I guess we'll all be watching The Trump Show at nine tonight. Maybe not. It could be hazardous to your health. Watching the Syphilitic King in all his tertiary madness while his chancred cronies cheer him on would, at a minimum, cause much psychological distress. I was going to post a picture of the Ukrainian flag here today, but as I pulled it up, I realized how much I do not like flags and all the strife and partisanship that goes along with them. I truly do not like national anthems and do not understand the connection between the anthem and a sporting event. And the Pledge of Allegiance? I say it every morning first thing when I get out of bed. It starts the day just right.
I like those things the way I love a square jaw and a buzz cut. Nothing makes me feel safer than a bunch of guys who look like that.
I don't know what is wrong with me, really. Why can't I just go along? It has to be my DNA. I'm simply not built like that.
None of this is what I intended to tell you about this morning, though. In my attempt to write away from my current life, I intended to tell tales of things I know or have known that are not me. I may get to my suggested story about the stripper documentary, but not today. Rather. . . .
There was a fellow who used to be part of the Brando Travel Cult. Now I shouldn't be so mean as I was friends with Brando for decades and actually partnered with him on several trips, but since he took my money and fucked me good. . . I feel enabled. But he did have a certain charisma that drew a type of person into his orbit, and he was good at blowing smoke up their skirts.
"Goddamn. . . Harry was our Hunter Thompson in Mexico. He started every morning with a shot of tequila. . . ."
Or, "You never saw anything like it. She danced barefoot all night in a Cuzco bar until her feet bled. I had to carry her back to the hotel."
Etc.
Brando never told any heroic tales about me. Ever. But I'll get to that in some later post.
Perhaps.
But the fellow. He had some tech job I could never figure out, electronics or something, and I guess it paid him pretty good money. He was also a self-professed photographer who ran his own photography shows in his home. I don't remember the photos any longer other than many if not all of them were black and white darkroom printed things, this being before the digital age. Brando favored him often and would use the fellow's home to host some of his adventure travel parties. He lived some distance out of town in an old house that bordered a newish neighborhood, one of those places close to the mall and the highway that served it, a good distance from the center of town. He went on many Brando trips and for awhile was dating Brando's daughter. Now this is a story all its own, for Brando's daughter was always getting engaged, and this fellow and Brando's daughter did, too, for awhile. They never married just as she didn't marry most of the men to whom she got engaged. Whatever psychological term there is for such a thing. . . she owned it. She finally married a fellow but was in love with someone she hadn't. . . but again. . . not just yet.
So the tech fellow/photographer used to come out with "us" on long bike rides and to cafes and dinners, and really, I could never understand the attraction. But he got married, around the same time I got married, to a woman who played violin in the symphony orchestra. And you will have to trust me on this as I have no visual evidence to show you, but she was a True Beauty, a real knockout. And I could never figure it out. I found him bland in just about every way. He was certainly not handsome. I had never heard him say anything that came close to being interesting. Indeed, I don't think he ever spoke more than two sentences at a time. He had small eyes that never came clearly into focus, often cast toward the ground.
But. . . there you go. There is no explaining love.
And I certainly won't try, for after a decade, my wife left me.
And so did his.
And so, as will happen, we joined the Newly Divorced Men's Club. I had another friend of similar attributes who was in the same boat, and as in war or strife, you bond with whomever you can. There were nights sitting in a bar, losers all, when I wondered, "What the fuck?" There seemed no way out.
But the fellow with the small, unfocussed eyes found another girl, and again she was gorgeous with a capital G. She worked as an airline stewardess and I was so envious of him/her I wanted to puke. Why? Why him? I mean seriously. . . why not me?
Before long, however, he dumped her.
"Why?" I asked in huge astonishment.
"I'm tired of American women," was his response. Well. . . there was that.
So he went online to some website called Russian Bride for Me dot com. Not exactly, but you get the idea. One day I asked him how it was going.
"I'm getting like hundreds of women sending me photos. They are beautiful."
Eventually he narrowed the field down to ten. Now I swear this is true and not made up. Numbers and all. And when he had narrowed the field to ten, he took a trip to Russia to meet them. And when he came home, he'd narrowed his picks to three.
"Now what are you going to do?" I asked.
"I'm going to fly each of them over to see me here."
And again, that is exactly what he did. And after flying them each over at different times, he made his choice. And here's the kicker. He picked a middle-aged lady who had a daughter. I was bowled over.
Now. . . how would you guess this turned out? Yes. I'm an asshole and you are right. They lived happily ever after. I'm not making this up.
I lost contact with him years ago, but today I have to wonder how he is doing as I, the handsome and talented one, live a life of solitude and exclusion.
The other fellow in the Crippled Divorcee Club married a woman older than himself, got very rich, and lives here in the winters and in the northeast mountains in the summers and no longer needs to work.
And I, the truly cool hip cat. . . .
You get my drift. I guess I've overplayed my hand.
I'll just end by saying that I had a couple chances with Brando's daughter, too, but I could never. She looked too much like Brando.
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