Human encyclopedia

Sitting at a picnic table, sharing a bottle of wine, we spoke. Or, rather, he spoke and I listened.

He talked like an encyclopedia. Every twentieth word was a proper noun. He enunciated the first letters as if to remind me they ought to be capitalized. At one point, I even thought he might be going in alphabetical order.

I began to discern the pattern. First, he would say the name. Then, he would pause to see if I had met them or been there, or at least if I knew of the person or had heard of the place. Finally, he would go on to give me the rest of the information, before proceeding to the next name.

When I hadn’t heard of the person (which was more often than not) and confessed that I hadn’t (which I only did a few times, when his pauses were extra long and accusatory of my ignorance) he would say, “Oh, they are important, you must read about them.” Of a place, he would say, “Oh, it’s beautiful, you must go there.”

Afterward, walking home, I thought of some possible explanations for his manner of speaking. Either he had learned in the past that bringing up names was a way to seem intelligent, or he just wanted to be anyone other than himself, somewhere other than where we were.