The Vanity Portal

I have learned that something good can occasionally crawl out of an embarrassing place.

For years, I have entertained a recurring fantasy so vainglorious that merely describing it makes me want to hide under a table. Yet somewhere inside this monument to my own magnificence, I discovered what I call The Vanity Portal: the strange passage through which a fantasy of being admired unexpectedly opens onto a sincere desire to become good.

The fantasy takes me back to 1983. I am twenty years old again, working at Jackson’s Wine & Spirits in Berkeley, where I actually worked while attending college. But fantasy has renovated the premises. The wine bar now sits conveniently beside a grand piano, because apparently my unconscious has obtained an unlimited remodeling budget.

I am not merely an employee.

I am the entertainment.

I even have a stage name:

Lachyrmose.

There is a ritual to my appearances.

I am in the beer box, tearing apart cardboard cartons and doing the grubby work of a liquor-store employee, while customers at the wine bar begin demanding music.

“Lachyrmose!”

I make them wait.

“Lachyrmose!”

Eventually I emerge from the beer box looking like a survivor of industrial combat. Shreds of cardboard cling to my clothes. A sharp carton has scratched my face. My arms bear little cuts and bruises. I am exhausted.

This is crucial to the fantasy.

I cannot simply be a gifted pianist. That would be insufficiently magnificent. I must also be a working-class hero who has just finished wrestling cases of beer before casually sitting down at a grand piano and revealing the soul of Rachmaninoff.

The customers grow quiet.

Lachyrmose begins to play.

Melancholy music fills the wine bar.

On one particularly ambitious occasion, Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett happen to be sitting among the customers. They are staying at the nearby Claremont Hotel and have wandered into Jackson’s for a little wine and relaxation.

Naturally, they are astonished.

Who is this young man?

Minutes ago he was dismantling beer cartons. Now he is producing music of heartbreaking beauty with a completely formed artistic voice. Gabriel and Hackett exchange glances. They understand immediately that they have stumbled upon some rare creature—a bruised liquor-store employee with the soul of a European composer.

At this point the fantasy has become so narcissistic that it should probably require a permit.

But then someone else enters it.

A homeless woman.

Unlike Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett, she comes from an actual memory.

I remember seeing her near Jackson’s wearing a red wig she had apparently found in a dumpster. She stood before the reflective glass of a newspaper rack, admiring herself in her new acquisition. The wig was garish and artificial, but she looked at her reflection with pleasure. For a moment, this discarded object had given her something beautiful.

In my fantasy, she joins the customers at the wine bar.

I begin playing.

She listens for a while and then falls asleep.

The melancholy piano music washes over her as she dozes in her ridiculous red wig. Peter Gabriel listens. Steve Hackett listens. The wine drinkers listen. But gradually they cease to matter.

When the recital ends, the woman wakes.

She thanks me for the music.

I give her a bag filled with deli sandwiches to take with her.

Of course Gabriel and Hackett witness this too. My unconscious is not yet willing to surrender the production entirely. They were already impressed by my piano playing; now they discover that Lachyrmose is also a humanitarian.

Apparently musical genius wasn’t enough.

I required sainthood.

But then the fantasy changes.

The woman thanks me for the recital and the sandwiches, and I tell her that no thanks are necessary.

It was an honor to play for her.

And I mean it.

That is the moment when I pass through The Vanity Portal.

Something strange happens. The fantasy stops being entirely about admiration. Peter Gabriel disappears. Steve Hackett disappears. The wine bar disappears. Even Lachyrmose begins to disappear.

There is only the woman in the red wig.

And I love her.

Not romantically. Not sentimentally. I feel an overwhelming tenderness toward this forgotten person who possesses nothing, who found a discarded wig and briefly admired herself in the glass of a newspaper rack.

In the fantasy, I tell her that playing for her was an honor.

But the tears aren’t imaginary.

I am actually sitting at my piano, playing music and crying.

This is what disturbs me about the fantasy and prevents me from dismissing it as mere narcissistic theater.

I struggle with Christianity. I struggle with its doctrines, its claims about salvation, its diagnosis of the human condition, and the enormous theological machinery built around Jesus. I can argue with all of it.

But in that moment at the piano, I experience something I can only describe as the love of Jesus.

Not doctrine.

Not theology.

An impulse.

The desire to look upon someone whom the world barely sees and regard serving her not as charity but as an honor.

And suddenly my ridiculous fantasy has shown me something I didn’t know was there.

I want to be good.

I want a pure heart.

Unfortunately, even my fantasy of purity arrives contaminated by vanity. I cannot simply feed a homeless woman. Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett must be sitting nearby taking notes. I cannot simply play the piano. I must emerge from the beer box bloodied by cardboard, sit before an awestruck audience, and reveal myself as Lachyrmose.

The ego insists upon producing the show.

But perhaps this is how The Vanity Portal works.

We enter carrying our vanity, our fantasies, our desperate need to be admired. We imagine ourselves beautiful, talented, heroic, compassionate. The entire production may be absurd.

Then, somewhere inside the performance, something genuine appears.

The fantasy begins:

Look at me.

But if we’re fortunate, somewhere along the way another voice emerges:

Look at her.

And for a moment, we do.