The Metropolis

CURVEBALL: The art of no conversation

Michael Pollitt | Tuesday 1 June, 2010 22:18

For connoisseurs of social awkwardness (aka fans of The Office), there are few things as excruciatingly satisfying as disastrous small talk. I treated myself to a particularly agonising example recently in an East End pub.

“Get to know each other!” said my friend as she nipped out for a cigarette, leaving me with a new arrival. How hard could it be? We swapped job titles. “That sounds interesting”, we lied. Commute talk, the glue that holds together so much London chit chat (See The Scoop, page 4 – ed), swiftly dried up. We had nothing in common, not even tube lines. There followed a pregnant pause. He praised the lager; I commended the ale. The pause had miscarried. A silence fell upon us—the silence of the damned.

What was wrong with this guy? Could he not even manage a smattering of pleasantries? It was pathetic. I looked across the table, deep into his eyes, and saw my contempt reflected back at me. The feeling was mutual.

It occurred to me that what we were lacking was the art of conversation. In the Victorian era they used to teach it in schools, but the only lessons in chat many of us have had are from Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge. We just don’t have the tools to enter the chatosphere. So when all else fails, what the hell are we supposed to talk about?

There’s always the weather, I thought. It may be a cliché, but by god it’s an English cliché. And that should mean something. I glanced out of the window. Was that a bit of volcanic ash floating serenely by? Or just a cloud? Hmmm. I could hardly start a conversation about something that might or might not be a cloud. But what else?
My eyes flicked to a fellow drinker with the tattoo of a fat man’s face on his upper arm. It was vile, wrinkled and reddened by the day’s sun. I wouldn’t have hesitated to point it out to my friends. But hang on…what if my silent enemy had a similar tattoo secreted about his person? Or his partner had one? Or his mother had died in a tragic tattooing accident? The risks were too great.

By now the situation was desperate. Perhaps I should copy the writers of Lost and not bother about making any sense, just blurt out a series of non sequiturs then promise to tie them up into something meaningful… when I got back from the bar!
I looked up. He was messing with his phone. Ah the phone. The last refuge of the social misfit. It gave me an idea. I could show him the sleep app on my phone. Have technological advances made it socially acceptable to give strangers a snore by snore breakdown of your REM cycles? Did I dare find out?

Just then our mutual friend returned “Sorry I took so long,” she said. “I got chatting to someone and ended up having another cigarette.” Gah! Curse these smokers with their easy ice-breakers, their casual borrowing of lighters, their relentless sociability. Perhaps that’s the pay-off for the crippling illnesses later in life. Perhaps it’s worth it.

Lubricated by her presence, we managed a few minutes of stilted chatter without ever hitting it off. He and I just weren’t meant to be. And maybe that’s the lesson here: if a situation is too awkward to bear, don’t. Go order a drink, go take up smoking, go spend ten minutes hiding in a toilet cubicle. That’s true social courage, because you’re saving your companion as much as yourself. As another expert in social incompetence, 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon once asked: “Sometimes, can’t we all just not get along?” To which we should all reply, silently in our heads: “Yes We Can’t!”

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