Commitments : Thanks, but She’ll Pass on the True Confessions

When my housemate and I moved to Los Angeles, we invited two new friends to our home for dinner one Saturday.

*

We didn’t know them well. Part of the reason for having dinner with them was to get to know them better. In that regard, it was a resounding success.

Too resounding. I learned from one that she hadn’t spoken to her father in 15 years, not since her 21st birthday when he had knocked her unconscious. She didn’t say why, and I wasn’t certain etiquette allowed me to ask.

The other said she was going home for a visit soon--the first in a number of years--and that her mother had planned a party for the occasion. Sounds like fun, I remarked. Not such fun, I learned. Her mother had also invited her older brother, the one who had molested her throughout her childhood.

All this before the main course.

But it wasn’t just them. During a lull in the conversation--one guest was trying to recall whether she’d undergone electroshock treatments in 1984 or 1985--my housemate (revealing a voluble facet to her personality I’d never seen--and hope never to see again) confided that she was in therapy, and that my mother is the least sensitive person she’s ever met, as though these two revelations were intrinsically related. She also told our new best friends that I had difficulty communicating important feelings to my father.

What important feelings? I inquired. You know, she knowingly replied. I didn’t. Like the time you were embarrassed when he gave you that ugly briefcase; you didn’t like it and didn’t want to use it, but you didn’t know how to tell him.

I was 10 years old, I protested. Sometimes the wounds inflicted during childhood leave the deepest scars, one dinner companion commented--fixing me with a penetrating stare, no doubt looking for deep scars.

It was time for dessert.

Only I had some. As I polished off a bowl of ice cream, one new friend described how Overeaters Anonymous had rescued her from the brink of dietary disaster; how for years she had stuffed herself into near-oblivion, going so far one evening as to chew massive amounts of beef bouillon cubes washed down by gallons of hot water when her cupboards were otherwise bare.

I quietly decided against a second helping.

Instead, I poured myself a glass of port, an apparent cue for the other guest to tell us about her lifelong struggle with alcohol.

Next followed a spirited debate whether addiction to alcohol or food was worse, during which someone told a story involving a late-night feeding frenzy that would have shamed the entire shark kingdom. The House of Pies figured prominently in the conversation.

What is it about Los Angeles that inspires otherwise well-mannered and reasonable people to forget both in their compulsion to confide their lives’ intimate details to almost total strangers? Do I need to know things so personal that you wouldn’t want to tell them even to your mother? Especially not my mother--the insensitive one.

I come from buttoned-down Washington, suit capital of the world. Gray suits at that. With vests. The place where no one talks about personal difficulties. Where the mayor had to be caught on video smoking crack cocaine before admitting that he had a little problem . Where 12 jurors watched that videotape--and half couldn’t even be sure that there was a problem.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a better way to live; it’s just the way I’m accustomed to.

Then it occurred to me. About that problem I have communicating with my father. Maybe if I just invited him to a dinner with these friends on Saturday night. . . .

* E. Lynn Malchow is a very private person living a very private life in Los Angeles.