -- as we know now, the other waverer won. I voted for him; I would do so again. Contrary to accusations you may have heard, Bill Clinton is no liberal; as a lifelong Democrat, I consider President Clinton to most resemble a moderate, decent-minded Republican -- he's not nearly as dangerous and deceitful as those Republicans who most virulently oppose him -- but he is a waverer (and not because he didn't go to Vietnam). Nevertheless, I enjoyed keeping my '92 election diary; there were so many stupid things to keep track of--for example, it was in Ridgefield, New Jersey, where President Bush suffered a memorable slip of the tongue. He told a crowd of 15,000 that he appreciated their "lovely recession." Of course he'd meant to say "reception," but he was exhausted. "Character counts," Mr. Bush kept saying. "Character matters."
It is only necessary to remember that Mr. Bush was also the candidate who ran against Ronald Reagan for the nomination of the Republican party in 1980, and who (at the time) was pro-choice; he was also opposed to giving any aid to Mr. Reagan's beloved "freedom fighters" in Nicaragua -- and it was George Bush who first called Mr. Reagan's supply-side economics "voodoo." Had being Reagan's Vice President changed him? Now firmly anti-abortion, and a born-again convert to the trickle-down economic theories of the former actor, Mr. Bush suffered no loss of face in delivering one of the most egregious lies of the '92 election. Bush actually urged Clinton to "come clean" about his student trip to Moscow -- "just as I have [come clean] about Iran-Contra." But if George Bush had "come clean" about his role in the Iran-Contra affair, then Bill Clinton could tell everyone that he'd fought in Vietnam.
I know -- more old news. It may be of greater interest to my readers to learn if I have been invited to President Clinton's White House. Yes -- in fact, twice. Both times I was unable to accept: the first time I'd made plans to take a trip with my children, the second time I was in Europe. I hope the Clintons ask me again. (It seems increasingly unlikely.) President Bush never invited me, but I wasn't surprised; I was only surprised to hear the reason -- and from no less an authority on dinner invitations to the White House than Mrs. Bush.
I ran into Barbara Bush at a black-tie event in New York City, following her husband's return to private life. Mrs. Bush and my wife (the Canadian) were talking; Mrs. Bush was surprised to learn that I was an American. Because I was one of her favorite authors, Barbara assured me, she had tried to have me invited to dinner at the White House; someone on George's staff had told her that it wouldn't be appropriate to invite me to dine at the taxpayers' expense-- because I was a Canadian! (Apparently, the same someone on George's staff failed to convey this misinformation to Dan Quayle; poor Dan was of the opinion that I was fair game for the Republican Inner Circle.)
After this little misunderstanding was cleared up, Barbara told me that she and George would be happy to have Janet and me to dinner; and that, vaguely, was how the matter was left. Janet and I are still wondering if Mrs. Bush meant Maine or Texas. (We still haven't been asked.)
"My Dinner at the White House," which in an earlier draft contained about 50 pages of my election-year diary, was originally published in Canada -- in the February 1993 issue of Saturday Night. (Neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush would want to have dinner with me if they read the Saturday Night version.)
It was for the benefit of Canadian readers that I included a small geography lesson in the original essay. I wrote: "My wife and I live in the low mountains of southern Vermont; we are a four-hour drive from New York City, which is directly south of us, and a four-hour drive from Montreal, Quebec, which is directly north of us. Both our Canadian and our American friends would be inclined to describe our location as 'nowhere,' or 'the wilderness,' but you would be mistaken to think that we are at all shut off from the world. Why? Because here is what you do if you live in Vermont: you find a pretty piece of land, you build a tasteful house, and then you stick a giant TV satellite dish in a prominent position -- such as in your nearest neighbor's face. Our dish is black, resembling the giant ear of a dinosaur species of bat. That's what you need, if you want 75 channels of sex and violence and sports -- and we do."
In an essay for a Canadian audience, it was also necessary for me to explain the American passion for bumper stickers, which is always exacerbated in an election year. In Vermont, I LIKE IKE was a prominent bumper sticker in the '92 election -- an expression either of nostalgia or of general displeasure with the choice between Clinton or Bush, or both. In my diary I noted: "Bumper-sticker lovers must regret the passing of President Bush's occasion to vomit in Japan. Even in Vermont, there were UPCHUCK IN ASIA! bumper stickers for a while -- they didn't last -- and many local wits subscribed to the theory that this moment of sudden illness was the most decisive, most strai
ghtforward foreign policy that Mr. Bush had enacted since taking office. Democrats hoped that this brief barf might be the only thing we would remember about George Bush, but -- to judge the passing importance of the event by the speed with which it vanished from Vermont bumper stickers -- the barfing episode was quickly forgotten. Perhaps the prospect of a President who travels to foreign countries and vomits on their leaders is an idea ahead of its time, although suggestions spring readily to mind. ... I mean, regarding where Mr. Bush should have traveled next. Anyway, the puking-related bumper stickers simply disappeared, whereas the President's ill-fated READ MY LIPS was still very visible on car bumpers, and still hurting him, in November."
Naturally, no diary of incidents contributing to the '92 election could be complete without a modest anthology of Dan Quayle jokes. By June of '92, about the only group Quayle could address -- if he wanted to be free of hecklers -- was an anti-abortion meeting where he followed up his attack on Murphy Brown, the fictional character in the television series, with more hot-blooded rhetoric. (An unwed mother was a poor role model for our society, Quayle had said.) He would press his case, the Vice President declared, "even though the cultural elites in some of our newsrooms, sitcom studios and faculty lounges may not like it." This was the same level of anti-intellectual buffoonery that had been used to portray Governor Dukakis (in the 1988 election) as a creation of the "Harvard boutique." But in June of '92, Clinton sent the signal that he would not be baited to discuss abortion or other "family values" on this level; to the disappointment of many Democrats, Clinton would fail to mention abortion sufficiently on any level, yet his cool response to Quayle set a tone. "I'm getting tired of people who have the responsibility for the American people -- like the Vice President -- pretending that the only problem we have is the absence of values," Clinton said.