Dining With Anderson & Friends

These days, as my friend Lucero taught me, I nestle small ice cubes into the root of the tall white orchid plants on the coffee table. I’m having dinner with my reliable friends, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell. I set out five plates, five silver forks from my parents’ house, and a drawing on each plate. Food is “nutrition” now, and has lost the amusement of creative action. I sit down on the chair by the coffee table, facing the TV set above the stone mantelpiece. My father's antique toy banks parade up there, with a brass horse and a scarlet fan. In the curious format of this time, imagination serves solitude well. I do not go out, of course. I live on my own. Laurence often invites the most interesting guests and pays special attention to their literary skills. I have come to know these guests well during the curve of the COVID. We agree upon most matters.

The commercials are like appetizers. I get hooked on some, such as the recent Infinity car commercial. This features a lusty dark woman with the most alluring expression I've ever seen. She is lounging in the back of the car. I am crazy about her sullen nod to music, a certain hostile look, like a spicy hors d'oeuvre. (On America’s Got Talent, Simon would give her a golden buzzer.) All the commercials grow on me. I worked in advertising long ago, and our ads were conceived with the same creative drive, mystique, and detailed attention that my father gave to his movies. So, when I bring my “reality” plate to the table, I set illustrations of the dinner they’re having for each guest and fill their crystal goblets with Perrier water. I have become accustomed to my dinner guests' familiar gestures and voices, Rachel's riveting expressions, her classic neck, and, yes, I look at Chris Cuomo, softer, wiser, since his recovery—and all his brothers (or does he just call everyone “brother”?)

The other night however, Anderson, even livelier now since the arrival of his baby son Wyatt (who I can't wait to see, Yes!) had a special story introducing Bats and their involvement, let us say, with the COVID-19. We see these Bats visiting mass outdoor markets. There were maybe several dozen close-ups of Bats, some with big noses, sort of ruddy complicated faces, as if they'd had “bad work done.” So many Bats flying around in Mr. Cooper's enormously unsettling well-done surreal documentary. My asthma clutched into low gear, sensing activity of some concern. Since two bouts of scary pneumonia I’ve been cautious around all flying creatures. Has one of these Bats come from Russia or was this gang sent to Trump, to share the cage Putin’s building for him?

The Bats, here, interrupt the format of what has come to be my dinners, reliable adaptations, with vintage cowboy napkins and butter plates to hold our masks. One creates details to put concern in its place (i.e. no knives at the table, keep anxiety at bay.) But tonight—this array, this study if you will, of Bats defines distress. They wear no masks, unlike Batman, who recently appeared to me in a wild hallucination, another of the semi-fictional experiences I suspect many actual humans are having as we react to what seems an upcoming leap of evolution.

I was not at ease—even with the Häagen-Dazs bar—as bats flew, swept and spun across from my dinner table. It would have been rude to leave. And I never crack the fortune cookie till I finish dinner. And I was learning so much: Did you know Bats love tequila (had not occurred to me.) They eat moths! (Which is why they wear leather wings.) There are bats who mate for life; they “shave” before they bite!? Yes, really. (I had boyfriends who never did that…but that was the Sixties.) Now, here’s something to consider: Bats are good mothers (Batman story coming soon.)

Anderson is directing the documentary perfectly. There are, it seems, flying foxes who get mistaken for Bats. A foxy way to take flight. Anderson introduces “Claudia,” an advocate for bats. She calls them fascinating. “They can eat 500,000 insects.” There seems, in the film, nothing encouraging about the Bats who have drawn our attention by destroying our societies and families, draining medical resources, and, let’s just say, taking our planet and turning it upside-down (an action aided, abetted, and abused by the current government).

Somewhere in the Bat documentary, I think I learned that Bats cannot hum while eating, because (and this may not be precise information, but we have little patience for that) “they can’t locate the echo!” I also need to convey that they eat moths to protect corn crops. Not, as I thought, to protect wool jackets. We just never know each other's special skills.

Then, as I was watching the Bats on the screen, I think I heard the rise of the protesters, appalled by the news that 13 million Mexican free tail bats spend hours in the summer looking for a place to sleep. Sort of like long ago in NYC, when we used to put together plans for the Hamptons. Now it’s, “Where will the Bats be?” Those were the days, my Friend. And my gratitude for the remarkable dinner guests: Always here. They never say “We’re going out tonight.” They never let me be alone.