|
Last updated: 23 December 1998
It wasn't a healthy attitude, but it wasn't really a healthy world.
If you are firmly enough rooted in your masculinity, it shouldn't bother
you much to have a woman on top of you. It's a good deal more relaxing,
it's often more satisfying for both parties, and you can see a lot more
of what's going on. Daydreaming while smoking cigars can be a fire hazard. It can be as
dangerous as drugs and booze unless you know what you're doing. If you
know what you're doing, it can be as safe as walking down the street. If you're patient and you wait long enough, something will usually happen
and it'll usually be something you don't like. As a general rule of thumb, however, if you thought of New York as a
Negro talking to himself and of California as a VCR with nothing to put
in, you wouldn't be too far off the mark. It was a nice neighborhood. If you liked neighborhoods. New York was the kind of place where you could hide from anything. Possibly
even yourself. In six days the Lord created the heavens and the earth and all the wonders
therein. There are some of us who feel that He might have taken just a
little more time. But if you're paranoid long enough, sooner or later you're gonna be
right. Golf is the only opportunity that middle-aged Wasps have to dress up
like a pimp. Every time you see a beautiful woman, just remember, somebody got tired
of her. The main health hazard in the world today is people who don't love themselves. Cats are a fairly right-wing group politically. They are lovers of the
status quo. They don't like anything that might represent change. They
hate marriages, divorces, moving days, graduations, bar mitzvahs, bill
collectors, rug shampooners, painters, plumbers, electricians, television
repairmen, out-call masseuses, Jehovah's Witnesses, and just about everything
else, most of which I agree with them about. "I'm not afraid to die," I said. "I'm not afraid to live.
I'm not afraid to fail. I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall
in love. I'm not afraid to be alone. I'm just afraid I might have to stop
talking about myself for five minutes." We're all worm bait waiting to happen. It's what you do while you wait
that matters. Now I have a cat. Well, that's not quite accurate. A cat and I have
each other. Most people, of course, spend their lives caring about the wrong things.
The worry about South Africa or Nicaragua. They spend so much time finding
themselves that they lose their taxicabs. They don't see that what kind
of napkin you get at a delicatessen is a matter of much significance in
the world today. They say that death is just nature's way of telling you to slow down
a little bit. Home was a meaningless word in New York. I could imagine a number of things that would look good on her. One
of them was myself. True New Yorkers would stand in line only at the Carnegie Delicatessen.
Or the lottery. Or the soup kitchen on the Bowery. Sleep came slower than a frigid woman. When you have a cat, you assume certain responsibilities that, in a
spiritual sense, may transcend those of a marital or a business relationship. Cats, as a rule, don't like lawyers. They have great insight into human
character. I rarely meddled in the cat's personal affairs and she rarely meddled
in mine. Neither of us was foolish enough to attribute human emotions to
our pets. There are no good lawyers. There may be lady wrestlers and Catholic
universities. There may be military intelligence. But a good lawyer is
a contradiction in terms. He looked a shade too healthy and nobody likes that. Particularly in
New York. I'd often felt that a man without a woman was like a neck without a
pain. There are worse things in this world than being lonely, but I didn't
ever want to find out what they were. I was used to lonely. Lonely fit
me like an old hunting vest. I would wear it in good health. They say God created whiskey to keep the Irish from taking over the
world. You have to work at it if you want to be a good smoker. Especially today
with all the nonsmoking world constantly harassing you. Friday night was the night most people thought they were supposed to
have fun. Trouble was most people didn't know what fun was or how to have
it, so things usually ended up pretty ugly. I knew I wasn't as stupid as I looked. No one was. On the whole, I preferred cats to women because cats seldom if ever
used the word "relationship". The guy standing on the tiny stage never missed a chance to take a simple
idea and intellectualize it until it disappeared completely. In New York nobody really regarded anybody as dead; we just thought
of them as not currently working on a project. She was the kind of girl that older dentists find attractive. She had
a nice set of teeth, a fair set of knockers, and a lousy set of values.
She was a chemical puppet.
 
|