BETWEEN THE WARS

You always said that you were born into the wrong era -- the age of intangible monetization and the quick fix, of information without wisdom, and sex without intimacy, the age of self-branding and dumbing down. You still liked an old-fashioned date and an old-fashioned drink, talking long into the night about books and movies, the kind of music they just didn't make anymore, casually stating your many opinions as though long-settled fact. You loved most Paris between the wars, the lost generation living just outside the mainstream, and those angry young men in England trudging through their working class lives in bleak sepia and gray, and the beautiful façade of Hollywood in the 40s -- a nation unto itself -- the high waists and low-tilted hats, the clipped and razor-sharp dialogue of no discernible accent, lines you could have easily written yourself. You wanted, simply, to be elsewhere, corresponding by hand on fine cream-colored vellum -- the one small luxury you would allow yourself -- signing off in your witty, offhand way, anxiously awaiting reply, and never using a word as gauche as Goodbye, not even once.