On the Road, afterword

Tonight I magnified my calling as enthusiastically -- as joyously as I think I ever have. And yet I was continually distracted by Ginger Grant. Damn.

A parting thought from Jack Kerouac, who understands senseless and relentless Sehnsucht:

The prettiest, shyest one hid far back in the field to watch and she had good reasons because she was absolutely and finally the most beautiful girl Neal and I ever saw in all our lives. She was about sixteen, and had a plains complexion like wild roses, and the bluest eyes, and most lovely hair, and the modesty and quickness of a wild antelope. Every look from us and she flinched. She stood there with the immense winds that blew clear down from Saskatchewan knocking her hair about her lovely head like shrouds, living curls of them. She blushed and blushed. We finished our business with the farmer, took one look at the prairie angel, and drove off, slower now, till dark came and Dean said Ed Wall's ranch was dead ahead. "Oh, a girl like that scares me," I said. "I'd give up everything and throw myself on her mercy and if she didn't want me I'd just as simply go and throw myself off the edge of the world."

On The Road Again

[misc]

This evening considered my wife sexually for the first time in a long time, which is good.

On The Road

I'm making another attempt at using books on tape to make my commute more worthwhile. I've listened to foreign language tapes, and the last book I listened to was The Book of Mormon, in late 2005 when then-President Hinckley asked Church members to read it before the end of the year. For some reason, it seemed substantially less believable as the spoken--as opposed to written--word.

Anyway, since most of the books on my "To Read" list are contemporary nonfiction, of which the local library doesn't have an abundance, I perused the fiction section and picked out the first thing that caught my eye, which was On The Road. I've never read any Kerouac, so I was curious, and have enjoyed it thus far.

In the face of centuries (millennia, rather) of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I somehow maintain this notion that recreational sex didn't really start until the '60s or so. For example, when I read that Alfred Hitchcock ironically called my pristine glamour goddess Grace Kelly "The Ice Queen" because "she slept with almost everybody while filming Dial M for Murder," or that her High Noon co-star Gary Cooper said, "She looked like she was a cold dish with a man until you got her pants down, then she’d explode,” it still strikes me as incongruous with the pre-hippie era. So to observe the relentless emphasis that the men of On The Road place on casually and serially "making" girls, is still an odd revelation. Almost like I'm being let in on some dirty little secret about Father Knows Best. And I was washed in a wave of nostalgia when the plot's itinerary turned to Central City, Colorado, an old mining town in the mountains above Denver, where I spent an adventurous and invigorating summer. A summer, yes, that involved several women. Not all of them physically. But a summer I'll remember, and probably wistfully, for a long, long time.

But of all of the book's attractions and encounters, this one has resonated most profoundly:

I had bought my ticket and was waiting for the L.A. bus when all of a sudden I saw the cutest little Mexican girl in slacks come cutting across my sight. She was in one of the buses that had just pulled in. Her breasts stuck out straight and true; her little flanks looked delicious; her hair was long and black; and her eyes were great big blue things with a soul in it. I wished I was on the same bus with her. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world of ours. The announcer called the L.A. bus. I picked up my bag and got on it; and who should be sitting alone in it, but the Mexican girl. I sat right opposite her and began scheming right off. I was so lonely, so sad, so tired, so quivering, so broken, so beat---all of it had been too much for me---that I got up my courage, the courage necessary to approach a strange girl, and acted. Even then I spent five minutes beating my things in the dark as the bus rolled. "You gotta, you gotta or you'll die! Damn fool talk to her! What's wrong with you? Aren't you tired of yourself by now?"

I know, and have lived, almost verbatim, every conflicted impulse he's describing. I recognize that it is not, despite what Kerouac's autobiographic protagonist calls it, "love." But rather, it's the lust-informed twitterpation of hope, of possibility, of knowing the unknown...and I, well, love it. Or at least feel vivified by it like I do by almost nothing else. Will I ever feel it again for my wife? Will I ever feel it again, period?

Speaking of autobiographies, during lunch today I was perusing the posthumous biography of prominent Utahan Larry H. Miller, among whose favorite quotes, attributed to Ezra Benson, was, “When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.” To hear obedience described as an "irritant" came almost as a relief: So I'm not the only one who's thought that! And the idea of an endowment of divine power couldn't seem more distant and foreign.

Speaking of quotes, on the drive home this evening, I heard on the radio someone quoted as saying something to the effect of, "The world will only be righted when men fall at women's feet and beg forgiveness."

PPI in the Sky

This morning, my boss walked into my office, said, "Maybe you've seen this before," and dropped on my desk a sheet of paper bearing the following statement, allegedly made in June 1965 by David O. McKay to a group of employees of the Church's Physical Facilities Department, then walked out:

"Let me assure you, Brethren, that some day you will have a personal priesthood interview with the Savior himself. If you are interested, I will tell you the order in which he will ask you to account for your earthly responsibilities.

"First, he will request an accountability report about your relationship with your wife. Have you actively been engaged in making her happy and ensuring that her needs have been met as an individual?

"Second, he will want an accountability report about each of your children individually. He will not attempt to have this for simply a family stewardship but will request information about your relationship to each and every child.

"Third, he will want to know what you personally have done with the talents you were given in the preexistence.

"Fourth, he will want a summary of your activity in your Church assignments. He will not be necessarily interested in what assignments you have had, for in his eyes the home teacher and a mission president are probably equals, but he will request a summary of how you have been of service to your fellow man in your Church assignments.

"Fifth, he will have no interest in how you earned your living but if you were honest in all your dealings.

"Sixth, he will ask for an accountability on what you have done to contribute in a positive manner to your community, state, country, and the world."

Cafe Rio

My father-in-law arrived in town this evening. My wife met us with all the kids at a home we're interested in, after which we went to Cafe Rio. While I was working my way through a steak salad, I caught in my peripheral vision something that I was sure wasn't really happening. So I turned my focus that way, and the entire women's volleyball team from one of the local colleges had queued up behind our table. One of them was a singular beauty among beauties, and as I watched her work her way through the line then sit and eat with her friends, my mind played through the logistics of asking her to name her price for one hour alone together: Is she LDS? Does that matter? Would she take me seriously? Could I proposition her on a note with an alias e-mail address, and how easily could the police hack out my identity if she went to them? Would I end up in the Johns section of the paper? Would I care? Would she turn and walk over to my wife and report my solicitation? Would I care? Would I show up for a rendezvous only to get thumped by her linebacker boyfriend and his buddies? Ah, too much hassle.

Tonight in the paper I read about a website (previously unknown to me) that had been refused naming rights on the NY Jets' stadium: AshleyMadison.com, whose tagline is, "Life is short. Have an affair." I wonder what my catchy nom de screen would be.

Very Distracting Banner Ads, Vol. I

Given the resurgence of nuptial gloom, combined with my slip off the wagon a bit this weekend, I figure I'll touch the unclean thing by posting these Very Distracting Banner Ads I've collected over the past while. Special thanks to the marketing crew at ideeli, for creating the campaign in the first place and then relentlessly mis-targeting (or not!) my email account with it. And that Brooks Brothers ad was on Bloomberg -- as if Wall Street needs more distractions these days...

Sniped

Wesley Snipes
Sean Connery

Blessing Max in a few wks

Run over

Yesterday - thanks for providing

Last night - I guess I expect too much; I know where you're coming from

This morning - #3's Razor scooter