prologue

Last year around this time I wrote to him and asked if he would do it. Ballsy, perhaps; but I thought gee he’s going to be in town anyway and gosh why keep him all to ourselves and boy it’s been several years since he did their font but they’re still using it every month in every calendar and well, wouldn’t it just be nice?

He wrote back within an hour: “Certainly.”

That was too good, too soon; for I hadn’t even called the venue yet to see if the auditorium was open that night. I dialed, and fortunately, it was. I got lucky – a second time.

Over the next several months, he and I exchanged sporadic emails. I asked:

This last one met with an immediate, one-word reply: No. I smiled, and called a university colleague to relate the irony. Several years previously, she and I had helped to arrange a visit by a prominent neurologist-writer who insisted on:

The prominent type designer required only a slide projector.

Months passed laconically; then, time superscripted exponents of increasing magnitude. Suddenly, we were at a week and counting. At a family gathering in Michigan, I found myself desperately in need of catharsis. I told my brother-in-law, “I’m introducing him. Just a couple of minutes, mind you, but 350 people and all. I’m pretty nervous about this.” He told me that, earlier in the year, he had given the keynote address to 10,000 people at a physics conference in Japan. That comforted me, sort of.

Yes, I faced the wonderful, horrible prospect of introducing him. I had asked him, after all; who better to do it, they said. You’ll do fine, they said. Not a big deal – up and say a few words, they said.

I was completely, utterly, terrified.

And yet, I was not at all surprised at the assignment. In fact, I had, for many months, thought it might just come down to this. Washing dishes, waiting at intersections, watering the lawn, I would try out short phrases like, “Type is everywhere: in our telephone books, in our newspapers...” and “He is an artist and a craftsman, and like his father before him, an historian...” So it’s not like I was unprepared or anything.

Though the event occurred just two months ago, my memories of the days beforehand are merely stroboscopic snapshots of pre-conference busy-ness and bliss, set against a subsonic score of general malaise. Could someone else do it? I really don’t deserve it. Who am I, anyway? Some Midwestern provocateur-wannabe with a penchant for FontFonts and alliteration, that’s all. But to no avail; destiny wanted my ass, and that’s all there was to it.

I remember peeing many times that day. Hand out a few badges and programs. Pee. Welcome to Minneapolis. Pee some more. Why do we pee so much when we’re nervous? Surely not just to mark some porcelain urinal on the third floor of a hotel men’s room. C’mon evolution – catch up already.

Anyway, sometime late in the afternoon, but well after having established firm rapport with my favorite trough (second from left, Kohler, pink soap cake slightly askew, loose handle), I exited the restroom for the nth (I’ll guess high teens) time to find him just on the other side of the door.

I had pre-assembled an internal pastiche from the various descriptions I had received. Tall, they said. A perfect English gentleman, replete with untarnished accent. Sixties, but youthful. And so he was just as I had imagined.

Pleasant pleasantries, and then, “But how do you plan to get to the venue tonight?” The reply: “Would you be kind enough to give me a ride?”

Surreal. See illusory, 976.9: dreamlike, unreal, phantasmagoric. 976.10: hallucinatory, mind-blowing.

Unbelievable. See complex, 799.4: convoluted, labyrinthine, fucked-up.

799.4 + 976.9 = some seriously fucked-up, mind-blowing shit. Not only was I introducing him, but I was driving him to the damn venue.

I thought briefly about returning to my favorite hideaway once more – this time, to vomit – but I feared that this might violate the sacrosanct, strictly urine-based bond, and so I held it all in. Besides, in a moment I would have to pull in front of the hotel lobby where he would be waiting.

The venue and the hotel are separated by 10 blocks, or 5 minutes. That’s a blinding rate of 120 blocks per hour; even so, as we blew past cafés and hotels, he’d say, “I remember that” and “I stayed there” and “Was that there before?” He had taken in much of the city, you see, when he was here eight years previous to work on the typeface, and he had not forgotten.

I dropped him off at the front door; it was six o’clock, and we had an hour to go. Better to be safe, right?

Inside, I caught up with him and said, in full-on, feigned nonchalance, “I’ll be doing your introduction tonight – is that okay?” Approval granted; last step before lift-off. But Houston, we have a problem: all my clocks are wrong; time is screwing with me once again. It seems the parabola has up and mutinied, inverting itself on me. Do you read? Over.

The engineers at command central all laughed at me. “Hey, you asked for it, sucker!” And then they went home.

T-minus five minutes. Standing-room only; I’ve just heard that there is a line 75 people deep out the door; they might not get in tonight.

Four. Three. Two. One.

Lights dim. Representative from the venue speaks briefly, and then I hear my name. It’s super slo-mo time, now, and I can feel John Madden tracing the path from my seat in the front row to the stage. He marks the podium with a large X and says to Al, “Do you hear that? Boom, boom, boom! Sounds like the kid’s got a giant subwoofer wired straight into his left ventricle!”

I took the two, rumpled sheets on which I had typed the introduction – every word of it – out of my pocket, and I laid them on the podium. I looked up and saw...nobody; I was suddenly alone, or so it seemed. The lights were all on me, leaving none for them. And so I didn’t need to imagine them naked, for it was as though they had all up and gone. A little less terrified, I began to speak.

It was an out-of-body experience, through and through. I was perched up somewhere in the rafters, looking down; sometimes at me, but mostly at those whom I worshipped and feared. Strangely, from up there, I could see everyone and everything so plainly, and I’m pretty sure I looked at them all.

I said his name, led the applause, and quickly got offstage. I exhaled slowly and deeply – a touch-your-toes, Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon exhalation, if you know what I mean. The air left not just my lungs, but also my feet, legs, arms, shoulders and head.

When I looked up, I realized that he was already several slides into his presentation. I suddenly stopped selfishly obsessing about my two-minute predicament, and understood that now, and only just now, the thing had begun in earnest.

19-September 2003