For much of my life I’ve heeded Lambert Strether’s advice and tried to “live all you can.” But until I was twenty, when it came to attending parties, I felt more sympathy for Bartleby: “I would prefer not to.”

I missed what should have been my first party. And it was being given for me, by Barbara Bimson, for my ninth birthday. I woke up with a leaden stomach. Did I have to go? Maybe I was sick. Certainly I was sick. My stomach hurt. I couldn’t move. Convinced, my mother picked up the phone and called Mrs. Bimson, but the party went on without me, and Barbara and her mother drove over later with a piece of white cake in waxed paper and half a dozen wrapped gifts. I don’t remember them. Just that I was embarrassed and wished they hadn’t — invited me, come over, brought me presents, any of it.

Maybe I worried that Barbara’s mother would have asked me to do things I couldn’t, like cut the cake, and I would make a mess. What would I say to my friends when I opened the presents? Even the thought of such a prominent role made me sick — with fear that I wouldn’t know how to act. At that point in my life, I had never been to a party, much less been the center of one.

We were supposed to like these events, yet there was no room for us kids to play, to make up games ourselves. The whole afternoon was scripted, and I didn’t like our lines.

In our family we didn’t invite friends over for birthdays. And I never became an eager guest at other kids’ parties. Ice cream and cake didn’t make up for the fact that perfectly friendly mothers morphed into bossy stage directors, lining us up to pin a paper tail on a stupid picture of a donkey, a scarf tied too tightly around our eyes, everybody screaming. And another mortifying game: Blind Man’s Bluff. It would have been better if we’d been blindfolded for the gift-opening. My mother didn’t believe in spending money on presents for other people’s children, so when it came time for the birthday girl to tear off the plain paper and uncurled ribbon of my gift to reveal a ninety-nine-cent doll whose eyes didn’t even shut, I wanted to run out of the room. No ooh’s and aah’s greeted the undressing of my offering. Usually it was the mother who would mouth a disingenuous “Oh!” followed by a pointed, “Say thank you, Susan.” We were supposed to like these events, yet there was no room for us kids to play, to make up games ourselves. The whole afternoon was scripted, and I didn’t like our lines.

Le petit déjeuner, 1915
(Oil and charcoal on canvas, 92 x 73 cm)
BY Juan Gris
Musée national d’art moderne, Paris

The only other party I knew was the kind Mom and Daddy hosted for a few of their friends from time to time. Perfumed and high-heeled, the ladies would cross their nyloned legs as they sat sipping their cocktails. I sniffed the sugary smell of the Old Fashioneds, and sometimes Mom gave me her maraschino cherry. I tucked myself onto the couch beside her, listening to comparisons of hairdressers and dentists. The women spoke as if they had signed an oath swearing they would not talk about anything significant or controversial, anything that might cause contention among their husbands, who stood across the room in an inviolable circle of gray- and brown-jacketed backs, highballs in one hand, cigarettes in the other. One evening, when I was about ten, I decided the women’s conversation was boring and walked over to join the men. Whereas the women would give me occasional mascaraed winks and red-lip-sticked smiles, their husbands ignored me and kept right on talking. Just as boring: loan amounts, dollars.

Humans are, my zoologist sister reminds me, a social species. We’re primates. We hanker to hang out with other members of our tribe. We like to gather in bars, parks, and ballrooms. In the nineteenth century, ladies met in parlors, or on verandas over quilts, each one plying a needle to fill in a different part of a bride-to-be’s bedspread-in-progress. Psychologists such as J.R. Mitchell, Stephen Mitchell, and Jessica Benjamin are convinced we exist, not, as Descartes insisted, because we think, but primarily in relationship, in mutuality with others. Of course, primates don’t live in herds like antelope; as the name of our order implies, we prefer to consider ourselves primary, if not self-sufficient.