I Remember Nothing [2]
In 1964 the Beatles came to New York for the first time. I was a newspaper reporter and I was sent to the airport to cover their arrival. It was a Friday. I spent the weekend following them around. Sunday night they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. You could make an argument that the sixties began that night, on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was a historic night. I was there. I stood in the back of the Ed Sullivan Theater and watched. I remember how amazingly obnoxious the fans were—the teenage girls who screamed and yelled and behaved like idiots. But how were the Beatles, you may ask. Well, you are asking the wrong person. I could barely hear them.
I marched on Washington to protest the war in Vietnam. This was in 1967, and it was the most significant event of the antiwar movement. Thousands and thousands of people were there. I went with a lawyer I was dating. We spent most of the day in a hotel room having sex. I am not proud of this, but I mention it because it explains why I honestly cannot remember anything about the protest, including whether I ever even got to the Pentagon. I don’t think I did. I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Pentagon. But I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it one way or the other.
Norman Mailer wrote an entire book about this march, called The Armies of the Night. It was 288 pages long. It won the Pulitzer Prize. And I can barely write two paragraphs about it. If you knew Norman Mailer and me and were asked to guess which of us cared more about sex, you would, of course, pick Norman Mailer. How wrong you would be.
Here are some people I met that I remember nothing about:
Justice Hugo Black
Ethel Merman
Jimmy Stewart
Alger Hiss
Senator Hubert Humphrey
Cary Grant
Benny Goodman
Peter Ustinov
Harry Kurnitz
George Abbott
Dorothy Parker
I went to the Bobby Riggs–Billie Jean King tennis match and couldn’t really see anything from where I was sitting.
I went to stand in front of the White House the night Nixon resigned and here’s what I have to tell you about it: my wallet was stolen.
I went to many legendary rock concerts and spent them wondering when they would end and where we would eat afterward and whether the restaurant would still be open and what I would order.
I went to at least one hundred Knicks games and I remember only the night that Reggie Miller scored eight points in the last nine seconds.
I went to cover the war in Israel in 1973 but my therapist absolutely forbid me to go to the front.
I was not at Woodstock, but I might as well have been because I wouldn’t remember it anyway.
On some level, my life has been wasted on me. After all, if I can’t remember it, who can?
The past is slipping away and the present is a constant affront. I can’t possibly keep up. When I was younger, I managed to overcome my resistance to new things. After a short period of negativity, I flung myself at the Cuisinart food processor. I was curious about technology. I became a champion of e-mail and blogs—I found them romantic; I even made movies about them. But now I believe that almost anything new has been put on the earth in order to make me feel bad about my dwindling memory, and I’ve erected a wall to protect myself from most of it.
On the other side of that wall are many things, pinging. For the most part I pay no attention. For a long time, I didn’t know the difference between the Sunnis and the Shias, but there were so many pings I was finally forced to learn. But I can’t help wondering, Why did I bother? Wasn’t it enough to know they didn’t like each other? And in any case, I have now forgotten.
At this moment, some of the things I’m refusing to know anything about include:
The former Soviet republics
The Kardashians
All Housewives, Survivors, American Idols, and Bachelors
Karzai’s brother
Soccer