The Bartelby Seven

“But I’m a chronic internet oversharer! If there are seven things about me that have not already been vomited up onto my blog, I will be shocked, Darling, simply shocked!”

—Atherton Bartelby

Of course, I was tagged (ages ago, yes, I know, Darlings!) by the fabulous Damien Basile of The Cause Is The Habit to complete that infamous “Seven Things Most People Don’t Know About Me” meme that has been making its way throughout the more colorful and fabulous sectors of the internet over the last several weeks. Now, while I am no stranger to internet memes, I do try to keep their appearances in this blog to a minimum (although the Curious Affairs blog category “Memes Are Beneath Me” may beg to differ with me on that assertion). But I will not deny that I enjoy participating in them when they are interesting, when other fascinating people I admire are also participating in them, and when, despite my plaintive wailing in the epigraph of this piece, participating in said meme may just allow my readers and friends to get to know me a bit better. So, here we go.

[Also, I altered the rules a bit, and am not "tagging" anyone to complete it upon the its conclusion, primarily because I am so embarrassingly tardy with my own completion of it that I am afraid everyone I would tag would have already completed it for someone else. Instead, I am including links to seven Twitter friends whose own lists I found rather interesting. However, please do definitely consider responding with your own list of seven items, and consider yourself invited to publish them on your own blog; and if you do, I would simply love it if you linked me to your entry in a comment to this one.]

Right! Without further ado, I give you: the seven things you (hopefully) do not know about Atherton Bartelby.

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1. I was trained in classical ballet from about just as soon as I learned how to walk until I was thirteen years old. Dancing was my entire life throughout those years, and I had every intention and dream of growing up to become a famous premier danseur with American Ballet Theatre; I was even en pointe (although for men this is a rarity), like my idol Rudolf Nureyev, for the last four years of my ballet training. My years of dancing came to an abrupt and unexpected end, however, during a live performance of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” in which I fell onto my right knee after coming out of a grand jeté. The ensuing damage to my knee’s bones and tendons prohibited me from continuing my career as a dancer, but to this day the arthritis pain I feel there is still an almost 100% accurate predictor of rain.
2. My first language was, technically speaking, Latin. My mother, among other things a professor of English literature, was a vehement advocate of being multilingual, and this vehemence extended particularly to one’s knowledge of classical languages, as well. So, while as a very young child I was given cereal boxes and other packaging to read at the breakfast table, I was given Latin grammar books and flash cards at the bruncheon table, so that I was actually reading Latin well before I was reading or speaking English. Knowledge of French came soon after English, thanks again to my mother; a bit of German and Russian for good measure, from my father; and, for some odd reasons, Spanish, Italian, and Greek during my college years. But I will always thank that formidable training in Latin for my lifelong love of all languages.
3. I was a champion dressage rider for six years of boarding school: two in Switzerland, and four in America. I like to think that my success in this sport had much to do with my favorite childhood “pet” of all time: a black Arabian thoroughbred named Beauvais. A son of my parents’ respective Arabians, Beauvais taught me a lot about discipline and dedication from a very early age, in a way that caring for my family’s countless purebred Himalayan and Chinchilla cats, Dobermans, and Greyhounds did not. This drive and dedication were utilized and perfected when I began riding competitively at school, and although the horses I rode during competitions were not Beauvais, I always sensed an air of pride about him whenever I mounted him after enjoying a particularly successful term of riding wins. Sadly, Beauvais, like many possessions both animate and inanimate, was one of the casualties of my parent’s eventual divorce.
4. Despite the fact that I am a “Momma’s Boy,” and was raised by my mother to know and appreciate Latin, classical ballet and piano, fine art, higher-end literature, haute couture, and proper manners, my father was somehow surprisingly successful at imparting some of his rather alarming butch knowledge / fetishes onto his Mary son. For example, I do not jest in the slightest when I recall fond memories of my father teaching me to properly aim and fire a .22 caliber Beretta, a 9 millimeter automatic, and a .357 Magnum with fairly impressive accuracy. Also, although I may not know the functional difference between a muffler and a carburetor, I have an almost heterosexual-male-esque fascination with and love of cars (just nothing American, Darling, unless it’s the original Ford Cobra that Cheryl Ladd as Kris Munroe drove on “Charlie’s Angels”). And when I was, in my past, a two-fifth-a-day scotch drinker, my knowledge of said spirit was, as my father’s had been, shockingly encyclopedic.
5. I have one brother, and he is sixteen years older than me. Following my brother’s birth, and an unfortunate miscarriage eight years after that, my parents had all but given up having any more children when I just kind of…happened. As my brother Balthazar was just going off to undergraduate school when I was born, I really do not remember him as being much of a presence in my young life, save for terrorizing me on family vacations in Aspen and Martha’s Vineyard that resulted in my mother screaming hysterically and my father talking to my brother in stern and quiet tones. My brother, still a Midwest resident with his wife and my two handsome nephews, and I have grown much closer since the deaths of our parents, and although it seems odd that it should have taken nearly a lifetime to become as close as we are now, I am still thankful that we eventually arrived at this rather amazing space in our relationship, as he has become a man of whom I am exceedingly proud to call, “Brother”.
6. I began smoking cigarettes when I was 19 years old…three years after I started smoking when I was 16 years old. Yes, I was a “puffer”…for three years! I was so very proud of my two-pack-a-day Marlboro Red habit throughout my last years of prep school and first few weeks of undergraduate college. Until one brisk autumn day, when my college BFF Kramer and I stood waiting for an uptown 6 train at Astor Place, and she quizzically watched me “inhale” and “exhale” my Marlboro Red before exclaiming, “Holy shit! You’re not really smoking!” This, of course, resulted in us spending the rest of our train rides back to Westchester County and the better part of two packs of cigarettes with her teaching me how to properly inhale. Which, I am proud to say, I eventually learned, and have been smoking properly ever since.
7. I’ve saved the biggest thing people may not know about me for last, and it is this: for all that I may joke about and seem to be an internet oversharer? Surprise: I’m really not. Oh, sure, I may in the past have chronicled all manner of sexual escapades in this space, ripped ex-lovers new assholes with my irrational rage, and gossiped shamelessly about friends and colleagues. But even then and especially now, for every one secret (of my own or others’) that I have divulged to the online world? There are easily twenty more that are kept just to myself. And it’s all of those secrets, and my confidence that only I know about them, that make me smile late at night, when I’ve insomnia, and lean against my kitchen counter to flip through Vouge or Monocle, and eat saltine crackers spread thickly with strawberry flavored Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese…

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Seven Fabulous Twitter Friends [And Their Own Lists Of Seven]

1. @db [Damien Basile]
2. @iamkhayyam [Khayyam Wakil]
3. @darrylohrt [Darryl Ohrt]
4. @mtlb [Bill Green]
5. @ryankuder [Ryan Kuder]
6. @adbroad [Ad Broad]
7. @thegirlriot [The Girl Riot]

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