Apropos of Nothing

by Woody Allen

turtlenecks and skirts with black tights, and carried big leather bags holding copies of The Metamorphosis, which they had annotated themselves in the margins with things like “Yes, very true,” or “See Kierkegaard.” For whatever irrational carnal singularity, those were the ones who captured my heart, and when I called for a date and asked if they’d like to go to a movie or a baseball game and they wanted rather to hear Segovia or catch the Ionesco play off Broadway, there’d be a long awkward pause before I said, “Let me get back to you,” then scrambled to look up who Segovia and Ionesco were. It’s fair to say these women were not eagerly awaiting the next issue of Captain America or even the next Mickey Spillane, the sole poet I could quote.

The few male teachers were more relaxed liberal Jews. One of the best was fired because his ideas were too liberal. At something called Sing, where each class would choose a song, sing it, and stage it in the assembly hall, he chose a turn-of-the-century number called “Boops-a-Daisy,” which went, “hands” (dancers touch hands), “knees” (dancers slap their knees) and “Boops-a-Daisy” (couples turn away from each other and bump their backsides together). Well, the biddies stood there aghast as if he had staged a gangbang in the auditorium. This was not the usual antiseptic rendition of “You’re a Grand Old Flag” or “Bicycle Built for Two.” To these frigid anti-Semites it reeked of lewdness. Today it would be called “inappropriate” by the Appropriate Police. Needless to say, this errant Hebrew pedagogue was out on his rear end at the soonest possible moment. The fact that he had pronounced leftist leanings politically didn’t endear him to Miss Fletcher, the principal, and her grubby minions.

I’m about fifteen, a multiple wannabe, failing in school, and as my hormones reach a critical mass I began my love life, or as one might have called it, Theater of the Absurd. Adrift in a sea of testosterone, looking for sex but more pointedly searching for that combination of Rita Hayworth’s sensuality, June Allyson’s supportive devotion, and Eve Arden’s sarcastic wit. This was a difficult package to locate anywhere on the planet Earth much less among the local fifteen-year-olds whose idea of a date was a movie, a soda, and home, getting the key out six blocks from their house lest they shouldn’t be ready to open the

Cole Porter’s “You’re not worth the ransom of asparagus out of season.”

They asked me my goal in life. I said, to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race and see if it could be mass-produced in plastic.

Maybe it was in my bloodstream or maybe it was a mental state that set in where I realized the Fred Astaire movies were not documentaries.

In those days, Chicago had a joint called the Black Angus that had ribs the taste of which gave life meaning you couldn’t get from religion, psychoanalysis, or great art.

Blaise Pascal, “The art has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of.”

Now, as I say, I was a bachelor dating the female lead in my movie who was quite terrific and I liked her, but it was a casual thing; we were not in love or committed to each other. Jessica was adorable but she liked snorkeling, and the thought I might eventually come face-to-face with a stingray kept me up nights. Not that I had any designs on Mia. I didn’t know her. What if she was one of those actresses into nutrition or astrology? What if her religion included handling snakes or she didn’t like The Bicycle Thief? All I knew was that she was a pleasant beauty who crossed my path a number of times over the years in the most casual way. We agreed to meet at Lutèce the following week, as I was leaving for Paris shortly after. So I sat there and waited for her, and she showed up late looking like a zillion dollars and after lunch and wine we agreed to have dinner the night I came back from Paris. I grabbed the check, found her a cab, went home, and two days later I was at Maxim’s in the city of light with Jean Doumanian. I had to be back in a week to do reshoots for Stardust Memories.

Attempts to deescalate the situation did not work, and I guess it’s easy for me to say as she was the hurt party, but where she took this rage crossed the line from understandable to unforgivable and then to unconscionable.

In reality, many years ago I did purchase this dream beach house right on the Atlantic in Southampton. I spent two years and a fortune fixing it up before moving in. I planted trees, I picked every carpet, every stick of furniture, every molding, finial, and screen door. I chose wallpaper and tiles. I made it the most beautiful house one could imagine. Finally, it was ready to live in. I went out there with Mia and her kids on a beautiful fall Saturday morning. The kids swooned. I walked the beach, the stars came out. I fell asleep to the gentle sound of the waves lapping on the shore. The following day I drove back to Manhattan, sold the place, and never returned. Who wants to hear waves lapping on the shore when you’re trying to sleep? Two years in the making, one night and I knew walking the sandy beach and staring over the ocean at the horizon wasn’t for me. Frankly, I didn’t even like the horizon, although I never really got close enough to it to check it out.

Well, given the malignant chaos of a purposeless universe, what’s one little false allegation in the scheme of things? Second, being a misanthropist has its saving grace—people can never disappoint you.

The mind boggles at what O. Henry could’ve done with a twist like that, and if not O. Henry, certainly Monty Python.

Rather than live on in the hearts and mind of the public, I prefer to live on in my apartment.