A Christopher Hitchens Memory

As frustrating as he could be, he was always also entertaining, engaging, and possessed of a literary bearing that seemed to come from a different age. Even writing about something as gauche as waxing his genitals, he had the air of an old-school raconteur, a gentleman rogue who could both outdrink and out-think the rest of the room. And out-smoke, too--it is hard not to suspect that his well-documented love of cigarettes had a hand in the esophageal cancer that killed him.

But there are plenty of people to write about Hitchens' career and lifestyle, and the way he seemed to turn them into a single, coherent, high-spirited jaunt for as long as he could. I just wanted to add a small note of my own, from my sole personal encounter with the man, because in my mind it illustrated some important things about him. Sometime in the latter years of the Clinton administration, I ended up at an alternative-newspaper convention in Washington, D.C. I was there partly to hobnob with my peers from other papers in other cities, and partly because a few articles I'd written for Metro Pulse had won awards in the industry's annual celebration of itself. One of those was about the death penalty in Tennessee, and the ways it was being used as a political club against judges who had any hesitation in signing off on capital convictions. When I received the notice about the award, I was pleased to see that the judging panel included Hitchens, himself a strong opponent of capital punishment. I was an avid admirer of his Vanity Fair columns, so knowing that he had read something I wrote gave me a bit of a fan-boy rush.

Hitchens was also a featured speaker at that convention, so I went to see him talk. I don't remember exactly what he said, something both flattering and challenging to his audience about the importance of the "alternative" press. I was hoping to get a second to introduce myself afterward, but a crush of people and an obviously hurried Hitchens made that seem impractical. Later that morning, I found myself back in my hotel room, paging through the D.C. phone book. To my surprise, there was a listing--both phone number and address--for a Christopher Hitchens. I nervously weighed in my mind the wisdom of trying to contact him. Would I seem like some kind of stalker? But he had liked something I wrote. Maybe that would mean something. I called. I got an answering machine, with his unmistakeable voice. I stammered my way through some kind of message, about who I was and how I'd been hoping to say hi to him while I was in town. I hung up, not expecting much. But about 20 minutes later, while I was fortunately still in the room (this was pre-cell-phone era), the phone rang. "This is Christopher Hitchens," he said. He had recognized my name, and he said some nice things about my article. Then he said he was a little rushed this afternoon, but if I wanted, I could come over for a bit. Trying not to sound too starstruck, I said thank you and of course.

I ran out and found a cab, gave the address, and was dropped off outside an imposing-looking apartment building. I gave my name and Hitchens' name to the man in the lobby, and I was quickly buzzed up. Hitchens greeted me at his apartment door, and waved me in. The apartment struck me as spacious and crowded at the same time--crowded because of the shelves and shelves of books lining what looked like every available wallspace. Hitchens took my coat, introduced me to his lovely wife, the writer Carol Blue, and insisted that we should have a drink. This was at about noon. I said, sure, yes please. He asked what I wanted. I tried to come up with something suitably respectable and just said, gin and tonic. He made two.

We went to his living room, with windows looking out on the D.C. streets, and spent I'm not sure how long talking. Mostly, he talked and I listened, nodding enthusiastically and speaking sparingly, trying hard not to sound like a dumb kid from some small Tennessee newspaper. (I don't think I was very successful.) He talked about reporting, he talked about Bill Clinton, he talked about Tennessee politics, which he turned out to know more about than me. That was no surprise. I got the feeling that if I had been a beekeeper from Ottawa, he would have known a lot about Canadian pollination problems, too. I finished my drink, and felt it dancing in my head. There was a lot of gin in there. He tossed back the rest of his, and asked, "Another?" It was maybe 12:45 now. I said, sure. So it went through another round. When I finally worked up the nerve to hand him a small packet of some of my other clippings, in a hapless attempt at networking, he accepted it gracefully and thumbed through it with polite interest. Eventually, we had to wrap up. He and his wife were due at some reception for the Gores. (Mentioning this prompted him to go on a brief rant about the general inadequacies, as he perceived them, of the Clintons, and the horribleness of the people around them.) I got to my feet, a little unsteady. Hitchens seemed entirely unfazed by the drinks. He grabbed copies of two of his books off a shelf, collections of essays on subjects ranging from the fate of the Palestinian people to Brideshead Revisited. He signed both of them for me, and wrote in one of them, "Jesse--Don't let the bastards grind you down."

I rode down in the elevator with Hitchens and Blue. They made sure I knew where I was headed, and then went off to retrieve their car. I walked out into the midday sun, buzzing with the sense of having been briefly allowed into the presence of some kind of Real Deal. As much as Hitchens always seemed to be playing a role in his writing and his public appearances, it was persuasive because it was fully inhabited. He really was that smart. He really wrote that well. He really drank that much. And he really cared enough about honesty and determination and sticking by your principles--about journalism, as he conceived it and practiced it--to open his door and his home for a few hours in the hope of encouraging a young would-be muckraker. That was just one Saturday afternoon. I can't imagine how many other times he did similar things, and how many other writers, reporters, and storytellers are writing their own accounts right now. Hitchens walked like he talked, and by all appearances he had a great time doing it. I'm glad to have shared the planet--and, briefly, a room and a few drinks--with him.

Metro Pulse staff members instantaneously commit their innermost thoughts to the Internet for your information and/or amusement.