The Big Questions

Where did I come from

Where am I going

Why am I blah, blah, blah?

Is there meaning to life,

Where were we before we were borne?

How long should I wait for someone who is late?

Is there a God in heaven?

Is heaven on earth or in my mind?

Aren’t there too many styles of shoes?

Why do we dream and

What do they mean and

Do I talk in my sleep?

What is mucous?

Why would a bird walk anywhere?

Quick, would you rather be rich or invisible?

Is the beginning of the end

The end of the beginning

Or just the last episode of the first season?

Sleeping is a little death

And if death is eternal sleep

Why do I wake up on the floor?

What is the soul and does

It plug a hole or is it just a way

To make excuses for overeating?

How does metabolism engage

With the endocrine system

to create anxiety and low self esteem?

What’s the difference between right and wrong

And should we be punished for

Lying about sex?

Ask the universe a question.

Why does The universe always answer,

"Shut up. How should I know?”

In a past life, in a different incarnation,

In another body, haven't we all been

Civil servants who are allergic to shellfish?

Angels, ghosts, specters

Immortal essence, eternal spirit, 

And Baboons. Always, baboons.

Where did you come from

Where are you going

Why are you blah, blah, blah?

Last Day at the Asylum

Scene: The wide porch of an expensive and luxurious Mental Hospital. It is an early twentieth century estate, perfectly maintained and landscaped. There are wicker chairs, tables, and baskets of hanging plants. In the distance several people sit on the lush green lawn engaged in an al fresco therapy session. There is distant laughter and several psych techs dressed in white monitor the patients from a discreet distance. A man throws a Frisbee to his attendant who catches it and throws it back. It is a pastoral scene.

An attractive woman in a pale yellow dress sits in a comfortable chair on the porch. There is a bowl of fruit on the table at her elbow. She carefully chooses a banana from the bowl, peels it, takes a delicate bite and turns a page in the magazine that lies on her lap.

The door swings open and a handsome man carrying a suitcase steps out. He is wearing a gray suit, white shirt with a flowered tie and a fedora.  He puts down the suitcase, tips his hat back on his head, stretches his arms and breaths deeply.

He speaks without turning around.

Man: Well, finally. I’m going home. I’m free and I’m out of here. After six months it is an enormous relief to be cleared; I am recovered, mentally fit and ready to assume my place in the world. I’ve missed the world. I’m really looking forward to working, to get back to my law firm and take charge again. I miss the challenges and rewards that come from a job well done. And, I must say, I am going to miss you, too, my dear. I’ve had my eye on you since you first arrived, you know. You never appeared dysfunctional at all; just the opposite. And, if you don’t mind, I think you are incredibly attractive. Beautiful. (The woman smiles, perks up, crosses her legs. Her summer dress rides up just above her knees.) I can’t tell you how great it is to be released from here, to be told that I am sane, functional and healthy. No more hallucinations, depressions or delusions. No violent outbursts or hysteria. Now that I am well, I hope I’m not being forward when I say that I’d like to see you, when you leave, when you go home, if that’s OK?  I am divorced, have significant funds, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way in my life. I am terribly attracted to you. In fact you have occupied my thoughts exclusively for the past several months. You are one of the reasons that I've made such breakthroughs, that I’m prepared to leave and that I am in good health. I don’t think I could have done it without your help and I hope we can meet when you are free and we can get to know each other better. I feel we have a future. Please say “Yes”.

Woman: Thank you. I’m flattered. I’ve been watching you, too, and I would very much like to see you when we get back to the city. So, yes, I feel the same. Very much so.

The man turns around, surprised and shocked.

Man: I wasn’t talking to you; I was talking to your banana.

Adventures in Adultery

Clay, a philanderer from San Francisco, writes:

My affairs became more about eating and driving than sex. Don’t get me wrong; the sex always starts out terrific and, probably because it’s illicit, can continue to be terrific for years. I spent a lot of time on the road, though, driving, always in a hurry. Weaving in an out of traffic I’d ask myself, “Is this really worth it? This driving and lying and worrying? The danger?” The answer was obvious.

To get to Maria’s I’d cross at least one bridge, merge onto a jammed freeway, get off twenty minutes later at an off-ramp that took me through a bad neighborhood, and then I’d pull up to her crappy little bungalow. Her street was anonymous but a few blocks away there was the sound of gunfire and breaking glass. I lived in the suburbs for Christ’s sake, I had a nice house, two new cars and a swimming pool, but three days a week I’d thread my way through unfamiliar streets, avoiding eye contact with pedestrians, worried about carjackings and stray bullets, so that I could be with Maria for two hours. Always two hours. Afterward, I’d retrace the same hazardous route home. I didn’t have the time to stop off for a drink so I kept a bottle of brandy in the glove box and I’d sip from it when I was safely back on the freeway.  Lots of times, when I pulled into my driveway, I was holding my breath. I was home, exhausted, undamaged, and slightly drunk, ready to face my wife. A component of the infidelity was the lie that I had to have a few drinks with coworkers and that’s why I was a little late. The brandy was a necessary, welcome part of the scheme.

 But the eating. Always eating. Goddamn, if you’re going to cheat get ready to eat an extra five or six meals a week. I weighed 240 pounds by the time everything came apart.

Maria and I always ate lunch at the same place. The Hunan Garden was a Chinese restaurant with 25 tables and a frothy, glittering pink ceiling. Our waitress, slim, shy and pretty, spoke very little English and welcomed us with a big smile, probably because I tipped well. Mr. Impressive. I was fat and exhausted, but boy, could I overtip. Maria always ordered Lemon Chicken. The place had a huge menu, lots of exotic items, but she only ate Lemon Chicken. I should have paid attention to that. Fifty items, plenty of variety, but she ordered the Lemon Chicken every time, no variation whatsoever.

After Maria and I had been seeing each other for a year we developed a routine.  Morning breaks in the company cafeteria, lunch at the Hunan Garden and two hours at her house on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Infidelity for morons.

One Friday night my wife, Claire, had made dinner arrangements for us. We were going to join two other couples at a new restaurant in Kentwood. I’d had a very filling lunch of Walnut Shrimp; the lovely waitress brought an extra large helping because I left extra large tips. Maria ordered her Lemon Chicken. After lunch, stuffed and sleepy, I drove the perilous roads to Maria’s, dodging traffic and knots of jaywalkers; I was tense and worried that Maria would want to talk about our future. I was calculating how long it would take to get home in time to pick up my wife for dinner.

I knocked a little too hard and Maria opened the door. She wore a lavender negligee and was beautiful, at that moment, standing in the doorway, holding a cigarette in her long fingers and smiling. The drive, lunch, the worry and the lies all faded. We kissed for a few minutes and for the time it took to get to the bedroom my life was perfect and I was too overcome to think about consequences or risks. Afterward, we caught our breath and Maria murmured about love and the future. I knew there was no future, but she had constructed a story about my divorce and our marriage and a rented house and probably a dog. I agreed, nodded, and stole glances at the clock.

I was preoccupied with the dinner engagement and I told Maria that I needed to leave, sorry, but I had to meet a real estate appraiser to get a price on my house for possible sale. I knew each lie brought us closer to the time when everything would reach its inevitable rotten end.

We dressed. I kissed her long, lovingly, and I meant it, and then I broke traffic laws on the way home, sated from sex and full from lunch.

At 6:30, Claire was ready and waiting. I said I was sorry but I couldn’t get away from work earlier, I changed my shirt and drove, more driving, to Kentwood. The restaurant was a new Dim Sum place right on the water with a deck and beautiful views of the bay. Our friends waved and we all shook hands and pretended that our lives were going well. I belched some Walnut Shrimp, we ordered drinks and the waitress came to take our dinner orders.”

“Hello, good to see you. You want Walnut Shrimp? Want Lemon Chicken?”

It was the girl from the Hunan Garden. I tried to hide my shock.

She said, “I work here, too. Another job.”

“Pardon?”

“Hunan Garden and here.”

I shrugged.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

She tried to help. She spoke slowly.

“Lemon chicken. You already eat. Walnut Shrimp.”

“I’m sorry, I, I don’t know what you mean. We’re here for dinner.”

She looked distressed, peeked at Claire, who raised an eyebrow and asked, “Does she know you?”

“No I’ve never seen her before. I’ve never been here. She’s confused. Or drunk.”

It had grown quiet at our table. I told the waitress, “Sorry, you are mistaken. I’ll have the Number 12 Dim Sum Dinner, please.”

Her face went slack and I thought she was going to cry. She took the rest of the orders and her hand shook as she jotted symbols on her pad, flicking glances at me. Claire was suspicious and our friends looked away. The waitress left our table; she was worried and confused. The expression on her face was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen and convinced me that, pretty soon, everything was going to hell; it was my fault and everyone would suffer. I even hurt waitresses.

Hell and The Roots of Atheism

     I learned about hell as a kid. It was a word that parents used when they spilled a drink; it was a modifier they slipped into conversation. It was a benign word that didn’t hold a lot of menace.

     “He had one Hell of a hangover.”

     “I’m going to give him Hell when he gets home.”

     “Hell’s bells, Joe, what the Hell is wrong with you?”

     No threat.

     Then I met the nuns. The Sisters. Handmaidens of Our Lord.

     And, man, did they understand Hell. Plus, they practiced all day; suffering, celibate, lonely, angry, no skin products, wearing uncomfortable clothing, waiting until some dopey little kid spoke out of turn, laughed out of turn, thought, moved, picked his nose out of turn. Then they would wail on him and rehearse for their next life. They communicated the agony of the underworld to us. Some of those women were clever, too; they had creative minds bubbling under the wimple.

     I couldn’t get my head around the idea of God, the Trinity, The Holy Spirit, which was either a ghost or a conscious light or something else that was impossible to understand. If we didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t understand the concept of The Holy Spirit, we were condemned to Hell.  Automatic. It was in the Bible.

     I was seven for Christ’s sake. Biblical and Christian and religious scholars have been struggling to figure out this crap for ages, and I was expected to get it all, without question, by the time I was seven.

     The punishment for not getting it? Hell.

     Deep, dark and hot. Not just hot. Hot was sunburn and the nuns tried convince me that neverending sunburn times 1,000 was considered a treat, a pleasure, in hell. How about skinning me alive, over and over for, oh fuck, Eternity? How would you like that? And remember having a splinter? Well, lost boy, can you conceive of splinters the size of a pencil wedged under every square inch of your skin, infected, pus-filled, tormenting and they will be there forever? Eternity.

Barbecued alive. Snakes. Maniac demons.

     Bad smells. They kept talking about bad smells. I didn’t know sulphur or chemical waste but I knew the bathroom, the toilet. I think that convinced me, the fear of everlasting stink. I’d better do what I could to avoid perdition because entering the boys bathroom during a stomach flu epidemic, that smell, magnified by a million, tangible and surrounding me, everywhere, for ever, was really something that I could sense, literally. I imagined the horror of thick, cloying bathroom smells and gagged. For Eternity.

      Which, like the Holy Spirit, was pretty goddamned hard to grasp. I could barely tell time. I had to look at my feet to figure left from right. So I had to have an absolute grasp of Eternity, Infinity, and advanced Physics in order to avoid everlasting, unending bad assed torment.

     Most of what frightens people is bullshit. What makes them anxious, disturbs their peace, is generally something they’ve learned to be afraid of. None, or little, of it is real. I learned to be afraid of the same stuff that frightened my family. When I was a kid I worried about foul balls at baseball games, rattlesnakes, getting locked in a refrigerator and suffocating, swallowing glass or nails, being torn apart by animals, other people, burning up, losing a body part, being dragged behind a bus. Looking back over my life I’ve only been hit by one foul ball; I have not experienced the rest of the stuff on the list. Most of what I learned in school and at home was not true. I get that now. It was made up in order to keep me in line, make me obey, or to scare me into submission. They were stories and examples and tortures that were the result of generations of unexamined fear.

     I had a hard time believing. I think everyone did, but we were taught Faith. That is, I was encouraged to believe things I knew weren’t true. The scary tales of hell, rattlesnakes and foul balls were made up by frightened people and repeated to convince kids to stay out of the way, obey, and do what we were told and not to ask questions.

     I don’t know where all the legends and anecdotes and warnings originated, but the combined fertile imaginations of the nuns and the dire warnings from parents kept me on edge.

     Until I was around eleven.

     I’d spent four or five years looking over my shoulder, watching my language around adults, trying not to steal, hardly every touching myself in the bathtub and then one day it all became clear.

     When I was eleven years old I was in the sixth grade at St. Anselm’s school. I sat in the back of the class at the end of the row, and, for a few weeks, my desk was turned around so that the rest of the student’s couldn’t see me. I suppose I was being punished, again, for not maintaining the code of fear and silence.

     The nun, Sister Mary Timothy, a tall woman with a well-trimmed mustache, was blathering on about God, The Trinity, or some other concept that was losing its grip.

I heard a car accelerating, fast, loud, and I looked out the window. Some guy with greasy hair was skidding in a beat up car with a broken windshield around the corner just outside of the school playground. He bumped up on the curb and a hubcap bounced off of the tire, rolled along the sidewalk, wobbled into the schoolyard and came to rest. As the driver was speeding away, another car, a cop car, black and white with lights flashing, slid around the corner and followed at increasing speed.

     Sister Timothy continued her lecture, a few of the kids glanced up, momentarily distracted from her tales of horror and misery.

     But I was changed forever. I’d just had a clear demonstration of the difference between fantasy and reality.

     Sister Tim, Hell, someone’s concept of obedience and fear, were all fantasy. All bullshit.

But a guy in a car, probably stolen, trying to out run a cop through a residential neighborhood, losing a hubcap and disappearing up the road and into my imagination. Absolutely true. Observable and measurable.

     At recess I got out of class before anyone else, ran through the schoolyard and picked up the hubcap. It was about eight inches across, dented, and the chrome was scratched. I put it in my book bag and took it home. Later, when I started smoking, I used is as an ashtray. It’s gone now, but it sat in the middle of my coffee table for years, full of cigarette butts, matches and the unsmoked ends of joints.

     It was a small monument to truth.

Honoring My Inner Sociopath

     Who doesn’t like getting something for nothing? I once was watching a high stakes pool game and a $100 dollar bill had dropped to the floor. I stood on it for over an hour, never moving, pretending to be engrossed in the game. People had to walk around me. I made sure I was the last one to leave the room and when I picked up the bill and put it in my pocket I felt the thrill of victory.

     My best friend downloads popular TV shows to his computer. He uses a torrent client program and has been doing this for years, enjoying, for free, premium shows like The Walking Dead and Homeland. He doesn’t pay for cable, won’t go to the video store or buy DVD’s. He likes getting things for free. As his friend Rol says, “There’s a little bit of the bandit in all of us.”

     He writes:

     Big horror first thing this morning. I opened up my email at 6 a.m. and there was a message from my Internet Service Provider saying that they had received a letter from Viacom, The Media Giant, indicating that I’d been illegally downloading episodes of South Park and there was a possible $250,000 fine and imprisonment for said illegal downloading.

     I was trembling with fear and excitement. The fear was because of a possible life destroying fine and imprisonment. I’ve faced those threats before, especially when I was drinking and behaving badly, thoughtlessly, psychopathically, but, jeezus, I’m not ready to lose everything I have because of a few silly South Park episodes. That would be lame and embarrassing. So, serious fear.

     The excitement came from the conviction that I now had to go into super compound hyper-drive and perjure myself about my involvement in order to prove my innocence. There was the possibility of winning, of beating the system. There was adrenalin waiting to be pumped.

     Getting caught is bad. Getting away with it is good. That’s been one of my principal beliefs for decades. You’d think sobriety and age and experience and a recently discovered vague sense of morality would eliminate my desire to break the law, but the craving remains. The dread of being caught is offset by the thrill of escape.

     From a Psychological Survey:

     Question: Would you break the law if you knew you wouldn’t get caught?

     Answer: Oh hell yes. Absolutely. Murder, theft, arson, assault, no problem, I’d do it all without a second thought. Anyone would. Wouldn’t they?

     I can make all of the justifications for any crime, including illegal downloading. We have to fight The Man, the entertainment industry and their shitty programming, their lowest common denominator approach, their absurd profits, the bad writing, their horrible fashions, haircuts and plastic surgery. I believe that the airwaves should be free, brothers and sisters, and we the people should not be made to feel like criminals for doing something that really doesn’t hurt anyone. Blah blah blah. South Park, though. Wow. Yeah, I think it is brilliant and deserves a Nobel Prize, but it’s still just an American TV show that is full of bathroom humor and profanity. That’s what I laugh at the most: little kids swearing, getting into disgusting situations, farting. Sorry, I guess there’s a 9-year-old boy pulling levers in my command center who still finds that stuff funny. I don’t have to defend my taste. It’s broad and ranges from the compound absurdity of Thomas Pynchon to bathroom humor that includes filth and swearing and unsubtle, obvious jokes. I don’t care. I will never pass up the opportunity for a cheap laugh and South Park has offered that for almost 20 years.

     So, I steal the episodes. I could say that it’s a compliment to the creators, but the creators have long ago sold their rights to Viacom, The Media Giant. I honor the innovators and despise the owners. But the owners, according to their latest emailed intimidation, have legal rights. I can’t play stupid. I was consciously breaking the law.

     One of my biggest fears is to be overwhelmed by a giant corporation, to be victimized by a company of immoral, greedy capitalists who have the resources to crush me, to destroy my life, to take everything, to torture, kill, maim, incarcerate. I’m an American and I know I’m not alone. This is a national shared dread.

     I’ve recently had terrifying encounters with Verizon and Bank of America. There were overcharges, mistakes, incompetence and outright deception. I was crumbling in the path of a corporate juggernaut, but with a calm demeanor, clear thinking, and a sizable dose of deceit and drama, I prevailed. (Keep cool. Use the silence.)

     Of course, I had a part in each of those events; I’d made my own mistakes, lied, tried to get more than I was due, but, honestly, I was only trying to survive. Right? Survival? Instinctual Defense Mechanisms? Saving My Own Life? In the end the balances were zeroed out, overcharges were eliminated, penalties lifted, threats were recalled and I triumphed. It felt great. The relief and potency lasted for days after each incident. I was high. I was grateful. I was safe. I was dominant. I might be immortal.

     So why would I go right back into the burning building and aggravate Viacom, TMG, one of the biggest, most powerful and lawyered-up conglomerates on earth?

     The thrill. My friend, Dr. A, calls it “Novelty Seeking Behavior”.  I thought that was a little demeaning at first, but as I consider it, I think she’s right. I’m not doing anything momentous or profitable; robbing a bank, killing a politician, or selling drugs. I’m seeking novelty, cheap kicks. And free shit.

     The excitement of talking my way out of something is hugely stimulating. I wish there was a way to feel the buzz of getting away with murder without actually committing murder. But, alas.

     How did I deal with the Viacom situation? The way I always do. Quick, aggressive, efficient.

     I phoned the owner of my local Internet agency, the guy who had forwarded the emailed threat to me at 5 a.m. this morning with a request to call him as soon as possible to avoid litigation.

“ Hello, ISP? This is Joe’s best friend. You asked me to call about the email from Viacom?”

“Yeah, thanks, Joe’s best friend. Sorry, but this happens about 10 times a month and I have to follow up. It looks like your computer was traced to some illegal downloading of 14 South Park episodes. I have to tell you that this is pretty serious. So far, I don’t think you are in heavy trouble, but it has to stop immediately.” He was polite, friendly and a little defensive. Perfect.

     “Yeah, I found out what the trouble was. Man, I am so sorry that this happened. I’ve been away, taking care of my poor mother, being a good son, struggling, out of town, in another state, and my niece and her kid have been housesitting for me. It must be him. The kid. He’s 15 and a little slow. I had a long talk with him this morning and, trust me, he will never do anything like this again. I put the fear of God in him. He’s pretty scared. He threw up while I was yelling at him. I made him wipe it up with his shirt. Yeah, I don’t think he’ll be giving us any more trouble.”

     “Well, OK, then. Sorry you had to go through this. Whenever I call someone about one of these notifications, ninety percent of the time it’s a teenager.”

     You can imagine how I felt about that.

More About God

     Many years ago my friend KO caught venereal disease from a woman he met in the Philippines while he was working as a merchant seaman. He then married her. He sent part of his pay to her every month, had his VD treated and wrote romantic letters. Her rare responses always included a clause that reminded him of his spousal financial duties. He knew she was working as a prostitute, but he kept up the charade for two years before he sobered up long enough to realize he was acting like a schmuck and stopped writing and sending money.

     We were sitting in Jean’s Bit o’ Bohemian one night while he was between ships. He had lots of money and was buying the drinks, talking loudly. He was almost at the point where he would soon step outside, climb into an empty parked car and sleep comfortably until the owner appeared, outraged, and dragged poor KO into the street and drove away, leaving my friend to sleep it off in a doorway.

     KO was drunk and philosophical.

     “You know why there is no God?”

     “Why?”

     “Venereal disease and tooth decay.”

     “?”

     “Think about it. All the stupid Christians say that God is a benign father figure, a loving guy who watches after his flock. Bullshit. I understand punishment for crimes and bad behavior, in fact I agree with that, but sex is terrific fun, full of delight and drama and danger; why would an all-powerful being inflict such a torment on his children? ‘I grant you the great gift of erotic pleasure, but then I’m going to plant the random Easter egg of disease somewhere in that enchanted garden.’  No supreme being, if it truly existed, would do that. It’s completely unnecessary. There are enough roadblocks to a satisfying sex life without adding disgusting, embarrassing and hard-to-cure infections. He’s supposed to be smart. That’s not smart; it’s just mean.”

     “Why tooth decay?”

     “Well, shit, it’s sort of similar. We eat, we have to eat, we enjoy eating, and then, BLAM, a germ that eats its way through the gum, into the tooth, into the nerve system and causes misery, pain and disfigurement. Thanks God. Thanks a lot.”

     “How about flossing and brushing?”

     “Horse crap. My brother is from the exact same gene pool; same parents and grandparents, ate the same food, used the same toothpaste and went to the same frigging sadistic dentist and he has never, never had a cavity. Me? Nothing but holes and fillings and root canals and crowns. I’ll have full dentures by the time I’m thirty. God. A lie, a joke. Dimbulbs who say God exists because I can’t prove he doesn’t exist are dead wrong. Venereal disease and tooth decay. Proof that God does not exist.”

     Since January first, when I returned home from Paris, maintenance and repairs have taken all of my attention. Home, car, teeth.  I’ve gotten used to living indoors, and am grateful to be able to do so, but the heating in the house was unstable and there were areas that were freezing cold and the temperatures were an unseasonable minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 F). So far this month, the heating system has required five visits from a heating specialist and I think (I think) it’s working. Now all I have to sweat is the goddamn propane bill, which can run upwards of $300 a month in winter. With all the screwups, frigid weather, loose wires and component failures, I expect the bill to be much more than that. I hope I’m wrong. I always hope I’m wrong.

     Icy driveways are a drag and a danger but, fortunately, I’ve never had a problem driving in the snow. A few close calls, but nothing damaged. A couple weeks ago, when it was minus fifteen degrees (-15 F) and hard-frozen, I entered my driveway, cautiously, slow, steering gently, and softly slid into the rear bumper of S’s car. Tap. Nearly inaudible. It didn’t even rock the car. Four hundred dollars for her bumper, a plastic affair that had frozen and cracked. It would never have been a problem in the summer, according to the friendly auto-body people. My vehicle lost a headlight, a lens, and a fender. One thousand four hundred and change. I’ve never used my auto insurance. Never. Now I imagine my premium will increase because I expect them to do the job I pay them for and they have the option of raising my rates. Again, I hope I’m wrong.

     Three visits so far for a replacement of a broken tooth. One of the last good teeth; unfilled, root-canal-less, free of decay. It cracked down the middle and now I’ve been to the dentist three times and it looks like another two weeks of appointments before I’m able to chew painlessly. And, once more, I hope I’m wrong, really mistaken, incorrect, way wide of the mark and off the beam, but dentistry is expensive, no matter how you slice it, cut it or drill it.

     So, when I run into friends and they ask if I’m glad to be back and do I miss Paris? I hesitate before answering. I have to remember that I’m living in a nice house in a good place, I have a decent car, though dented, and the majority of my teeth are holding up with the help of Dr. T. So, when they ask if I’m happy to be home, they seem confused by my reasoned answer.

      “Well, thank God I don’t have venereal disease.” 

Smile, Goddamnit.

     

     Another trip to the Dentist today. Dentist appointments are coming up too often. What the hell?

I broke a tooth eating a salad the other night and have to get it repaired, replaced or removed. Nothing like those options to limit my desire to smile pleasantly at everyone I meet.

     People keep bitching that I don’t smile enough. Screw them. What is that all about? What’s the big deal about smiling? I watch people, a lot, and very few are actually in a constant state of “smile”. When I run into an acquaintance and the first thing he says is “Smile!” it makes me want to throw a punch. It’s like saying, “Wow, you look tired.” Yep, that’ll help to get a friendly conversation started.

I saw a photo of myself taken 13 years ago. Nice big white smile, black hair, tanned and relatively unlined.

     Well, Smilers, things change. The hair is thinning and graying. I still have some, but graying nonetheless. I’ve just returned from three great months in dark, crowded Paris, France, and the tan has faded to a fine urban pallor. I was beginning to blend in. The only tans in Paris are the fake ones that are sprayed or smeared on. The colors range from Cirrhosis Ocher, Tangerine, up to and including Tomato Soup. Match that with eggplant-hued hair dyed in the kitchen sink and you’ve got a really colorful and horrifying vegetable sub-species of misguided insecurity.

     The smile? Hah. I’m on the way to the dentist to discuss that issue. I floss, brush, have regular cleanings but the teeth are no longer white. They look natural, but not the white-white that can only be obtained through prescriptions or expensive treatments. They’re like abs. Hard abs and snow-white teeth are the first steps to a career as a celebrity look-alike, a personal trainer or a German porn star. Why would I spend a lot of dough on whitening a tooth that may not even be present in six months?

     And that’s the issue. I’m missing a couple of teeth in the back so my smile, which I used to use as a manipulative or threatening component of my confused progress through a difficult and sometimes dangerous day, is disappearing, Cheshire-cat-like, one tooth at a time. Today, I’m being fitted for a temporary replacement so that I can chew, which would be a luxury, and also so that I can, perhaps, begin to smile again.

     But I don’t feel like smiling. Not that I can’t or don’t want to. I’m not depressed or angry. I smile when I’m happy. I’m happy sometimes, but mostly I’m striving for neutrality, contentment. Benignity. And the more dentistry I am subject to, the less benign I feel. I have a great dentist, Dr. T, he has a clean office, friendly staff, but hell, it’s not a place to go for good news. Even my primary physician, Dr. L, the guy who will, eventually, give me the bad, bad news, occasionally he says, “You’re looking good. All the numbers are in the healthy range. Keep up the good work.” Wow. What a high. I usually head right for the grocery store and buy a frozen pizza and a gallon of ice cream. That’s one of the reasons I don’t try to achieve acute happiness or expect joy to be a constant. I just can’t manage it very well. Fear of failure has always been a threat, but success has often led to hedonistic behaviors far beyond the norm, way out on the edge of the bell-shaped curve of indolence; events and activities and indulgences that can never be reported to anyone.

     Good news at the Dentist’s? Nope. Never. The most I get is, “That one will probably last another year or so. We can wait.”

     Or, “As I look at these x-rays, I see that you have two options. Pain and discomfort and disfigurement, or extremely expensive treatments that will take all of your disposable income and may or may not be successful. No more trips to Paris, no more computer upgrades, new clothing or movies. Ever. So, what do you want to do?”

     The Dentist Office. Where to go when you really need bad news.

I’m a realist. Hair is a variable; the color will continue to move away from the darker range on the spectrum, into an indeterminate dullness and the texture will become more feathery; some days it looks ok and on others it is thin, wiry, and sparse. My scalp will become available for public viewing. Skin will sag, crease and eventually flake off, exposing bone and organs. I look all right in certain light, but not for long.

     Smile! Show us your teeth! Say Cheese!

     Nope. For now, I’m satisfied with a moderate, tight-lipped grin that doesn’t stray too close to joy. That is where danger lies.

     But there is really nothing like a big, fat, fake, toothy smile when someone I would rather avoid appears.

     “Hey, how the hell are you. Great, really great to see you. Oh, shit, we absolutely have to get together for lunch or coffee but I need to be somewhere right now. Man, I am gonna be late for my dentist appointment. Good to see you. You look tired, though.”