I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Late last year, I accepted a dinner invitation from an esteemed writer, someone whose work

I admired, someone whom I knew lived a reclusive life.

20 minutes into our sitting down in an exclusive restaurant, I was looking at the red glowing

exit sign above the entrance door.

The dinner was a mistaken social outing.

The entire conversation centered around their life as if they were selling their importance,

their Ivy League schooling, their friends, their first million dollars, their children's

careers, their summer vacations.

The rotomontade was interminable and crude.

I felt like I had been run over by an eighteen-willer carrying all of their express self-importance

and grandiosity.

They were the headliner at this dinner, they seemed to say.

I was in the presence of greatness, they seemed to say, and I had better know it.

Just when I began to quietly question myself, they must have noticed my drifting gaze floating

like a lost balloon.

They suddenly asked about me, how was I, what projects am I working on, how are my children?

This was 50 minutes after sitting down.

I thought, okay, they asked about me.

Maybe their winded bragadocio was just a moment of lapsed social graces.

I'm generous with people's awkwardness.

We all have some.

...