COLUMNS
Talk Show 13: with Kiara Brinkman, Bret Anthony Johnston, Fiona Maazel & Margo Rabb
/ Jaime Clarke
05.13.08
Maazel: I once told my best friend that I went into a Teriyaki Boy where all the employees were defective in some horrible way—each dragging ass behind the counter: drooling, limping, weeping. The story went on and on and climaxed with the manager of the restaurant finally telling everyone to knock it off, this wasn’t fun anymore, at which point they all got normal and carried on. I made as if they were just messing with me because, after all, what’s there to do at Teriyaki Boy? Cook?
Rabb: When I was twenty-six, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. My mother had died years before that, and my sister and I inherited the house we’d grown up in. I spent a year living in the house while we settled my father’s estate, and during that time, I was single and dating. Typical first date conversation:
DATE: Where did you grow up?
ME: Queens. In Sunnyside.
DATE: Oh. And you still live there? Do you live near where you grew up?
ME: Yeah, I do…actually…I live in my parents’ house.
DATE: You live with your parents?
ME: No…they both died.
DATE (uncomfortable/sad/embarrassed/repulsed expression): Oh…
Then I’d inevitably make an inappropriately cheery smile and attempt, futilely, to steer the conversation in a conventional direction.
I soon realized that there wasn’t really any good way to say that you lived in your dead parents’ house, so after that I answered any questions about my family by simply stating: “They live out west.”
––What made you tell the lie?
Brinkman: Well, I suppose I sensed the possibility of reinventing myself. Not to mention, I desperately wanted a sibling. I’d watched the movie Annie countless times, and had decided life would be much better if I had someone to sing with me, and pillowfight with me, and to share the lonely darkness of my room at night.
Johnston: Is it too grandiose for me to say ‘youth?’
Maazel: I am a compulsive liar.
Rabb: Death is a bit of a damper on a conversation, and most people in their twenties don’t have much experience with it. And apparently, mentioning you live in your dead parents’ house does not make a man eager to become your boyfriend.
Rabb: When I was twenty-six, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. My mother had died years before that, and my sister and I inherited the house we’d grown up in. I spent a year living in the house while we settled my father’s estate, and during that time, I was single and dating. Typical first date conversation:
DATE: Where did you grow up?
ME: Queens. In Sunnyside.
DATE: Oh. And you still live there? Do you live near where you grew up?
ME: Yeah, I do…actually…I live in my parents’ house.
DATE: You live with your parents?
ME: No…they both died.
DATE (uncomfortable/sad/embarrassed/repulsed expression): Oh…
Then I’d inevitably make an inappropriately cheery smile and attempt, futilely, to steer the conversation in a conventional direction.
I soon realized that there wasn’t really any good way to say that you lived in your dead parents’ house, so after that I answered any questions about my family by simply stating: “They live out west.”
––What made you tell the lie?
Brinkman: Well, I suppose I sensed the possibility of reinventing myself. Not to mention, I desperately wanted a sibling. I’d watched the movie Annie countless times, and had decided life would be much better if I had someone to sing with me, and pillowfight with me, and to share the lonely darkness of my room at night.
Johnston: Is it too grandiose for me to say ‘youth?’
Maazel: I am a compulsive liar.
Rabb: Death is a bit of a damper on a conversation, and most people in their twenties don’t have much experience with it. And apparently, mentioning you live in your dead parents’ house does not make a man eager to become your boyfriend.