The gazebo where the wedding took place was a good distance from the clubhouse where the reception was to be, and on the walk there I asked a man if he was a friend of the bride or the groom.
“The groom,” he told me, explaining that the two worked together. He gave me the name of the company and told me about the specialized work it did.
I asked him where he was from originally.
“New Jersey,” he said.
“Me too,” I said. “What part?”
He gave a detailed explanation of his hometown and its environs, which was followed by silence. We still had a distance to go before we reached the clubhouse but he had no desire to fill it, no apparent curiosity about what I did or where I was from in his home state. I concluded that either I looked like a man of no interest whatsoever or a man so fascinating that any information about my life would reveal to him the blandness of his own.
