Caliper

Oh what a glorious shimmering day, a bicycle ride, coffee with friends, a jaunt out to a Thimble Island. My plans
resplendent with mirth. ‘Threw my bike in the hallway, leapt to the apartment, then still shower dripping answered the phone.

I don’t know why, but when I’m dressing, especially in a hurry, I like company. I don’t care what; I’ll turn on some nice music, talk with a roommate across the hall or flip through a magazine. But an hour ago I turned on the TV, and that’s when it punched through the fabric of my day and gashed right through my being.

It’s funny how a body is made. A tree branch, a raccoon, a person all assembled so much like all else, with a frame supporting the gross structural weight along with the integral systems contributing to a whole. But us animate things are so different than, say, buildings. We start as tiny bits which seemingly emerge from within themselves, so that even though a rib is perfectly encased in musculature, one never had to be fit inside the other. So I guess, when you ponder, it’s no great mystery that a lurking thirst could be found inside there as well.

I don’t know why, but someone must have made the decision to broadcast the movie just then. It always leaves me dumb, from the moment I hear the music. I just went and closed the blinds, then the curtains over them, and with the lights off poured drink after drink and sat. I don’t care who wrote or directed this one, so intensely personal the thrust behind it seems. To me it has always been so much more than just a film. It somehow manages to heap my long frozen tears into its glow.

Always I realize it is me. And I think then that my arms could never open wide enough to hold such a woman. When suddenly I remember the truly sad part of it all; no such woman exists. She was a sprite. But that’s OK, ‘cause I’m only a cheap Puck.

All Stars

Downtown there was a bomb scare; pantsuits and ties on the sidewalk. I took the time to mull about, let the small things hit me like raindrops. Hasidim negotiating on Blackberries, plain-clothesmen addressing one another as commander, an unusually attractive woman festooned with chestnut curls in a wheel chair. I luxuriated in hundreds of socially guarded vignettes, like I used to when I smoked pot. My steps fell easily.

Rrrrgrrrhrrgrrr

There’s only a few things in this life that hurl my furor into a vortex uncontrolled by man or nature, and almost all of those things can only be done by my wife; specifically when she does them to push my buttons. She knows well and good that I am going to blow my top. That’s how women are. If you are a man, not yet married, and the notion of marriage ever emerges even in casual conversation, RUN.

There are times when there is just not enough cubic miles of atmosphere to fill my lungs so I can yell loud enough. This is especially true at the track when I’m rooting for Todd. Todd Vodka, as almost all of you have figured out, is the horse I trained, know as a friend and race. His place in history as “The Wet Track Underdog of All Time” is well deserved, and not only because of his masters affiliation. I won’t go into detail here, but he was born a quarter-hoof, a bastard just like me. Think of the poetic justice.

A few days ago, after a particularly exuberant revelry in celebration of a win, the barbarous shrew that sometimes possesses my wife started nosing around my laptop. Invading my privacy, in case I’ve neglected to clarify, is a transgression which turns me into a thing which ware wolves would cower from. So what does she turn up? Not only the fact that there is a blogger out there operating under the name of our horse, but also that this individual seems eager to boast of crimes which she has always suspected I myself am guilty of. Coincidence? She thought not.

Now this is the part of the story that split my tectonic plates: She went into my laptop and deleted 17 of my future posts from the annals of time and history; forever. Then she came to the dinner table and said “you wanna’ be a dirty old fart sitting around trumpeting the excesses of your youth, go ahead”. And she harrumphed.

Before I go any further let me just say that my wife is the woman of dreams. We met in a glorious spring and fell together easily. To this day we are, in our seventies, a couple which people stop to watch; our love is that whimsical and glorious. The day we married I wore clouds, sonnets and laughter like an expertly tailored suit in a light breeze. But right now, I’m not sure if I’m stepping out for a breath of fresh air or headed to the shed for my hatchet.

I know this: I am going to torture her ruthlessly, and she will turn her indignation against me and make me feel like a criminal for defending my inclination to enjoy life. She destroyed 17 stories that I slaved for days on end to write, and the world should penalize me with the wrath of Medusa for her doing so. That’s how women think. All of them.

Something deep within has compelled me to share thoughts of my Senior year at Chaote. Stale memories of a certain Claire Lemsoll and her fascination with the results of a procedure I underwent at an early age in accordance with my religion have come to mind. I wonder if the poor dear ever adjusted to life in Paris. You know what?, I think I’ll put this aside and call her right now. But first I have to throw a pair of gardening shears in the pond.

Crypt

Sometimes celebrities are edgy about their fame because they have not yet learned to deal with all the attendant attention. Others have had trying experiences with unprovoked intrusions into their personal lives. Still others, like many ordinary people, are just edgy by nature. But Patty Hearst, now there’s a woman who has all the reason in the world to be edgy. And that is exactly what was going through my brother’s mind when he took a seat on the train next to her on the way into Manhattan.

If you’re not a fan of Orson Wells or media Moguls of yore, you may not know who Patty is. She’s the billionaire heiress to a fortune amassed by the man who sculpted the news over half a century. Her Daddy’s mere pocket money built castles and shrines to himself that would weaken the knees of Egyptian kings. As the only child of the doting “Citizen Kane”, a man who immortalized himself in Xanadu, Americas most extravagant mausoleum, no earthly sum would be spared in satisfying her every whim. Yet poise and etiquette were equally imparted, so that by her early teens she was quite the debutante-to-be.

Just one year later, though, the world would gaze on another cherished symbol of Ms. Hearst’s personal brand of aristocracy: a photograph of her holding a loaded fully automatic assault weapon to the head of a bank guard as The Symbianeese Liberation Army made off with the loot. Somehow it seems that after the radical group snatched her up for ransom, she caught the Stockholm Syndrome ball and carried it deep into the end zone. It must have been a transformation which astonished even her captives.

Anyway, Dad somehow managed to extract her from all that glamour and reconditioned her brain, but of course he had to have most of her new friends assassinated in the process. And needless to say they were a pretty nasty and vindictive bunch. So yet again Patty knew she was destined to spend the rest of her life in the company of men who carry large caliber automatic weapons. Only this time they were body guards. So the guy in dark shades sitting one seat back and one over was probably fresh from the jungles of El Salvador or Peru.

Several times during the train ride my brother turned halfway towards her, placing his fingertips upon his chin in an inquisitive manner. Intermittently he would crinkle his brow and raise a finger, only to surrender his point. Patty visibly squirmed as he appeared to spend the hour summoning the notion of where he knew her from.

As the train pulled into Grand Central Station my brother just turned and asked, in the most casual of ways, “so, does that mean that Xanadu will be the last stop for you too”?

Apparently she laughed. Very hard. Because my brother never told me this story. Years later he just handed me a folded over copy of Interview where it was recounted, and said “you know this guy”.