The Ninth Stop

DISCLAIMER: The following is a work of fiction, and any resemblance between the characters herein and real persons living or otherwise is purely coincidental.

We were intimate friends, I told the investigator. It was true, we loved each other the way only friends do. Remember the quote I found from Webster Hubbell, not one of my favorite people, but quite insightful when he said: "I mean, you love a friend more than you love a lover"? She'd probably deny it now, or resent me for bringing it up, but it was she herself who declared she was my friend for life. I hadn't heard that before from anyone.

But then it was over. I don't know why, she won't say why, it was over and it only got worse, all of a sudden. I asked if it was something I had said or done, and she said no. Soon thereafter, she made the accusation, one of several, that I had presented her a bar of imported bittersweet chocolate, her favourite flavour, by the way, with the word "Passion" printed somewhere on the wrapper. She ate it first, of course. Last Saturday morning, that is several months later, I made the ninth stop on the weekly errand run again, to visit the shop where I had bought it, searching for this word on the wrappers of their large selection of chocolate bars, having remembered nothing about the brand or the country of origin, but I didn't manage to find it.

I'd like to tell you what happened and why, but I don't understand it myself. I gave her chocolates, CDs, books, homemade clear borscht, which she loved; she in turn gave me banana bread she had baked herself, pastry and cafe lattes from her favorite bakery, her poetry. She wrote well. She told me I made her laugh, and that she had seen me change. I told her to take full credit for that change.


Like a soap bubble, it all burst, made a sticky mess, and was no more. One friend tells me such breakups are always final, but I live with hope. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton went back together for a while, didn't they?! Time, that heals all wounds, will tell.

I saw her the other day, for the first time in months. Just a brief glimpse. I was walking down a deserted street, she, driving her car, passed me by, must have noticed me, my back, that is, I turned to look and saw her face in profile, staring intently ahead, pretending not to see me, but in that split second, I saw enough to get all shook up again, the fresh haircut, the anger, sadness and pain, and her incomparable beauty. And then she disappeared in the vast parking lot up ahead.

A New Words Dictionary

Here are some new words I've learned recently, all of them utterly without application in our daily lives.

The Monday morning yoga class at my gym has been cancelled. The instructor quit. In its place a yogalates (pronounced 'yoga-lattes') class, combining yoga and Pilates, will be offered. It sounds like a drink on the menu at Starbucks, no?!

Here are two words from the celebrity gossip column I shamelessly read in the newspaper picked up on the train home:

celebutante,
heirhead.

You can probably guess which celebrities they refer to.

In a web article which mentioned conservative journalist William F. Buckley's support for legalization of drugs, I found some interesting new words, and a story about how he arrived at this position. Apparently Mr Buckley once took his yacht outside the territorial waters of the U.S. to light up a joint before becoming convinced that the weed should be legalized. Here are the words, which have nothing to do with Buckley's long ago experience with marijuana, by the way:

chronic - 1) very high-quality weed, generally with red hairs on it.
2) marijuana with cocaine mixed in

broccoli - slang for marijuana coined by Vallejo, CA based rapper E-40

spark the broccoli - to light a bowl of marijuana. "Spark that shit, yo!"

Now, the latest front page news from this morning's newspaper. Quote:

Legal, intense
hallucinogen
raising alarms

Salvia divinorum produces
short, dreamlike experience

End quote. Street names for this species of sage: Sally D and magic mint.

And the following also from this morning's newspaper:

A child's tantrum on board a Delta commuter flight forced a pilot to make an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

An internet wit's comment:

"Definitely a good old-fashion application of the board of education to the seat of instruction is required."

Hip-hop music (?) in a country & western version? Why, that's called hick-hop!

In his television program on public TV, Dr Wayne Dyer used the expression helicopter parents, to describe parents who 'hover' over their children.

These two words appear often in advice columns and in Women Seeking Men advertisements, as two character traits the advertisers do not seek, and the advice seekers wish to avoid:

clingy
needy
For a long time, I didn't understand the application of the word 'needy', thinking that if a man wasn't 'needy', why would he reply to a Women Seeking Men ad? (Incidentally, those ads and advice columns are as often as not litanies of undesired character traits.) I asked a friend and this is what he told me:

Clingy is like when you come out of the bathroom with a piece of toiler paper stuck to your shoe and trailing behind you for all the world to see. Somewhat embarrassing, and undesirable (unless you're drunk).

Needy is like trying to watch a 2 hour Docudrama on a Pay TV in an airport waiting lounge (do they still have those things?) and have to keep feeding quarters into it every 10 mins.
Somewhat costly, and undesireable (unless you're drunk).

Now children, can you write a sentence using all of these new words?

Our Radiant Future

The Radiant Future is the title of a book written by Alexander Zinoview, the author of The Yawning Heights, both highly recommended.

There are at least three New Age monthly magazines one can pick up gratis at cafes and bookstores around here. There is something called the Psychic Institute, dozens of yoga studios, tarot card readers on the Avenue, a bookstore devoted to just fantasy fiction, all this and no Gypsy caravans in this town!

The monthly free computer magazine stopped publishing at the beginning of the year, but we now have two monthly newspapers devoted to dogs. Astrology, tarot, yoga, dogs, you think I'll be talking about the glorious past now? No, we're talking about our pagan future, boy!

Last weekend, I picked up one of those New Age magazines, which, like the other two, is getting thicker and slicker, advertising revenues from all those gurus, quacks and aura readers must be up. I stepped inside the pub, ordered a pint of ale, and tried to read some of it without laughing.

And then I opened the page to an article about and an interview with one Dr. Masaru Emoto. Dr. Emoto is a Japanese scientist who has a certification from Open International University as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine. His published works include The Miracle of Water, The True Power of Water and The Hidden Messages in Water. The article tells us that Dr Emoto "stepped outside of the boundaries of traditional science to study water samples from around the planet as a human being and an original thinker." Hmmm.

Dr. Emoto claims that exposing water to music changes the structure of water crystals (i.e. ice) in a bottle. More, exposing water to written words, does the same. The words are written in Japanese on a sheet of paper which is placed near those water crystals (i.e. ice) which are examined through a microscope before and after.

Here are three quotes from Dr. Emoto:

I believe this world was created and designed by God's intention. He created water as a means to convey the information rapidly. So in this sense, the water is a messenger of God. Creator etched two basic Yin and Yang energies into water–Love and Gratitude/ Thanks. He made the ratio 1 to 2 (1 part Love and 2 parts Gratitude/Thanks) so that free energy could be provided when people really understood the meaning of H2O. I know a scientist who is doing research on the power of love and gratitude. I believe there will be more scientists to follow him.

If you are happy, the water in front of you is happy and if you are unhappy, the water in front of you would also be unhappy. Therefore, water and human are connected to each other. The consciousness of every one of us can be transmitted to water. This consciousness creates a morphogenetic field and, as a result, influences the climate and energy of the earth.

I believe in the saying: "In the beginning was the word" from the Bible. That is why the water crystals are changed by words. I am now doing research about this and I am getting the answers. The results should be published in my new book that will be coming out in three months.

Is this like, far out, man? Wouldn't you like to smoke what this man is smoking?

In the meantime, previous Saturday's Wall Street Journal printed an article about and an interview with Václav Havel. Here are some quotes:

Mr. Havel saw "living in truth" as the act of refusing to participate in the everyday lies that were the cornerstones of totalitarian rule: sham elections, hypocritical expressions of solidarity for the oppressed, patently fraudulent statistics on the economic progress of the socialist bloc, and so on.

In the essay's most memorable passage, Mr. Havel ruminated on the phenomenon of the greengrocer who places Marx's slogan calling on the workers of the world to unite "among the onions and the carrots." Why does he do it? Not out of any serious conviction, Mr. Havel argued, but simply to "get along in life" and "to conceal from himself" -- by means of a high-sounding slogan -- "the low foundations of his obedience."

To some of his critics, the idea of living in truth smacked of moral posturing by a man who, being the childless and bohemian playwright he was, mistook drama for life and failed to appreciate that in the face of dictatorship "getting along in life" was hardly an ignoble or degrading objective. Mr. Havel shrugs the criticism off. "I was never a priest preaching how people should behave, or a moralist bullying others to be this way or that," he says. "I simply thought about the behavior of the majority as well as that of the minority, and tried to analyze it."

"hope is not the same thing as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good. . . . The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is."

I ask whether the quality of art in the West hasn't in fact suffered in conditions of almost unfettered liberty. "I wouldn't declare it as a rule," he ventures. "But let's say that semi-democratic conditions are inspirational. And that art plays a more important role because it assumes the place of politics."

"a big danger of our world today is obsession . . . an even bigger danger is indifference."

The Future is Ours, Comrade

Try as you may, you can't escape the future. The Radiant Future, as our one time friends the Soviets called it, assuring young Jerzy Kosinski with the phrase you see above, which he would later use as the title of his first book in English.

Dana Gioia (pronounced Joy-a) is a businessman turned accomplished poet, who now heads the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal government agency with a measly yearly budget of $133 million to fund art institutions across the country. Somehow or another Mr Gioia was invited as a commencement (graduation) speaker at the Stanford University last Sunday. According to a press report, some students were concerned that he was a controversial choice as a speaker, not being a celebrity, i.e. someone being known for being known. In his speech he called American culture "bankrupt", and said "we live in a culture that barely acknowledges and rarely celebrates the arts and artists." And "Everything now is entertainment. American culture has mostly become one vast infomercial." The students' reactions? Judging from the interviews conducted by the reporter, they're already in the future "I'm a pop-culture whore", says one laughing. "For me, my culture is sports," says another, while another is interested in little besides economics, and so on. The poet spoke to the wind.

I don't own an iPod, or a mobile phone, or a fixed-gear bicycle like the one pictured above. But I do attend spinning classes. Spinning is a group exercise on sturdy stationary bikes built for this purpose, expensive and lacking all controls normally present on stationary bikes, except wheel resistance adjustment. The bikes allow the rider to stand on the pedals. Spinning sessions last an hour or longer and are led by an instructor who, on a spin bike himself, leads the participants through a program of drills, such as climbing, sprints, flat road racing, etc. After a good hour of spinning participants end up soak up in sweat.

Unfortunately, this futuristic exercise, hasn't escaped the future of auditory experiences. Any group exercise at an American gym, be it yoga, aerobics or spinning, must be, by some diabolic rule, accompanied by loud noise of piped in music, if music it is, and not an infomercial to purchase the CDs of the performers. Our regular spinning instructor, a woman in her early 40s, a geologist, road bike racer and mother, plays CDs of retro music dating back to the 80s and 70s, generally melodic hard rock. Her summer substitute, a woman slightly older, a gym professional and a New Yorker who says "come one", when she means "come on", plays the music of the future, what my drinking buddy calls "techno", no manual virtuosity allowed, all electronic, all programmed by, presumably, a non-musician, but a conceptual artist. One "tune" we heard last Friday imitated the sounds of a construction site, unchanging pounding of machinery, with electronic bass and drums, no melody of any kind for 5 minutes. I looked around me at the five other participants, some of them not much younger than myself, and they didn't seem bothered by it one bit. Annoyed, I thought of leaving right there and then, when the obnoxious tune ended, and another one slightly less offensive started.

More on the topic of inescapable future next time, but for now here's something from the past. A book titled The Walk by William deBuys was published recently by a university press. I learned about it reading a review in the local newspaper, and immediately ordered a copy through Amazon. The author is a teacher and naturalist living in New Mexico. For 27 years he has made the same 45-minute walk "up one arroyo, down another, back by the river and the ancient mill, and up through the farm". It is a meditative book, the review informs us. The writer says "the more you know the place, or think you know it, the more it can take you where you do not expect." And "Sometimes the easiest answers to our difficulties is not so much to get outside ourselves, as simply to get ourselves outside."

"I take the walk and then the walk takes me."

(to be continued)

Talk about it

"I can't talk about it."

"Talk about what?"

"I can't even talk about what I can't talk about!"

"If I didn't know you better I'd think this is a comedy routine."

"You know it isn't, I barely emerged out of this with superficial wounds."

"Why can't you talk about it?"

"Confidentiality rules, and all."

"Who'll know?

"Well, I think the lawyer involved in the case may be watching."

"Watching what?"

"This very blog."

"Can you say anything at all?"

"Cherchez la femme."

"Ah yes, Alexandre Dumas (père) in Les Mohicans de Paris, 1864:

"Ah! Monsieur Jackal, you were right when you said, 'Seek the woman.'"

"No, no, that's not the way I heard it:

"There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report,

I say, 'Look for the woman'."

Past Tough

Some of life's lessons come from unexpected sources, like, say, from a standup comedian. The late Rodney Dangerfield (not his real name) made numerous appearances on the television's Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (also deceased.) He might have made more appearances on the show than anyone else, I recall reading one time.

The routine was always the same. Like other comedians, Mr Dangerfield would first stand on the stage in front of the live audience that we never saw on the screen, and perform the obligatory standup routine. But in his case, the routine was brief. The show hadn't started yet. After the applause, he'd walk over to sit on Johnny's couch, and if some young starlet who preceeded him was already sitting there, he'd turn to her and ask "Do you live alone?" Next, the essence of the show was Johnny feeding Rodney straight lines, and he responding with one liners, or brief stories, the gist of which was always that he was a man who could never get respect. 'No respect' was, as everyone knows, Rodney's entire shtick. He was slightly overweight, badly dressed, sweaty, nervous, forever adjusting his cheap neckie. The repartee between Johnny and Rodney started the routinely, with Johnny asking how he has been. Rodney's reply was always the same too (I recall from memory):

"I'm all right now Johnny, but the last two weeks have been tough!".

He'd shake his head and reach to adjust his necktie. Johnny would then ask what had happened and Rodney proceeded to describe his travails.

And that one line, which I had anticipated dozens of times, is the life's valuable lesson from a standup comedian. It is a philosophy of an eternal optimist, who remains an optimist despite it all, even as he fails repeatedly. It's not the present that's tough, we'll deal with it somewhow, it's the past that was and is now gone, thankfully.

After recent tough two weeks (broken legs, broken arms, broken head), I arrived at the workplace to be greeted in the office kitchen by a young Chinese co-worker, who, not knowing anything of my internal injuries, said: "You always look so happy!" I thanked her and reached up to adjust my cheap necktie, which wasn't there to be adjusted. What else was I to do?!

Back in jail again

A propos the past week's public melodrama involving an empty headed heiress famous for being famous, who was dragged to Los Angeles County jail screaming and kicking, I asked a friend if he knew who Claudine Longet was. He's old enough to know, but he didn't know. Here's a reminder.

One of the most interesting unreleased rock and roll records of the past 50 years is Claudine, by the Rolling Stones. It is also one of the best recordings by the group. You can still find it somewhere on the Web and download it. Intended for their Some Girls album, it had to be withdrawn at the behest of lawyers, because it was (is) about an easily identifiable living person and one easily identifiable dead person, whom the easily identifiable living person had shot dead.

It is a driving blues number, intense and aggressive, with a strong, biting vocal by Mick Jagger. The lyrics tell the story.

Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail (again)
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine

Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail (again)
She only does it at weekends
Claudine
Oh, Claudine

Now only Spider knows for sure
But he ain't talkin' about it any more
Is he, Claudine?

There's blood in the chalet
And blood in the snow
(She)Washed her hands of the whole damn show
The best thing you could do, Claudine

Shot him once right through the head
Shot him twice right through the chest
The judge says (ruled) it was an accident
Claudine
Accidents will happen(In the best homes)

And Claudine's back in jail again

Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine

(Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine) [additional chorus]

I'll tell you something Now
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine

Tell you one more
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Huh Claudine?
Oh Claudine...

Oooo ...
What about the children, baby?
Poor, poor children

Now I threaten my wife with a gun
I always leave the safety on
I recommend it
Claudine

Now she pistol whipped me once or twice
But she never tried to take my life
(What do you think about that)
Claudine

The prettiest girl I ever seen
I saw you on the movie screen
Hope you don't try to make a sacrifice of me
Claudine
(Don't get trigger happy with me)
Don't wave a gun at me
(Claudine)

I said Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine
I said Claudine's back in jail again
Claudine's back in jail again
She only does it at weekends
Claudine

Keith, will you put that weapon down?
Oh Claudine
Oh Claudine

(Claudine by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards)

How I became a nun

The story you are about to read happened on a recent Saturday evening in my current hometown, about two miles from my residence. Some details and names have been changed to protect the innocent. The guilty are not compelled to read beyond this point.

I was sitting next to the jukebox, on the stool in the corner, having a panoramic view of the front room and the entrance. I saw him first as he walked in the door (and I want this detail recorded in the history of the place), a tall balding man over sixty with a long face, grey hair neatly combed back, long over the collar of his expensive patterned silk shirt. Casually and lightly dressed for an evening in these parts, he moved like a successful, self-assured man. He was with a shorter man over fifty, dressed a little more formally, but expensively, and still atypically for our region. They took a table opposite the bar, with the taller man facing us.

"Look", I said to Mike, sitting next to me, " That's Bernie Schwartz over there"
"Of the Schwartz LePiere duo?", he asked.
"LaPiere, not Le Piere," I said, "The same ones. In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!"
Mike turned to his right and glanced at the man.
"Sure looks like him", he said, "They're obviously from LA", he added.
Indeed. We were miles and miles from LA, but those two guys looked, dressed and behaved like citizens of that metropolis of the future, we could tell. The price tag on their casual elegance treads betrayed them. Further confirmation of Bernie's identity.

Mike turned to Gary and asked him, but Gary, although a musician himself, is not into pop music history and couldn't confirm or deny. Mike then motioned to Linda, who's a little older than Gary, and should remember the famous duo. But Linda, a reader more than a listener, would sooner recognize James Michener or Sidney Sheldon, than Eddie Cochran, should one of them walk in, though those three all happen to be dead.

"Norman LaPiere retired or died a few years ago, didn't he?!", asked Mike, adding that he never liked them much as they had appropriated the black musical vernacular. Mike, a former punk rock pioneer, won't listen to anything today that didn't first appear on a 78RPM record.

I quietly sang the first line of their biggest hit I've got a well full of feeling. Bernie, the taller of the two, sang baritone, while Norman sang high tenor. "Your eyes are open wide, as I hug you with my arms", I sang with my best baritone voice. Mike repeated the line. We couldn't remember the subsequent lines, and neither could Gary or Linda.

We called over Bob the manager. "Is there a problem with the service?", he asked.

There is always a problem with the service, even newspaper reviews of the place have noted it, but we, regulars, have come to tolerate the situation resignedly.

We related the news to Bob, who's younger than both of us, but who manages the jukebox and is well versed in the history of the most important music genre. He has no Schwartz LaPiere records on the jukebox, and nothing from those good old days except two disks by the Swinging Blue Jeans and one by one hit wonder Marcie Blaine titled (I wanna be) Bobby's Girl, that no one ever plays, and we figure it is there as Bob's private joke to himself.

"Bob", I said, taking advantage of the occasion, "Every dive in the world has on the walls autographed pictures of celebrities who have visited it. A pizza joint in Italy, I once walked in, had a photo of Marino Marini. You have nothing but old beer posters, and on the shelves under the ceiling wooden beer cases and dusty bottles that'll tumble down on our heads the minute an earthquake hits!"

"Earthquake? What earthquake?", demanded Bob, "We don't get earthquakes in this state!"

I thought of timidly suggesting "Tsunamis?", just to continue the dialogue, but decided to stay on his good side.

Bob announced he'd go to his office upstairs and look up Bernie Schwartz' visage on the Internet. Five minutes later he came back with a small colour printout of a promotional photograph of the duo, taken perhaps four or five years ago, and declared that it wasn't Bernie Schwartz sitting over there. We examined the photo. It was a typical professional studio job, retouched, enhanced, faces made tanned, unwrinkled, eyes made smaller, for some odd reason, hairlines advanced forward, or else the two were wearing toupees, an altogether unreliable indicator.

"The Rug Brothers", commented Mike seeing the hairlines in the photograph.

Having swallowed my usual dose of the weekend medication, I decided to continue the cure, ordered my third pint and stayed to see what would develop, but nothing interesting ever did, as none of us felt young enough to get up, approach the table, disrupt his meal, and demand an autograph. The two men were sitting and drinking, the shorter man appeared to us like the taller one's manager, or accountant, or a person at his service. The mystery remained unsolved.

After returning home I looked up Bernie Schwartz on the Internet myself. He has a website, but then who doesn't, that lists his performance schedule. He was supposed to appear at a Las Vegas hotel that weekend, but lo and behold, the hotel cancelled the appearance! More proof! I also examined photos of the duo going back 45 years. Only his nose didn't quite match, but I decided it an insignificant detail.

The following afternoon, I think it was Sunday, I went back to the pub at the usual time of 4:35 in the afternoon daylight savings time. On the way I thought of buying a black marker pen, but the office supplies store was closed. I walked in, headed straight for what my friend M. calls the powder room, located in the back, to make sufficient space for the incoming 32 ounces of the nourishing liquid. When I returned to the bar, Bob was leaning against it.

I said, "Bob, there is a graffitti in the john saying 'Bernie Schwartz was here'"
"No, really?", he asked earnestly.

"No, there isn't", I answered, "but only because I forgot to bring my marker."

Bob said, "After you left last night, Dennis (the weekend bartender there, who works as a construction worker during the day, shaves his head, and sports earrings in both ears), gave Marla (one of the waitresses, who studies to be a computer programmer) five dollars to walk up to the table with the printout and ask the guy if he was Bernie. She went, showed the man the picture, which by then had been signed by Mike 'Bernie Schwartz', and asked, 'Is this you? He answered 'no', and told her that he's asked this question all the time. Which still doesn't mean he wasn't Bernie."

"Could be playing hookie from Vegas", I observed.

"And he was with Harold Scherer, did you see?!", chimed in the other, heavy drinking Mike, who was sitting on a stool nearby. Harold Scherer was of course the famous Hollywood actor who once played with Julia Roberts in The Heart of Gold. Bernie's companion did look like Scherer with eyeglasses on, was the right age, had Scherer's physique and hair, but he lacked Scherer's New Age Eastern mysticism aura about him, so he wasn't Harold.

I walked over to the jukebox to check what aural monstrosity was offending our ears, a tuneless, beatless song, no one could possibly dance to. The performer's name listed told me nothing. It wasn't Schwartz LaPiere, or even the Swinging Blue Jeans, that's for sure!

I sat down on the corner stool, ordered a pint of ale, and opened an acclaimed book of fiction by Argentinian writer Cesar Aira titled How I became a nun.

More than

Quote of the day from an article by Carl Bernstein in the London TIMES:

"I mean, you love a friend more than you love a lover"

-- Webster Hubbell

Nice guy

Some of our best philosophical discussion take place inside a gym locker room. You could say we're just carrying a tradition begun in Greece 2,700 years ago.

"How is work? Easy?", asked my Taiwanese friend Jin, as I was getting out of the shower and he was preparing to go in.

"Yeah, easy, real easy", I replied. Which was true.

"And life?"

"Hard!", I said, "When work is easy, life gets hard for some crazy reason. And you?"

"Hard work and life OK", he replied.

"Work should be hard, and life easy", I said without putting much thought into it.

I knew his job was hard, I used to do the same thing myself before moving to another floor in the building. For a year or so a while ago, Jin took a job with another company to do similar work, but it was even more stressful there, and he came back. And when my own job was hard and stressful, life wasn't easy either, the tension of work spilled right into life.

Someone's cellphone started buzzing inside some locker, ringing a proverbial bell in my own head.

"Whenever I'm sitting on a throne and a cellphone rings in the next stall, I flush as soon as the neighbour receives the call", I said.

"Nice guy!", said Greg, who was just arriving for his daily dose of sweat and muscle strain.

Another cellphone joined the cacaphony in a locker on the other side of the room.

One of the company's many vice-presidents came out running from a shower stall to get it, water dripping all over, evidently recognizing the ring as his own, even though it sounded like a generic vanilla flavour ring. It turned out it wasn't his phone after all, and the vice-president returned to the shower.

"Can you believe it's June already?", asked Greg, "What happened to those five months?"

I didn't have an answer for him. What had happened to me was no picnic, but I couldn't talk about it now. What happened to these two guys in the past five months, I thought? Probably nothing as dramatic as my experiences, but what did I know. Our conversations, such as this one, ever consisted of quips and witticisms, shallow and brief everyday exchanges. Years ago, when we all worked together, we went out a few times to play pool, drink beer, and talk, but that too did not last long. In the past year, I've had a few personal conversations with Greg over lunch, during which he'd remain guarded as always, and I'd have to fudge and evade to protect common acquaintances' confidences.

A woman friend of mine told me late last year that Greg checked himself into a mental health facility. She had learned about it from her manager, a woman, who had been closer to Greg than any of us. I was surprised to hear it, having always considered him a tower of strength, with his midwestern calm demeanor like that of midwesteners Bob Dylan and Johnny Carson. I couldn't have asked him about it and he hadn't said anything to me. I knew he had women problems, I guess he's one of those 'nice guys' that American women love to abuse a little and then "dump", to use a common female expression, preferring instead men who abuse them just a little (all of this according to press and personal reports.)

"When you're younger than thirty," Greg continued, "Time passes slowly, and you keep thinking 'when will I be thirty'. Then when you're over thirty, time rushes by, and you keep thinking..."

I interrupted, finishing his sentence, "You keep thinking, when will I be thirty again?!"