I looked back at my paper, unnerved. I’d written the first draft two and a half years ago. I’d just managed to move a comma or two, but it clearly wasn’t going to be much improved before my panel at 3:00. This reappearance of Jimmy Stewart also wasn’t exactly helping my concentration. I saved my changes, closed the document, and ejected my flash drive. I hesitated for a moment, and then opened up the Internet browser, heading straight for YouTube. I typed in “michael jackson moonwalk modéré satie.” Up she popped: the tiny dancer. I watched her quietly sink and rise in her mechanical little demi-pliés, with her little mudra-hands hanging at odd angles off her wrists. I watched it again. Evidently somebody else had, too: it was up to nineteen hits. I saw from the clock on the corner of the screen that it was really time for me to be heading over to the Faculty of Architecture to test my a.v. before my panel. But I couldn’t resist quickly scrolling down to check on the comments. There was a new one, from “quothballetcarper”: “Not bad, little lady. Keep practicing.” To which falserebelmoth had responded, in a language as peculiar and indecipherable as her choreography: “And I sneered – softly – ‘small’!”
I got to my assigned room at 2:50, a little out of breath. I was supposed to be presenting with two other people – the prominent dance theorist Niels van der Waals, and a graduate student from the University of Wisconsin named Amanda Trugget. Amanda was trying to figure out how to open her file on a PC. She was a Mac person. There was a tech guy assigned to the room, but he didn’t seem to understand her question. She looked pretty nervous. When I introduced myself she said this was her first conference presentation. She had braces. I helped her figure out how to access her PowerPoint file on Isadora Duncan. Then I checked my own Forsythe images. Quite a few people were gathering around the door, but after chatting and peaking in, they all filed discreetly into the room next door. At about 3:05, someone shut that door, and you could hear the muffled sound of their panel beginning. Amanda and I settled into our seats, and the U. of Z. tech guy politely took a seat at the back of the room. In the awkward silence, Amanda and I flipped through our notes, smiled at each other, and checked our cell phones. I texted Sven: “low turnout wtf?” He texted back: “ :( ”
At about 3:20, I stuck my head out in the hallway, and saw a sign taped to the door. I guess I’d missed it on the way in. It said, “Unfortunate news Professor van der Waals is unable to attend conference.” Well, that would explain the quiet migration away from our panel. I explained the situation to Amanda, and she started to cry, softly. I told her I’d be happy to listen to her paper. She pulled herself together, and began reading in a tremulous voice. When she got to the line about how Marinetti had rejected Duncan’s “childish sensuality” in favor of “the ‘cakewalk’ of the Negroes,” she looked up at me with an awkward grimace, her lips stretched painfully over all that orthodontic hardware. I nodded encouragingly, indicating that I understood this wasn’t her own word choice. Amanda forged ahead, stoically.
At several points during her presentation, my mind wandered. I was replaying that weird video in my head. I don’t think Amanda noticed. I was careful to maintain the appearance of rapt concentration.
When she concluded, the tech guy and I applauded. Then, to reciprocate, I read my paper. Amanda, too, had an expression of polite engagement, but by the end, even I had lost interest. I came up with one lame question for her – the year of publication of the Manifesto of Futurist Dance – which she answered (1917). She asked me what I thought the phrase “Fiction (as wish)” meant in Forsythe’s Sleepers Guts. It appeared as a projection in the background of one of my slides. I started rambling about how, for Derrida, dance has to precede writing… But Amanda’s face was clouding over and I let myself trail off. The tech guy was already winding up the cables from the microphones, so Amanda and I just smiled limply and clapped for each other’s good manners. We gathered up our belongings in silence and each headed for the gender-appropriate restroom. I don’t think it was because we had to pee. I think we both just wanted to get away from one another. It was nothing personal. After washing my hands, and drying them, I stuck my head out into the hall. Seeing no sign of Amanda, I took off for the Arcotel.
Maybe now you will understand why I’d been toying with the idea of writing a novel. It’s not that I don’t enjoy academic writing, and it’s not like I want to be the next Stephen King. Honestly, I love the idea of a paper with an audience of one. Well, two if you count the tech guy. It really had more to do with that question of Amanda’s.
That evening someone from the conference organized an impromptu session in the lobby of the Zagreb Youth Theatre where conference attendees could process Michael Jackson’s death. Maybe “organized” is the wrong word. I noticed there were not a lot of people of color at this conference. The motley crew that assembled in the lobby of the Zagreb Youth Theatre seemed unsure about whether they were there to speak, or to listen. Someone did, however, read aloud the brief statement issued by the performance artist Reverend Billy (of The Church of Stop Shopping) on his website. It was quite moving. It addressed MJ directly, and encapsulated the extreme beauty and disfigurement of the artist as the logical conclusion of advanced capitalism: “We created you and you created us. I am proud and I am ashamed.”
Dan Ferguson texted me that night at about 10:00: “@ gbar mesnicka 36 upper town.” I looked up the address on the little map of Zagreb that came with the conference materials. It looked like a doable walk, so I headed out on foot. It was a beautiful evening. Zagreb is a fairly quiet town – not really known for its nightlife. The weather was pleasant, and aside from a few sour-looking elderly pedestrians, most of the people I saw seemed to be teenaged couples making out on benches. They were very workmanlike about this. There was not a lot of laughter or conversation. On my way up into the Upper Town, I stopped in front of St. Mark’s Church, which they say dates back to the 13th century. You wouldn’t know it – big chunks of it were destroyed and then replaced after various catastrophes, both natural and man-made. The roof has a mosaic of the Dalmatian, Croatian, and Slavonian coats of arms. In the evening light it looked as if it were made of Legos.
I turned the corner and walked up the hill on Mesnička Street. It was very quiet, and apparently mostly residential. When I got to number 36, I wondered if I’d made a mistake – or if Dan had. It looked like a regular row house. But then I saw there was a doorbell with a discreet label saying “gbar.” I buzzed, and almost immediately a middle-aged guy with a crew cut opened the door and nodded me in. There was a rainbow-colored neon sign over the bar, and they were playing VH1, relatively quietly. It was dark and air-conditioned. Aside from Dan Ferguson and his three other friends, the only other people in the gbar were the man who let me in, a young, hot guy staring at the video screen, and the bartender, who was a woman. She was also young and good-looking, with spiky hair and a pierced lower lip, but she was very serious. Dan, however, introduced her as though she were already a friend. “Gray, Zlata. Zlata, Gray. Zlata makes a mean Thirsty Lesbian!”
I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, “Oh, really?”
Zlata just stared, waiting for my order.
“Is there something you recommend?”
Zlata said, with nary a hint of a smile, “We have two specialty cocktail, Thirsty Lesbian and Double Penetration. Thirsty Lesbian is wodka. Double Penetration has two kinds alcohol. I recommend beer, Zlatni Medvjed.”
I looked at Dan’s glass. It had a pink liquid in it that I guessed might be sweet. The TL. I considered asking for more information on the DP, but since I wasn’t really in the mood to get hammered, I went with Zlata’s recommendation.
Dan introduced me to his friends, who were all, like him, ABD. Sometimes I feel a little old in these situations. I went back to graduate school as what they euphemistically call a “mature” student, but these days a lot of doctoral students are fresh out of their undergraduate institutions. All three of Dan’s friends, two guys and a girl, were gossiping about some confrontation that had occurred at the plenary that day. I try to steer clear of academic gossip. I have one of those little figurines of three monkeys next to my computer at home: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I tried to engage Dan in a separate conversation. We didn’t have to apologize