Dear Diary: Entertaining
A fellow blogger came to dinner this evening, and I only wished that it had gone on longer: a very good time was had by me. But when the dinner was over, and the coach of conversation turned into the pumpkin of pickup, all I could think of was the ever-lengthening list of things that I could have done better. This sort of post-mortem anxiety is part and parcel of entertaining anybody for the first ten times. I know all about all the corrections that fly to mind in the wake of any dinner party. They may be neurotic, in that we’re worried about things that nobody else noticed; or they may be psychopathic, completely overlooking glaring horrors that were evident to everyone else. But we do learn from them.
There was a new note this evening, however, possibly because, as I’ve already suggested, what I really wanted to enjoy was a conversation with an extraordinarily intelligent mind. Of the meal that I prepared, I hoped only that it wouldn’t be unappetizing. It followed my Degree Zero low-key menu: roast chicken with simple extras (tomato soup, roast potatoes, bought dessert). It’s true that I heated up some cheese hors d’oeuvre from Agata & Valentina. Big deal. We hardly ate them.
But I’m thinking now that to ask anyone into your home for dinner is really to dump a lot of information in a guest’s lap. Maybe the restaurant isn’t, by strict somparison, nearly as noisy. Perhaps this — and not an obsession with privacy — is what instructs people of the European persuasion to entertain only their oldest friends at home.
On top of that, I was the waiter as well as the cook. I don’t mind those jobs at all — but is what I mind important? Maybe my friend would have preferred a dinner companion who stayed put at the table. (We had soup/salad/chicken/cheese/eclairs.) When the evening was over, there lingered in my mind an awful vibration: I’d been “on,” what Fossil Darling used to call “societal.” Gawd, not that.
I remember when all I worried about was whether the chicken was overcooked. Tonight, I’m afraid, I’m worried that I was overcooked.