Casual
Caldwell, Christopher
Casual HISNIBS A problem with carrying fountain pens is that strangers use them as a pretext for conversation. Familiar icebreakers include: “Say, is that some kind of fountain pen?” (meaning:...
...Just as a woman enters the universe of spinsterdom when she gets her second cat, a man becomes a pen-weirdo when he goes public with his second fountain pen...
...And at the end of any discussion, you get asked why you use a fountain pen...
...My collection also necessitates a range of maintenance purchases: blotters, solvents, and high-quality paper, since the 18- karat Paris-made nib on my Etalon tends to “bite” at cheaper stock...
...But owning one provokes a chain of events that makes one’s pen as indispensable as others’ wallets or watches...
...I shook the pen a couple of times to get the ink running, but still not a dribble...
...I won’t wear them, of course, but it’s a nice thought all the same...
...I looked at the proffered pen...
...I don’t really know...
...At that point my sister, who works in Germany, found me a truly superb and (now, at least) indispensable product, the Graf von Faber-Castell “pencil extender...
...It seemed heartless to consign one of them to the loneliness of a desk drawer, even for a day...
...My pen ownership thus acquired the status of “quirk...
...But when I started to write, nothing happened...
...I threw up my hands (literally) and sent another great big dollop onto the wall, where it immediately began plowing floorwards down the ridges of the handcrafted wallpaper...
...So I decided to fill the fine-nibbed Etalon with black ink and use it for writing, pressing the medium-nibbed Gentleman into service with various colored inks for editing...
...Am I the kind of person Madison Avenue dreams of, or what...
...Or the bold and vivid strokes of the Gentleman...
...Answer: “No...
...Must be something wrong with your paper...
...he said through a grit-toothed smile...
...meaning: Say, are you some kind of nancy boy...
...Don’t worry about it...
...Ever since I read in a Nabokov book that “a scholar is a man who reads with a pencil,” I have tried never to be without one...
...I opted for the latter, thinking its blue would stand out more starkly against the grayblack Bic scribble of previous guests...
...that the box doesn’t even have an English translation on it—h?chfeinster Bleistiftverl?ngerer, it reads—and I have to send away to Potsdam for the refills...
...Last week, for example, my wife and I were leaving a dinner party at an elegant townhouse in Georgetown when our host said, “Wait...
...I should have been wary when the pen began to make a soft but insistent pfff sound...
...CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL...
...I wondered...
...I reassured him that my pen would probably be okay...
...I liked my old Waterman “Gentleman” so much that a few years ago my wife got me an even nicer “Etalon...
...I recall saying to my mother-in-law a couple Christmases back, after receiving hundreds of dollars’ worth of elegant-but-pocketless shirts from her...
...Don’t worry about it...
...Sign the guest book...
...Do I go for the austere, tapered precision of the Etalon...
...This means my shirt pocket is now filled with so much silver and tortoise- shell and gold plate that it is irresistible to my grabby two-year-old daughter whenever I pick her up...
...I could hear him thinking...
...Gee, that’s funny,” I said to my host...
...Can I try writing something with that...
...The ink had probably been hemorrhaging onto the guest book and the mahogany table for a couple of seconds before I noticed it, because by then it was pouring onto the Persian carpet in an audibly pattering cataract...
...That’s to say nothing of the way it conceals, in a most 007-like way, both an eraser and a sharpener...
...So I started unscrewing the barrel...
...This is an item so recherch...
...And since it protects the pencil-tip, my Bleistiftverl?ngerer has freed me from the old choice—a sooty shirt-front or multiple stab wounds to the thigh?—that confronts the inveterate pencil-carrier...
...Casual HISNIBS A problem with carrying fountain pens is that strangers use them as a pretext for conversation...
...and “Wow...
...It was hardly up to the splendor of the surroundings: the chandeliers, the Persian carpets, the hand-painted wallpaper, not to mention the tooled leather of the guest book itself, which appeared to have stood up well to the signatures of decades’ worth of guests...
...Hey, don’t touch that...
...The man who uses a fountain pen has experiences denied to mere scratchers with ballpoints...
...When I returned from washing up at the kitchen sink, our host was patting the carpet dry with paper towels...
...Play with these cigarettes...
...I no longer even wear shirts without pockets, which has led to awkward moments at holidays...
...But it’s worth it...
...Very nice of you...
...Just leave...
...But which one...
...Here...
...So I decided to use my own pen...
Vol. 7 • March 2002 • No. 26
