I blame Larry David for what happened to me recently in Merrion Square. I can draw a direct line from him to a queue for the bar in that beautiful Dublin park on a recent sunny evening. If it weren’t for Larry David and his show Curb Your Enthusiasm, this excruciating happening would never have happened. If it weren’t for David, I’d have handled the situation differently. If it weren’t for David, everything would have been fine.
It wasn’t fine. And I will tell you just how not fine it was in a moment, but first, for the few who aren’t familiar with Larry David or Curb Your Enthusiasm, a brief explanation: In Curb, Seinfeld creator and writer Larry David plays an exaggerated version of himself, a comedy writer who likes golf, going to restaurants, hanging out with friends and complaining about attending various social engagements. His schtick is that he is a neurotic, socially awkward, brutally honest man incapable of meeting society’s expectations who loves giving other people grief for not sticking to his made-up, random-seeming rules for life. He has no shame. He does not care about social norms or niceties. He does and says the things we all wish we could do and say. In short, Larry David is a legend.
The specific scene in the specific episode that led to my mortification in Merrion Square happens in Vow of Silence, episode five of series eight. Larry is at his friend and manager Jeff’s going-away party, in the queue for the hot buffet. The queue is moving slowly, and they are hungry. Next thing, a woman approaches the man who is standing in front of Larry and Jeff in the queue. She starts a conversation with the man, reminding him of some party they were both at years ago. It looks to most of us like an innocuous conversation. But not to Larry. “It’s a classic chat’n’cut,” he explains to Jeff. “She’s feigning familiarity with someone she vaguely knows for the sole purpose of cutting in line. She’ll be picking up a plate any second.”
Sure enough, the woman picks up a plate ready to get some food. Of course, Larry can’t leave it there. He congratulates the woman for an amazing attempt at a chat’n’cut, one that “99 times out of 100 would have worked” except for the fact that he, Larry David, an astute observer, is behind her in the queue. Her chat’n’cut is exposed.
I call out a chat’n’cut, Larry David style. I will never live down what happens next
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And now here I am standing near the top of a long queue for the bar on a sunny evening in Merrion Square. I am queuing to buy drinks for a woman I am catching up with, a world-renowned writer and thinker who is in Ireland on a speaking engagement at the International Literary Festival Dublin, and her friend a respected Irish academic.
I am standing in the queue when a smiling, bespectacled man sidles up to me, feigning familiarity, asking to join me there. I have two choices. I can let the guy skip the queue, I mean who cares and sure what harm? Or, I can call out this blatant chat’n’cut for what it is. Invoking the spirit of David, I choose the latter and I tell the guy it was a nice try, but that he should go to the back of the queue.
If Larry were here, he’d lean in. He’d tell everyone about his misdiagnosed chat’n’cut and own the situation
The woman behind me in the queue thinks I am amazing.
“The way he came up to you, I thought he knew you,” she says.
“No,” I explain. “In fact, what you witnessed there was a classic chat’n’cut, he just wasn’t expecting me to call him out on it”.
“Wow,” she says admiringly. “So un-Irish of you. Look at him there at the back of the queue, all sheepish in his glasses.”
I look down, and smile at the chat’n’cutter. No hard feelings. He just didn’t know who he was up against.
Delighted with myself, I buy the drinks and return to where the Thinker and the Academic are sitting with another woman. We’re chatting away when several minutes later, a man appears holding a drink for the other woman, his girlfriend. The man looks vaguely familiar. My stomach lurches. The man is the bespectacled chat’n’cutter. Except, now I realise he wasn’t chatting’n’cutting in the classic sense. This man knew that I was also in the company of the Thinker and the Academic and he thought I’d be decent enough to let him buy his drink with me.
We both know what happened earlier but neither of us mentions it. Then from a bag he takes out little Tupperware boxes of beautiful food he has made for the Thinker, a thoughtful gift from her home country. I die a little more inside.
Of course if Larry were here, he’d lean in. He’d tell everyone about his misdiagnosed chat’n’cut and own the situation. As previously mentioned he has no shame. But I am Irish and I cannot own this situation. I can only sit there, covered in shame, munching on delicious rice wrapped in pickled vine leaves trying to convince a nice, bespectacled Turkish man that I am not the rudest person in this country of a thousand welcomes. I’m not sure he’s convinced. And, to reiterate, I blame Larry David.
