By Ben Cheever

Got your attention? Good, because that’s what I want: attention. It’s what you want too.  Pundits bewail the oil shortage, the job shortage and the ethics shortage, but none of these compare to the attention shortage.

That’s why dogs are suddenly such a phenomenon. If you have a   Milk Bone, you can get a dog’s attention. Doesn’t work with people. I’ve tried Milk Bones. I’ve also tried Twinkies. Do you suppose cash might work?

And when it comes to attention, dear reader, you’re getting the short end of the stick here. Because you can read what I’m saying, while I can’t hear you talking back. You can go to my web site and write to me.

Convince me that you’re real, and think I’m real as well, and I’ll write you back. The web site’s at Benjaminhcheever.com. I’m not suggesting you do so. I don’t want you feeling cheated, though.

I wish I could write a column — I wish I could write a book– that would sit still and listen to the people who bought it. I’d certainly buy my own copy. Until, then, though, all I can be is honest. Honest and precise. Others have succeeded.

Addicted to running
I buy a lot of books. Sometimes I feel that these books are paying attention to me. Not because the writer knows where I am, but because he’s expressed where he is, or where she is, and done so with such candor and force that I am there too. The light shone has illuminated us both. It’s a good trick, though, and not everyone can do it. Words are tricky. Slippery.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists 250,000 distinct words, but clearly that’s not enough. Because we’re always grabbing the ones we have and squeezing them into different meanings. Just take the word  “addict.” You can be a heroin addict, a chocolate addict, or a sex addict. Or  — as in my case — you can be addicted to distance running.
Or take the word “alcoholic.” In 1950, you weren’t an alcoholic until you’d ruined at least two perfectly good careers and backed the family station wagon over the family poodle, killing her.

In those days an adult male who didn’t get pie eyed at least once a week, was considered eccentric. You needed to get a note from a doctor that said you had an ulcer, and even then, your FBI file was flagged.

Saying I love you
Nowadays all you have to do is say, “My name is Ben and I’m an alcoholic.” Presto-chango, you’re an alcoholic. Or not. But I know about those rooms, and there’s something going on there that’s magic. People often pay attention to one another. But you have to be an alcoholic. You have to say you’re an alcoholic before you can feel the love. Love. Now there’s a word that’s had the tar beaten out of it. I love my wife. I love my new computer. I love when it snows.

I almost never say goodbye to anybody in my immediate family without adding, “I love you,” a couple of times, as if I were salting popcorn.

Here’s the point where a professional columnist might condemn this intellectual sloppiness, and give you all a scolding. But I’m one of the worst offenders.

It is with genuine bitterness that I have concluded that the language is not to blame. I have trouble mastering the language and this life because I have an inadequate brain. The computer that runs this self didn’t come with enough RAM installed.

Mark Twain wrote that, “The difference between the perfect word and the next best word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. “ I spend a lot of time reaching around in that hamper of 250,000 words and coming up with the next best one.

Please pay attention
Nor is this my processor’s most obvious flaw. When it comes to filing names, I’ve got the sort of secretary (administrative assistant?) in my cranium that I’d have fired, if I still had an office job and a secretary to fire. All Peters, for instance, she’s got in a single hanging Pendaflex file. Peter O’Toole, Peter Canning, Peter Boyer and Peter Herbst. Even Peter Lorre’s in there, though I never met the man, nor am I certain what movies he was in. They’re all named after the same Apostle, but otherwise they have nothing to do with one another. Often as not, though, I reach for one man and retrieve somebody else.

If all those Peters can go in the same folder, then long-distance running can hang in the addicted file along with drinking and dark chocolate. My father was an actual alcoholic, and I’m an actual long-distance runner. I hate to let a day pass without running five miles the same way he hated to have one pass without a fifth of Gilbey’s gin. Although he never backed over a dog of any breed. But he did some wild things. Nor  — before AA — would you have wanted to get between that man and his bottle.

So we were both addicts. What else have we got in common though? Something we’ve got in common with you as well. We’ve always needed to have somebody pay attention. He was famous, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, which doesn’t mean that anyone’s paying attention to you. Odd how that works. Celebrities complain of it, and I believe them. If you’re unimportant enough, nobody will see you. If you’re too important, they stop seeing you again. You can be well known and lonely. For years my father counted most on an old Black Labrador who reminded him of his mother.
I don’t know you, and so I don’t know your needs, but I’ve made a serious study of my own. And Arthur Miller was right in that play of his, when he has Linda Loman tell us all that “attention must be paid.”

Addicted to running? Addicted to chocolate? Addicted to words? Addicted to vodka? We’re all in this boat together. And I believe that we’re much more alike than we are willing to admit. We’re all fumbling around in a darkened cellar, looking for understanding and operating with an intelligence programmed for survival and reproduction. Operating with a brain that can’t easily tell one Peter from another. Those other creatures we sense and touch are frightening and sometimes even grotesque. It’s dreadful, but at least we’re not alone.

We can use language. We can write and read as honestly as we know how. Sometimes you’ll get the lightning, sometimes the bug. Sometimes you’ll like what you hear, sometimes you’ll hate it. That’s not what’s most important. The contact is what’s important, the authenticity. The attention being paid. It was Rollo May who told us that the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.

Benjamin H. Cheever has published four novels (The Plagiarist, The Partisan, Famous After Death, The Good Nanny). He’s also written two works of nonfiction (Selling Ben Cheever and Strides). He edited The Letters of John Cheever. He’s taught at The New School for Social Research, and the Bennington M.F.A. program. He hosts a TV show called “About Writing,” which can be seen at PCTV76.