THE SWINGER VOTE

If you make a sharp left on Mt. Zoar Street about thirty feet west of the Rite-Aid and continue driving for about a half an hour toward Sayre you reach one of the oddest places in all of rural America. What appears on the surface as a typical Republican redoubt of disheveled virtue, anti-Euclidian hand-wringing and genteel homophobia is in fact a hotbed of revolutionary foment and closeted subversive intrigue.

I'm talking of course about Grande Trace, New York, home of the Secret Sons of Albion.

The Secret Sons as anyone who has even glanced at a newspaper in the past six months can tell you are an ad hoc cabal of middle-aged men who intend by glint of witchcraft and homeopathic magic of deposing and upturning what they call the "smart-ass urban elites."

I love these guys with their over-sized baseball caps, decrepit RV's and their fanatic devotion to forgotten poets and political philosophers. They meet twice a month in the basement of Our Lady Star of the Sea and argue until their wizened throats turn brittle with all their idiotic fury. 

I stopped by a few weeks ago - my buddy Elton is a regular - to something they call a "Bagel with Hegel," and I'll tell you, these guys are hot-headed. Someone in a weathered khaki vest and a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt was screaming about transcendence and something about finitude and duty and for a few tense minutes I thought things would get violent. But when he got up from his seat and gave this tattooed Kantian a tender kiss on the lips I knew it was all a big bluff.

The Feds think these guys are a real threat but after seeing them in action I don't think there's much to worry about. Sure they have a few guns but who doesn't. If there's any real reason for concern it's their obsession with William Blake.  Dragging "the chain of life in weary lust" is a pressing issue for them and if the "lambs of joy" can't find their way to "the Tent of God" any time soon there's no telling how the Secret Sons might react.  

But on the grand scale of conspiratorial crackpots I give these guys a 6. While they still believe in God and are adamantly pro-life they also swim in the nude and smoke a lot of pot.

Man, I love this country! 

DAMN!!

The Lord Jesus Christ revealed himself to me forty-two years ago on a dim stretch of Route 17 about 14 miles east of Corning.

I haven't heard from him since.

Not that I expected to, though it would have been nice to check in with me once in a while. 

A lot of other people seem to be keeping in contact with him but not me.

I know what you're thinking but it's not for lack of trying.

I attend church, though not as often as I used to. I pray but not with much conviction. It's not that I have doubts, though I do (who doesn't?) It's more that I don't feel like taking up the Lord's time.

Besides, what should I pray for? World peace? Now that's a laugh. If the Son of God had a dog in that fight we'd all be singing Kumbaya around our lava lamps by now. Praying for my personal well being seems, well ... a bit presumptuous, don't you think? I mean, would you call up Bill Gates to ask for tech support if you forgot the password to your email account?

So it's been like that with Jesus and me. He leaves me alone and I basically return the favor.

Unless of course I cut my finger while slicing a tomato.

COME GATHER 'ROUND PEOPLE

I'm not one for customer complaint. The wise injunction of Caveat emptor typically dissuades me from pursuing any kind of consumer dissatisfaction beyond a general explosion of vulgar invective. But I recently received the Christmas catalog of The Great Learning Company - a formidable enterprise that offers college level courses on DVDs - and for the first time in my long life I was prompted to express my grievances in the form of a letter.

Dear The Great Learning Company,

I want to begin by thanking you for filling the glaring chasms in my faulty education. For almost twenty years you have guided me like Virgil through the Underworld (Great Learning: Course no. 4907) addressing the awful omissions of my costly yet inadequate college education. As an engineering major I scarcely gave a second thought to The Greek and Roman Worlds (Great Learning: Course no. 3301) nor to The Treasures of The Uffizi (Great Learning: Course no. 4009). Thanks to you, art and the humanities have opened themselves up to me and I have become an avid life long autodidact.

But even more importantly, it was through our common interest - dare I say passion - for The Great Learning Company that my wife Betty and I first recognized the profound bond between us. From the day I noticed her at Starbucks, ear-budded and riveted to Milton's Paradise (Great Learning: Course no. 2001), I knew that I had finally found a kindred spirit. Betty was a paragon of Brains and Beauty (Great Learning: Course no. 2200) who was at home in the world of ideas as she was in The Realm of the Senses (Great Learning: Course no. 4104).

Sadly, times have changed and with the times both you and Betty have dumbed down beyond recognition. Though I fully understand the difficulty in remaining profitable in this highly competitive atmosphere it is nonetheless lamentable that your once venerable company now concentrates primarily on courses like Happiness and Yoga Therapy (Great Learning: Course no. 7080), Six Secrets to Confidence and Success (Great Learning: Course no.7309) and Sophocles and Fitness: How Antigone Can Help You Control Your Cholesterol (Great Learning: Course no. 7398).

You've not only lost me as a devoted customer but in your attempt to seize the spirit of the age you have lost Betty as well. My wife no longer has the patience to pore over the terza rima of the Purgatorio (Great Learning: Course no. 2379)  nor does she find comfort in Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed (Great Learning: Course no. 1980) and when she needs to monitor her intake of carbs she consults the Huffington Post and not Human Physiology and Weight Loss (Great Learning: Course no. 8093) or Decisive Diets and The Will To Live (Great Learning: Course no. 8110).

Please remove me from you mailing list or as they say in the world of social media, 'unlike.'

Sincerely,

Clement Digby

Of course I'm nearly certain that my letter will remain unread. After all, I wrote it on a piece of paper. 

SOMETHING IS FISHY IN FRANKFORT

Life is full of uncertainty but there are two things of which I am sure:

I love Chinese food and I hate art.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not your garden variety philistine. Nor am I an indiscriminate gourmand. 

Some Chinese food is better than others and some art is more easily digested than even some TV. But the general rule still holds.

Wontons - yes! 
Syllogistic legitimacy - nyet!

  
Case in point the latest theoretical flavor of the month straight out of Berlin, Professor Friedrich Einsame.

  
Yes, we get cable here in snowy upstate New York and this, from the Arts and Ideas station (#234).

I'm on to this guy.

He's the toast of left wing Europe and the darling of the Academy. He's made a career of this kind of gibberish and the smart guys here in the U.S.A. eat it up like its liverwurst.

But hey! Even us rhubarbs know a thing or two.

Sometimes a trout is simply just a freakin' trout!

I CAN'T GET NO ...

 Some days while taking my early morning walks through Danfroth Park I marvel at how an indifferent sunlight manages to tease such elegance out of the slender grey twigs of the ancient Pignut Hickorys or how the ribbed, olive green leaves of the Black Cherries fairly glisten with so little prompting.

But most days I wallow in a foul cesspit of regret having spent the best years of my life living in the boonies.

I'm a city boy at heart and for me, after a while, every bird ends up looking like a pigeon.

I love the noise, the filth and the relentless bedlam of aggressive cosmopolitan bullying. I love the armies of people rushing in that deranged choreography of urban pandemonium, the mayhem that seems to be just one tiny incident away from a broiling panic.

You can't find that kind of energy anywhere but in big cities but what you also find in these centers of sophistication and wealth are steaming mounds of pitiless bullshit.

Case in point:

My daughter Sherrie lives on the upper west side of Manhattan, is a buyer for one of the big department stores, makes a comfortable six-figured salary, has two children, a housekeeper and a wonderfully loving husband and yet she constantly complains that she is "unhappy."

Oh to live in the First World! Where is that Jerry Lewis telethon when you really need it?

Only in these charmed and lavish communities do you find people enrolled in workshops and seminars that promise to teach the fine and elusive art of joie de vivre. Sherrie is already six weeks (and who knows how many thousands of dollars) into a class at the 92nd Street Y called (I kid you not),  Fabricating Fun: How to Fashion Rapture into Your Lives and Learn to be Fulfilled Again.

The class promises to "detonate the shingles off your chagrin," and to "overhaul your hell, turning it into an authentic, nourishing and animated carnival of happiness and glee."

Gee!

I'm often tempted on my early morning strolls to ask the trees if they are living up to their ultimate potential, if they are exhilarated and animated by the delights of being and becoming, if they are vitalized by the winds and the rains and fortified by the sun.

 Have they found bliss in the sheer thrill of living or are they stressed out because too many dogs are pissing against their bark.

I'LL JUST HAVE THE TOAST

I've heard it said that life is a carnival, (see Cahoots, The Band, 1971), but I don't buy it. Unless you're an Aussie - and in that case it's completely understandable considering your criminal provenance - implicit in the phrase "no worries" is a bold face lie.

I'll go a step further.

Consider the folks you hear who thoughtlessly repeat this imported cliché and you will notice an underlying commonality. These careless linguistic pickpockets are the very people so encased in their own private world of trivial woe that to say "no worries" comes off as a futile hope or as a sad desperate godless prayer.

In contrast to the homegrown East Coast expression "don't worry about it," "no worries" with its grammatical indolence and deliberate evasion of specificity is essentially a rebuke to the harsh realities of human existence.

I can already hear you Californians out there with your cheery chorus of "what's so bad about that?" Well I'll tell you what's wrong with it - To paraphrase George Orwell, sloppy language inevitably leads to sloppy thinking.

And so it is with the no worriers. These are the same people who begin every sentence with the word so, who punctuate every mindless utterance with regular intervals of "you know" and who use the word like for every purpose save for its proper one.

We live in The Age of Mild which I suppose is preferable to an age of instability and chaos. Our tongues, with their absence of gravitas, have yielded to a pleasant, noncommittal indecision where honesty is a punishable offense.

But hey, no worries, who cares anyway!

THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO

I love kids.

From babies to teenagers, no matter what stage they're in, I get a kick out of spending time with them.

I like the way they think and the way they see the world with fresh, unjaded eyes. I enjoy their innocent perspective, their idealism, their energy and yes, even their pathos. Young people can't help but be sincere and it's a welcome relief after spending so much of my time among middle-aged cynics and bitter retirees.

So when my brother called me a few weeks ago from California asking me to play host to his sixteen year-old daughter Katie I jumped at the chance. 

It had been about a year since I saw her last and I was anxious to experience how the world looked to someone just starting out.

They say blood is thicker than molasses but I have to admit that after only a day and a half I thought I was going to lose my mind.

You see Katie came with a friend. A close friend. A friend so close and dear that they clung together like desperate strangers on a crashing plane. Even physically, they folded themselves up into such an intimate clench that one was hard pressed to see where one ended and the other one began. The way they walked together, always in sync and always locked into an almost eerie stare. It was such a struggle to get Katie's attention that after a while I actually stopped trying.

I was relieved when they left and I have to admit I'm still shaken by the whole experience. 

But then again, I'm an old guy so what do I know?

I AINT HURTING ANYBODY

I don't swim but I like to go to the Y on Lake Street, sit with the fellas and watch some of the local ladies work out in their water aerobics class.

Some of the gals find it odd to be watched but heck, why else would the Y have installed that giant window overlooking the pool?

Now not to over-egg the custard but there's something truly magical about a bunch of wet women wiggling their fannies to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off."

I like Chinese Hot Pot dinners too.

But for some reason nobody finds that objectionable.

I guess that's why I don't like living in the boonies.

FALURE OF COMMUNICATION

My wife Betty and I were in our middle years when we both began to feel a bit crushed by the pressures of child-rearing. Our three girls were all teenagers and every night a new Greek tragedy would unfold in our living room. Kelsey was getting fat, Susie was getting thin and Daphne's eyes were always so bloodshot we were sure she had dysentery.

Needless to say our marriage, rather than being a source of consolation was a bestiary of small slights and major conflagrations.

I felt so desperate at the time that to soothe my ever increasing anxiety I began to compile a list or more precisely, a glossary of our misunderstandings.

I found it the other day and upon reading it I was amazed that Betty and I came out of the whole ordeal more or less in one piece.

I called it "What You Said And What She Heard: A Guide For The Perplexed."

Here are  a few highlights:

HOW WAS WORK? -------------------------------YOUR STUPID JOB IS BENEATH YOUR DIGNITY

WOULD YOU LIKE MORE SALAD? -------------------------------------------------------- YOU'RE FAT

REMEMBER TO PICK UP THE DRY CLEANING --------------------- YOU'RE AN IMBECILE

CAN YOU TURN DOWN THE VOLUME --- YOU THINK MY TASTE IN MUSIC STINKS

DID YOU BUY MILK --------------------------------------- YOU'RE A ROTTEN MOTHER

DAPHNE WAS SUSPENDED FOR SMOKING POT ------- YOU'RE A ROTTEN MOTHER

DAPHNE WAS SUSPENDED FOR DRINKING -------------------- YOU'RE AN ALCOHOLIC

ARE YOU COMING TO BED SOON ---------------------------------------------- I MUST HAVE SEX

WHAT TIME DID YOU GO TO BED LAST NIGHT ------------ ----------YOU'RE A FRIGID BITCH

I'M WALKING THE DOG ------------------------------------------------------------------------- FUCK OFF!

Etcetera, etcetera, you get the idea.

In my old age I've come to the belated realization that true, hard love is something one has to earn. All too often we turn our partners into these diabolical mounds of clay which we knead and mold into conveniently self-defeating forms in order to assuage our savage insecurities.

I retrospect, I don't think I could have survived if I didn't have HBO.  

Or Xanax. 

Or a mistress.

THE LIFE OF THE MILD

Some time in the not too distant past I began to feel the gradual erosion of my ability to yearn. I can't say with any great precision when it was that I realized my romantic impulses had irreparably drifted from the tender to the tawdry.

I assure you this is a painful confession for I have always taken great pride in my capacity for love. 

For me the word love, once uttered, ceases to be an accretion of soft, alternating vowels embraced by a pair lazy consonants but rather floats in an ether of sweet sound like a hymn or a prayer or a dirge.

I vividly remember the first time I was visited by this sublime and mysterious feeling. It was summoned by a high school infatuation that though chaste and unrequited, nevertheless lifted me into the odd air of mysticism. The name of my teenage Beatrice took flight long ago and I never saw the importance of trying to remember it. It's the feeling that I recall and it is a feeling that I have tried, with uneven success, to replicate ever since.

When my wife Betty and I first met I was flattered by the asymmetry of our relationship. Betty at the time was a beautiful shy woman who concealed her vulnerability with a curiously icy caution. Her early declarations of love were almost combative as if by their preemptive recklessness they could deflect my rebuttal. It was as if she planted the conqueror's standard square into my thigh severing the tendons of agency and dissent.

I was a willing vassal rendered powerless, not by Betty's charm but by her persistence. If it entered my mind to be suspicious of such a premature articulation of faith I don't really remember. What I do remember is that Betty was beautiful and knowing that love is but a premeditated act of will, I consigned myself toward what seemed like a worthy task.

I am happy to say that through our thirty-one years together I have had more than a few intimations of bliss. Having determined to assume the virtue of the besotted, I arrived through various mental and spiritual exercises to see my wife as the apotheosis of affection, fidelity and even, at times, passion.

Lamentably, like all fictions, hard reality looms like the angled blade of the executioner. With time my talent for intimacy has atrophied from neglect. The dance of benevolent deception has depleted my hopes and hardened my heart. The drunken boat of desire is now a rusted junk moored in the brine of disuse. I still love my Betty, of course, for habit is the strongest ballast but ultimately her early, irrational declarations could never realistically be reciprocated. And now as we sit across from one another nightly, sipping acceptable wine and nibbling on healthy and adequate dinners we accept our fate because that is the norm and to expect the extraordinary would be greedy. 

There's no need to worry though - Like most men, I've made some adjustments.

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

I had no idea how miserable my wife was until I heard her talk in her sleep.

My first experience with her somniloquies was about twenty years ago while on vacation in Vieques. (Why one would go to Puerto Rico when one could just as easily go to Florida is a mystery I will leave for later). 

Passed out by the pool after her third Cuba Libre, I noticed Betty's exposed calves were turning the color of steak tartar. (Why the French see fit to waste perfectly good hamburger meat is another matter best deferred to the future).  

Dutiful to a fault I fetched a fresh towel to cover my bride's bare legs and it was then that I first heard the grumble that has since dogged my nights with suspicion.

Nobody likes to imagine their wife in flagrante with another man so when the grumble turned plaintive and partially coherent I ignored it in spite of my curiosity.

A few years later when my wife and I would still occasionally go out for a leisurely lunch at a sidewalk café and idly watch the suburban world unfold in all its indolent splendor I noticed Betty's attention drift even more than usual. Being married is an interesting process where one gradually grows accustomed to being rendered insignificant. A perfect stranger will at least afford you the courtesy of feigning interest while a wife won't think twice before dozing off while you're in mid-sentence.

And so it was one summer afternoon when the heat and the chardonnay and my annoying voice all conspired to lull my wife into a prone siesta at Sally's Continental Bistro in downtown Elmira.

 Now I know that women are capable of all types of deception but I had never heard of someone faking an orgasm in their sleep.

It was brief but unmistakable.

That Betty was still capable of arousal should not have come as a surprise but of course it did. Like many middle aged men I mistook my wife's ambivalence towards me as a disinterest in intimacy in general. I foolishly saw it as something that occurs specifically to older women, as if they were from another species whose sexually curdled like milk when it aged.

I decided not to bring the matter up, for after all, one should never be held accountable for the content one's dreams. All the same I've often wondered if Betty's garbled, midnight syllabics was an imaginative article of longing or an involuntary admission of guilt.

Or perhaps it was just a prolonged campaign of calculated revenge after that unfortunate incident with the babysitter.  

 

REAL LOVE

Like K on the dock for some unarticulated offense I have been the object of my wife's tireless resentments for forty-two long years.

We've been married for forty-three and not unhappily, I hasten to add.

Happiness is accepting the ones you love for what they are without any abiding ambition to change them.

For me, being the readily-at-hand vehicle for emotional release and psychological abuse has been my privilege and my joy.

My bride Betty in the flower of her corpulent youth circa 1983

You see, I love my wife and if I could turn back the clock to those halcyon days of misspent, drug addled youth I would marry her again in a quivering heartbeat.

Look, let's face it, nobody's perfect and as Philip Larkin famously pointed out, our parents are always to blame for our inability to function properly as adults.

You see, Betty is cold which is surprising to most people because she's also fat and fat people are generally jolly. She also trims the nails on her left hand first, another telltale marker of the sybarite, but here again, Betty disappoints.

There's only one side of the bed for Betty and that's the wrong side. She greets the day as a grouch and she returns to our nightly nest with a slant of mind only slightly less impaired.

At work, I'm told, she's a dreamboat of equanimity and good cheer. It's Betty that arranges the birthday balloons, organizes the pot luck lunches and sends encouraging emails to her discouraging peers. Betty never wishes anyone anything less than a "great" day and at the office all is "awesome" and everyone is a "rockstar."

I know she adores me because she saves the brutality of her sincere feelings for me and me alone.

As Kafka pointed out, lying is a universal principle. My exemption from this principle vis-a-vis my bride is nothing less than the deepest expression of complete, deep and unconditional love.

Thank you Betty.

(and fuck you too)

SPLENETIC & CALORIC

My wife Betty is fat.

I'm no Jack LaLanne myself but Betty is a house.

  Getting fat doesn't happen overnight. Actually, it's rather hard and methodical work. One has to be fairly consistent in one's behavior. It's not a simple matter of eating a lot. One has to be careful to eat a lot of the wrong foods in disadvantageous combinations while expressing an extremely torpid attitude toward physical activity.

Basically you have to consume a great deal more calories than you actually need, every single day for an extremely long period of time with little or no deviation.

Betty during better days

I have to give my wife Betty a lot of credit. She doesn't let those fit fancy Hollywood actresses make her feel bad or self-conscious. Every weekend she straps on a tight bathing suit and spends whole days at the local municipal pool cooling off from our relentless summer heat.

I don't trust thin people. Their conspicuous self-denial is to them a badge of virtue whereas to me it's a futile abjuration of all things sensual and delicious.

Life is short and basically miserable. If a grilled cheese sandwich and a large Coke can mitigate the unrelenting pain, where's the harm? Between existential angst and a bag of potato chips I willfully lean toward the latter.

Thin folks are way too wholesome, consistently untrustworthy and above of all, unvaryingly attractive.

Uch!

DEBBIE DOESN'T DO DALLAS

I've been married for thirty-five years. My wife and I met in college, dated for about four years and tied the knot when we were still in our early twenties.

Debbie Digby

We have a pretty decent relationship. We don't fight like my sister does with her husband. Hell, I really can't remember the last time we had an argument. We communicate pretty well though I wouldn't call my wife my best friend or anything like that. She's a woman and she's interested in things I don't really care much about.

Like celebrity magazines, nail polish, shoes, calories, George Cloony, classic rock, online shopping, offline shopping, her mom, her brother, snack foods, Netflix, cats, exercise, Downton Abbey, global warming, and re-upholstery.

And being a man, I'm interested in things that are totally off her radar like the Ayatollah Khamenei, the designated hitter rule, Japanese knives, liquor, the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, biographies of former presidents, the Russian Mafia, Election Day, band-saws, golf and old Clifford Brown records.

Oh yeah ... and sex.

The wife will have nothing of it. It's been like that for years.

More years than I care to count.

Trying to have sex with her was like trying to talk my parents into raising my allowance. I remember my dad was always ready with a list of reasons why my allowance should stay the same: I had to learn the value of a dollar, I needed to develop a strong work ethic, I didn't need the extra money, I was a lazy son-of-a-gun etc. etc.

He always had a reason but the truth was he simply didn't want to do it.

Just like Debbie. 

She'd rather not.

I've always been a good husband so I never went too far off the reservation. When I had an itch, well ... let's just say, like Jimmy Carter I knew how to daydream.

And the wife, well, I never asked. Some things are better left alone.

Yeah ... alone.

Does anyone remember Ginger on Gilligan's Island?

CONFUCIUS CONFUSED

Down the block from me there's a guy named Fripp. That's not his real name but I never heard anyone call him anything else.

He's about 50 or so - it's hard to tell with fat guys who spent most of their lives smoking and doing crossword puzzles. 

He lost his job about a year and a half ago - I think he serviced valves or something like that - and he's been struggling ever since. His wife is a nurse and his kids are grown so I suppose he's luckier than most.

There are a lot of Fripps in my neck of the woods, proud, simple guys who found dignity in work and who needed no consolation in a life of low expectation.

I saw him the other day at Doris', the diner downtown that just started serving four-dollar lattes to go with their short-stack and bacon. When he saw me pass he looked up from his puzzle having pegged me with my horn rims as being the town's resident wise-ass.

"What in fuck's name is qi"?

There was real pain in his face as if his whole world was collapsing around the sudden realization that not every Q need be followed by a U. How do you explain to an out-of-work pipe fitter that "life's energy" can be corralled by positive thinking. That money and good fortune are within everyone's reach by the simple act of entering into the flow.

Visiting my daughter in Manhattan I've actually been witness to young, affluent professionals using the ancient Chinese concept of qi to justify the purchase of hundred-dollar bottles 1985 Canon-La Gaffelière.

I have no quarrel with consumption, I'm a lifelong Libertarian with nary a whit of compassion for slackers and near-do-wells. If some ambulance-chasing corporate lawyer wants to blow his wad on a pricey grape, God bless him.

But please spare me the New Age milquetoast, bleeding-heart justifications. Sometimes qi is just chance and the flow of life is upstream and always against the current.

THERE'S THAT GUY ...

I always hated when old folks would dispense their idiot wisdom or offer their unsolicited advice with the odious introduction "when I was a kid..."

But now that I've reached the tender age of decrepitude I think I too have earned the right to be tiresome.

  And so ...

When I was a kid people read the newspapers. Damn it - children read the newspapers! They read books, played games, got dirty and if they watched television they watched it with their families.

They even watched The News.

People knew what was going on in the world.

Now in the alleged "information age" nobody knows squat.

Let me rephrase that.

It's precisely "squat" that they do know about - so long as it's some starlet or pop music putz that's doing the squatting.

My grandkids think Luxembourg is a kind of stinky cheese, they can't name a single Supreme Court justice and they don't even understand why the designated hitter rule is such a shamefully deplorable perversion.

There is, however, a silver lining.

They don't believe in god and they have no idea who this guy is: