A Witty Age

The moralists are running to the microphones, their chest inflamed with indignation. They make an example of Eliot Spitzer and their theatrics remind me of that other Eliot, who thought the world would end with a whimper rather than a bang. If only some would avoid speech, as in that other line of “The Hollow Men.”

“What an age,” Thomas Hoveling once said and then, when I didn’t say anything, he added, “Wit. Don’t forget the wit.”

Here is a little fantasy:

I settle for smelling the orange blossoms as the powdered wigs walk by. Everyone looks so good under the glass tears of the chandeliers. Everyone but me, I say to Thomas, and with a finger smeared in saliva, I remove the dirt from my shoes. I sit in a corner trying to fit in. Experts in irony, the moralists, with their flaring cuffs, hold the little hands of the academics as they glide on the dance floor. The entertainers and the financiers talk about their retirement accounts while the rebels listen in.

I do fit in. And where are the arts?

They waive at me from the other side of the room where a small auction is being held. All of them, even the critics, are wearing Hirst’s Manolo Blahniks. On the men, the Manolos seem a bit puffy.