As we adjourn to the living room, I maintain that folk behavior is interesting and horizon-broadening to know about. I refer to specific sexual adventures of the Kinsey Gang. My sources are the not always reliable books, movies, and biographies on that Gang, together with their pioneering research. Everyone, I figure, at the table is curious about what went on back in Bloomington but we’re circumspect. We present ourselves as un-shocked, we wear our most disinterested expressions.

That is, everyone except Lucian Freud. He still appears bemused.

Summarizing, Lucian eventually declares that “everything is autobiographical.” Elisabeth, shaking her long brown hair, again is not so sure. The most she’ll say now is that good science does arise out of personal drives of researchers.

Slightly off-topic, eventually Hu Jintao only offers that old feminist cry from the ‘60s and ‘70s that ‘the personal is also political.’ He doesn’t elaborate on that, in or out of his nation’s context. Perhaps at variance to the child-like obedience demanded by the murderous and absolutist Mao, Hu’s politics enable his countrymen and women to have -- if not liberty -- more personal space?

I assume, all very respectfully of course, that Hu is a devotee of the school of ‘Capitalism now, Democracy later... Maybe.” So when a chance arises, as tactfully as possible, I inquire if he has any idea how much ‘later’ may be. I figure he’ll say something about his path of gradualism and incrementalism. I expect that observation especially since five or ten minutes ago, he was telling us that he governs by consensus among rival leaders, and thus he’s certainly not in a position to solve speedily all governmental problems by himself. Other leaders have to come round.

Elisabeth is more direct: “President Hu, what are the chances that social democracy will be established within 10 years? And with a farmer's vote equal to a city-dweller's vote?” I'm confused by Elisabeth's question as I had thought citizens didn't ballot on state or local officials. What I hear from her is that now the rural voter registers as just one-quarter of the urban voter. I want clarification.

Hu doesn’t go there. What he repeats is that political reform will have to be cautious and studied. Hu says China is "pursuing a scientific outlook in development" through solutions that integrate not only economic concerns but environmental and social ones.

Hu's scientific quest to tie things together strikes Barb as akin to Lucian's artistic need to have models pose throughout an entire picture's creation. Eyes turn to her as she recalls what Lucian had said earlier about the model's presence affecting his painting of everything, e.g., the floorboard in the background, the lamp at the side, the sheet on the couch.

Eyes turn back to Hu with his point that China should “cherish socialism”which is hostile to great inequities and supportive of millions continuing to rise out of poverty annually. "Workers," Hu accentuates with what could be interpreted as either a smirk or a hope (sorry, I am not good at reading Chinese faces), "workers have recently gained job rights including the development of skills and talent via on-the-job training. Also lawyers now are taking on cases for workers' rights." And Hu has initiated programs and centers to make officials more accountable and government more open about meetings and functions.

“How’s it working out?” Elisabeth asks pleasantly, grateful (I think) to be talking about something other than her sex research. And as she ever-so-discretely pours Earl Gray Tea, Barb asks too: “Are there also provisions for elected works councils, collective bargaining, trade unions, and direct profit-sharing?”

For half a moment, Hu visibly blanches, cautiously and studiedly.

Suddenly, a pang of guilt hits me about my earlier pushiness tonight over energy, carbon credits, global warming. Maybe I shouldn’t be deferential to foreign authority, but after all this cordial man is our guest in our house. Methinks we should tread more lightly challenging him and his Party’s hierarchy. Our Chinese teapot and our questioning of his regime may ignite in Hu’s mind, even sparking him to reflect that his most brutal predecessor may have had the right idea after all, i.e., during the Cultural Revolution, Mao the Uber Authoritarian attempted to closed-down all his country's teahouses, the better to squelch dissidents.

Not to worry. No scowl emanates from our Presidential guest. Ah, relief. Tea-time with us, here in our often-democratic and very often-comfortable West, may veer toward the argumentative, but it hardly threatens his state, which now permits teahouses anyhow.

And…who would have thought? With marked chagrin in his voice, Hu says his father -- who had a small tea-trading business -- was denounced during the Cultural Revolution.

“How many blacks have you invited to supper here, Rick?” We are not jolted by Jackie Robinson’s equal-opportunity challenge. As the son of a sportswriter, Rick knew Jackie used to chide journalists in the ‘60s with ”How many blacks on your sports staff? I thought so.”

Rick has no rhetorical acrobatics to spin. Blacks have been under-represented at our table.

“Jackie,” my hubby mumbles, finishing a chew, “give me a break. I was there with you on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Actually Rick did not see Jackie there in August ‘63, but we know the guy was there, a friendly face in the friendly crowd.

“That morning," Rick resumes," I remember Nancy Dickerson on the morning news."

Perween Warsi and Muhammad Yunus do not seem to recognize the name, and so I put in a good word for her: "Nancy broke a glass ceiling as CBS-TV's first Washington reporter. She was a Washington Insider."

"Anyway," Rick takes back the floor, "Nancy discouraged viewers from walking anywhere near the route from Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial. Trouble was expected. A quarter million people and I went anyhow. We passed thickets of FBI agents snapping our pictures.

“I hung out there for five or six hours, listening to singers like Mihalia Jackson, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Speakers like Walter Reuther, Ralph Abernathy, and Charleton Heston, who I mis-remembered for years as Burt Lancaster. Plus James Farmer, John Lewis, and other chaps pushing for meaningful civil rights legislation.” Just to pronounce these names brings gravitas to tonight’s party.

“I’d forgotten to wear a hat, and after five hours standing mostly in the sun, around 3:15, I went back to where I was staying. On the evening’s news, I learned about the final speech, the ‘I have a Dream’ one. Greatest speech of my lifetime. Hearing Martin Luther King unfiltered would have been worth a sunburn.”

Jackie is okay with my ramble. He adds that he supported King’s non-violent strategy for achieving equity, just as he respected the mobilizing talents of the ‘60s other charismatic leader of American Negroes, Malcolm X. “When I disagreed with Malcolm’s strategy of hating whites and wresting freedom by any means necessary, black militants labeled me an ‘Uncle Tom.’” Well, I saw through their tactic -- it was a case of 'If you can't play the hockey puck, play the man. If you can't win on the merits of your argument, discredit the person you're arguing with.'..."