III. MY SPACE
People at the bar recognize them, but nobody stares too much. A few friends stop by to say hello. Anderson nurses a couple of iced teas, then a beer, while Junger—two months into a sabbatical from alcohol—sticks to nonalcoholic Bucklers.
Anderson: Our original idea was to buy a building over in Red Hook [in Brooklyn]. We were going to have apartments on the upper floors and a fireman's pole down into the bar. We'd come down, hang out, then get winched up at the end of the night.
Junger: We were imagining a pulley system to get back upstairs. We'd each have a floor, there'd be a crash-pad floor with a pool table for our friends, and the ground floor would be the bar.
Anderson: It's like the ultimate bachelor pad.
Junger: The idea was to have it just break even and pay the mortgage, so we wouldn't have to be business owners. That didn't survive scrutiny from, uh, others.
Anderson: Girlfriends.
Junger: Yeah...
Anderson: You always think of worse ideas in collaboration with someone else than you would ever come up with on your own. And yet, somehow, the Half King worked. One of the things about doing our kind of journalism is that when you come back, there's such a disjuncture. You were based in Darfur or Afghanistan and all of a sudden you're dropped back in New York. It's very difficult to explain what you've experienced. So to have that place where you can get together with people who do similar things—that makes it less disorienting. This place is much bigger than we had envisioned and much more of a general-population bar, but journalists all over the place know about it. I was in Libya and this English journalist started talking about this really cool bar in New York. I said, "What's the name of it?" And he said, "The Half King."
Junger: We didn't want a literary salon. And we didn't want a place that was obnoxiously journalistic. Most of the people in here right now are not journalists. But very often when journalists congregate, they come here.
Anderson: Especially photojournalists, it seems. Maybe that's because they're more noticeable, because they're louder.
Junger: They drink more.
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Junger embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, 2005. (Teun Voeten)
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IV. YOU COMPLETE ME
More than an hour after we start talking, a table opens up out front, where Junger and Anderson can smoke. This they do with abandon.
Junger: We don't talk about relationships that much, and we certainly don't talk about our own relationship very much, and, uh, now's our chance.
Anderson: I think this was just intuitive—with me, at least—that, from very early on, there was a lot that was very similar about us. Including vulnerabilities that were buried under bravado, or sort of always appearing open and outgoing.
Junger: Both of us are very careful not to reveal that anything is wrong. We both present an exterior where everything is fine. And we both emotionally play our cards very close to the vest. We're like cats. You can pet the cat, but ultimately the cat doesn't really give a shit whether you're there. And we can both have that effect on people—and probably on each other.
Anderson: I have a question for you. I bet I know the answer, but I've never asked you: Were you a sickly kid?
Junger: When I was very, very young I was. And then, because my father's a hypochondriac, I decided at age ten that I was going to be robust and athletic. And then, after that, I've never gotten sick. But at first I actually had a ton of health problems.
Anderson: I had really severe asthma. To the point where I had to be rushed to the emergency room a few times. So I always had this sense of being somehow apart from other kids. I did the same thing you did: I never wanted to show any physical weakness; I never wanted to show any physical pain.
Junger: Also, we both came from really weird families. My dad is French; he grew up all over Europe, and the family really reflected that, so I always felt like I was outside my peer group. And you just had a weird childhood, by any standard.
Anderson: I grew up in Asia—my dad worked for USAID—and we were constantly moving. I also think having mothers that were creative... Your mother was a painter, and mine was a children's-book writer—
Junger: I didn't even know that. See, we don't talk. You know, now that we're being forced to examine ourselves, which is a good, healthy thing... My family wasn't very close at all, so I never felt included there, either. I grew up a really solitary kid. And when you grow up solitary, your worst fear is that you'll be alone. And you cover that up by trying to convince yourself that you don't need anybody. So you don't get married at 23; you get married in your forties, like both of us did. So my question to you, because I'm just starting to understand this in myself, is: You seem very complete, and like you don't need closeness. But at your core, are you scared of being alone?
Anderson: Good question. You know, probably. I had the added thing of growing up in cultures where I couldn't understand or interact with the world around me. You create a sense of autonomy. It's always been a sense of perverse pride: I'm utterly self-sufficient; I don't need anyone. It can be couched in this way of not wanting to burden somebody.
Junger: Right. Or limit yourself. Because we've both had lives with a series of girlfriends, never settling down, running around doing foreign reporting. It all looks to the outside quite impressive and autonomous. But at its core, it's not. It's really a defense. My other question to Scott is: Is he truly the completely independent person that he appears to be?
Anderson: I suspect I'm not. But things are so intense now. My brother [Jon Lee Anderson] is a journalist, too, and he just left for Baghdad again today, and anytime my brother is in Baghdad, I slip into a different mood. And it's never anything I say to him, but if something were to happen to him, it would... I think about it all the time. So, no, I am probably not as autonomous, but I would never express it.
Junger: Until now. For an audience of millions.
