Big as I Want to Be

Originally Posted Sunday, December 8, 2013

. . . but more is never enough.  All I want is just a little too much, perhaps.  And then all I want is. . . nothing.  Desire.  There is no fulfilling it.  Ask any junkie.  Pleasure leads to obsession which leads to a dulling of the senses.  There is no controlling pleasure, I think, or rather the desire for it.  Certain pleasures are less harmful, though, like the music I am listening to this morning on Apple Radio.  Jesus, it calms me.  It is romantic and of another time and place and it carries me away across the vast oceans of time to the movies of my youthful dreams.  Papeete, Morocco, Tangiers, Shanghai. . . all journeys originating in London or Paris.  Beautiful bars and hotels and people.  And suddenly I am thinking of the Bartle Bull books I have read (don't be fooled by his son who writes hideously under the same name). These desires are O.K., perhaps, like the Patagonia catalog or even one of the old Banana Republic catalogs from the 1980s when the company was privately owned before it was bought by Gap.  But all this running around I've been doing of late, drinking and staying up late and performing regrettable acts. . . it is wearing.  I know, however, that it will all transform in memory and someday I will think about the days when I was still running around at night in restaurants and bars thrilling the locals with my savoir faire.  And it is true.  I got a call from an ex-girlfriend two days ago.  She saw me out on the Boulevard sitting at a sidewalk restaurant eating oysters and bacon-wrapped scallops and a big swordfish steak topped with a light wasabi paste and drinking too many Hendrix perfect martinis.  She was breathless. I looked like a movie star, she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked her.  "I don't just play one on t.v." 

It hardly gets better than that, right?  But I pulled some bonehead moves and drank too much and the recollection of those events could only be made right by telling them on the old Merv Griffin Show with Richard Harris or Lee Marvin sitting beside me on the couch.  Every public outrage could become simply colorful there.  Perhaps even charming. 

Last night eating at the bar of another place after too many drinks, having finished one meal, the beautiful bartender (I have fallen in love with her) asked me if I wanted another drink.  Of course, I said, and bring me the menu.  I want more to eat.  That's very manly, right?  Oh, yes she said, giggling. But it became rather old man-ly when I asked her for one of the pairs of reading glasses they have sitting behind the counter for old manly men (and women) like myself. 

It's getting expensive and debilitating being such a high-profile romantic.  A few hours of playing Clark Gable (I can't come close to being Cary Grant) is costing me a pretty price. 

Apple Radio is telling me I can share my station with others.  I've not explored that yet, but if I figure out how to do it, I will.  Then you will see what I mean.  You will go as mad as I. 

I am kidding, of course.  About all of this, really, but especially about the radio station.  I know you all. The music would drive you headbangers crazy.  Even my friends, when they hear what I listen to, ask me if I am having my period. 

The morning is beautiful and I must go to it.  There are miles to run and mountains to climb.  I must stay strong and healthy if I am going to be King of the Bonobos. 

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Wait a minute.  Something is wrong here.  Look at this Clark Gable from "Gone with the Wind"!