Putting the U.N. in Fun

Recently I found myself hanging out at the U.N. bar with a bunch of Middle East dignitaries not named Michael.

The U.N. bar is not some hipster haunt in Williamsburg, and no, "middle east dignitaries" is not code for "other suburban moms." I was literally at the United Nations delegate's lounge-- a guest of my girlfriend, Dahlia-- chatting with foreign dignitaries who asked that, were I to write about them, they each be identified as Michael.

Dahlia's been my girlfriend for twenty-five years and working at the U.N. is the culmination of a string of global career moves she's made to keep herself engaged in foreign politics and the plight of the war torn and emotionally mending. For years she's brought me hand woven scarves, hand bound journals and beaded strands of beautiful craftsladyship that have made it all the way from Rowanda, East Timor, Nepal, India, or Hong Kong safely back to me in New Jersey. She travels alone, always has, and has never so much as batted an eye at narrowly evaded military coups, raucous uprisings or surly cab drivers. I've marveled at her unflappable gusto and wanderlust-- which blows mine out of the water-- ever since we met in Paris on a trip to Moscow all those years ago. And now she's in New York City, for another ten months (or ten minutes), until her next opportunity opens up and she flies out the window, leaving yet another sublet to store her bare-bones belongings in some basement in Queens. She's got boxes all over the world filled with the flotsam of sudden moves-- undeveloped film canisters, needless formal wear, letters and trinkets-- awaiting the day when she makes her global rounds to claim them. I love her because besides being ballsy and wearing all the world's hearts on her sleeve, she's funny and laughs at my jokes.

The Delegate's Lounge was located at the end of a massive room the size and scope of a large museum cafe. One wall was compromised entirely of windows-- an interesting safety choice for the U.N.-- and the ceiling was in another stratosphere, which was a good thing, because on the opposite wall hung the most exquisite and enormous rugs I'm ever likely to see.

I was immediately frustrated that I didn't bring my camera.

One rug had an Escher-through-the-looking-glass design that began broad at its edges and pointedly delved into such dizzying minutia that I couldn't help but picture the famous Iranian artisan, crouched on the floor with his forehead pressed against the fibers, a knotted carpet thread in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other. The other rug was also a gift, from China, and its topic was the great wall of. It was a breathtaking depiction-- just the sort of misty mountainous vista that I get lost in leafing through expensive glossy coffee table books or watching animated Pixar movies. It was so exquisitely detailed and so ridiculously huge that I felt for a moment that I was perambulating the great wall itself. Completely encompassing my vision, I followed the wall as it snaked and wound between enormous teal green mountains, low lying fog clinging to forgotten blackened trees, until eventually the wall, too, disappeared into it's own distant minutiae.

I'm no rug-hugger, but I was completely awestruck and I asked Dahlia, if this bar was open to the public. Everyone's gotta see this rug, I thought. Goodness, no, was her reply which I should have known as I recalled her having to meet me at a gate about eighty yards from the building where she presented me to a security guard only minutes before. Then Dahlia told me that this summer they'll begin renovating this 1950s vintage monument to Bauhaus Buck Rogers architecture-of-the-future and I felt an immediate concern for the rug. What if it doesn't make the new interior designer's cut? What if they go with flocked wallpaper and a nice arrangement of plates? I’m going to miss the wall-to-wall carpeting, hospital-blue formica and all that curved, blonde wood paneling. Where will they store these rugs and how did they get them into the room in the first place? My concerns gave way to introductions as I was lead to a table under the windows and introduced around.

Five relaxed, attractive, swarthy men in jackets and ties looked up to greet me as Dahlia introduced me around the table counter clockwise. "This is Michael, Mike, Mikey, Mick and Mack," she didn't actually say. Their true names were more colorful to me, but really they were the Tom, Dick and Harrys of the Middle East, or to be more current, the Dave, Steve and Johns of my generation. I found in them no trace of bravado or outward display of chauvinism. They each looked me respectfully in the eye-- something I'll admit I hadn't expected them to do-- and were modest and soft-spoken. I knew I had no business talking to these guys and I was smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to engage them in any variant of meaningful political discourse that they haven't had a zillion times before. There was nothing so tedious to me, in the many months over many years that I spent in Europe, as having to have the same clichéd debate over and over with smug, humorless internationals, most of whom, had never been stateside. So, as they looked to me to inject new life into an hour old cocktail conversation, I threw them a curve ball.

"What kind of games did you play as children growing up?" I asked.
They looked at me and finally, one of them spoke up. Mike, I think it was.
"You mean games with other children?"
"Yes," I said, "Tell me about the games you played with your brothers and sisters and all the kids in the neighborhood where you grew up."
There was a bit of shifting in chairs but it was Mike again who spoke up.
“There was this one game we played where all the kids ran around while one kid chased after them and kicked them in the bottom. If you sat on the ground, you couldn't be kicked, but the moment you stood up to run, you were chased and kicked again.” I thought this sounded like fun. Also like something the Little Rascals would have played. I considered asking them if they wanted to play. There was certainly enough space. We wouldn't even have to push any tables aside. I smiled.
"Sounds hilarious and really fun," I said.
"It was," said Mickey. He was older, a friend of the dignitaries and a doctor now, but remembered playing it as well.
"What else?" I asked.

Michael told me about a game they played on a flat surface with round flat pebbles or thick discs. The object was to knock your opponent's to the corners of the table, (or out of bounds or off the table), by flicking. Each player took turns. I asked them what the flicking looked like. "Show me," I said. Michael leaned forward and moved his beer out of the way, then he held his bent forefinger back with his thumb and flicked it low against the table. I asked Mickey if he had the same flick. No, he said and he showed me his. He held his forefinger back by his index finger and the two fingers stayed straight while they flicked.
"It sounds a bit like pool or billiards," I said.
"Yes, it's very much like this," answered Mack.
"Did you all play this game?" I asked. They had grown up in different parts, mostly cities, of two separate but neighboring countries.
"Oh, yes. Everyone played," said Mick.
"Will you all show me how you flicked?" I asked, "I want to see everyone's flick."

They all sat up and moved their beers aside to show me their own individual flicking positions. Each one differed from the last and every finger was used to a unique effect. I thought about how these men must have learned their particular styles from their older brothers and fathers before them. Or maybe they came up with their own. For a brief instant I pictured these well-respected and well-comported men as excitable five-year old boys, studying the older kids and then racing off to perfect what would one day be their own signature style.

It was then that I heard my girlfriend say something to one of the Michaels about how she could fit six spiders in a matchbox. "What did you just say?" I asked. She grew up in the Philippines, raised, along with the chickens, by nuns. Electricity was available every other day. Easy Bake Ovens and Big Wheels were not.
She said, "If you sectioned off a matchbox you could fit six spiders perfectly in each compartment."
"To keep?" I asked.
"No, to fight," she replied.
"I don't understand."
She explained, "When I was a child we used to catch spiders and keep them in matchboxes. Then we would find a stick and someone would hold it. Then two people would put their spiders on either end of the stick and we would watch them fight until the death."
"I beg your pardon?" I said.
"They would move to the center of the stick and fight each other until one wrapped the other in its web around the stick. That was the winner." I didn't know there was an arachnid version of the cockfight.
"How long did this take?" I asked as I imagined this drama unfolding with the riveting speed of a six-hour cricket match.
"Oh, two minutes or so," was her answer.

Wow. Clearly it is not a small world after all. It's a big, big world and my slice-of-America ala mode upbringing looked nothing like theirs. All those childhood hours I logged making up dance routines to The Carpenters I could have been ass-kicking and spider-fighting. I suppose I can still teach my son these games. Of course I'll have to make him promise not to tell the other mothers where he learned them.

Our round table chat took on the feel of an intimate campfire heart-to-heart and the dimming dusk light softened our faces and defenses. Stories of childhood games turned to the re-telling of cherished lore: epics of romance and the quest for God and love. The men sitting around the table grew from boys to lovelorn teens in my mind and their eyes grew a bit lonely and remote. Years before they would find themselves eating take-out dinners with plastic forks and defying parking signs in New York City, they were gangly teens, at home with their families, craving the kind of unattainable romantic perfection they had only read about in school and whispered about in the dark. It's then that they began their grope for what they perceived as true enlightenment. Half way around the globe, I was doing the same.

The barmaid took one last sweep of our empties and a security guard gave Michael a sideways glance. The room had darkened and I looked up to see that the rugs had lost a bit of their command. Rising from the table we wordlessly shook off whatever intimacy had been garnered over the last few hours. The men walked ahead, their faces out of view and Dahlia and I followed, arm in arm, a few steps behind.

That much I had expected. The rest was a pleasant surprise.