Those things which are under my bed
It takes me forever to finish a book these days, but I took in Christopher Moore's Fool and managed to savor every page. Every once in a while there's a book that seems like it was tailor written for my own personal enjoyment, and this was one of those that feeds such narcissism. I'm sure you'd hate it because it's filled with coarse humor, bad language and has King Lear's jester as the protagonist. I imagine you already get plenty of that at work.
My dear friend The Man Himself sent me the book as a present. As I said, the book's a perfect mental fit, which adds to my growing suspicion that perhaps T.M.H. knows me a bit too well. Then again, I'm either over-reacting or T.M.H. has taken my paranoia into account and has already taken measures to counter it, so it's all good.
The book will now find a place on a shelf somewhere. It will no longer live under my bed. The books under my bed tend to stay there much too long. A couple have grown some kind of film for want of a dust jacket. The reason books stay under my bed for so long is that I try and read them in bed. Some nights I make it as far as a paragraph or two. Sometimes I'll read three sentences and wake up fifteen minutes later with my sore arm still holding up the book in defiance of gravity and sense. I have an S. J. Perelman anthology that I've been reading in and out of consciousness for more than 3 years now. I love the book, but I get tired dammit! Luckily, Perelman's one of those guys who crafts every sentence so even if I nod off quickly, I've still taken in something good. I used to read voraciously, then sporadically, but now soporifically? Something tells me I should spell-check this paragraph.
The books under the bed will have to come out now, though. More on the reason for that later. But I should point out that under my bed are books, not porn. I'm a grown man now. I don't keep porn under my bed. I don't even own a laptop. The nice thing about being married is the porn is now on top of the bed. And it's interactive.
It's strange to think about, but will the current generation of boys never know the sinking dread that comes from mom accidentally finding something while changing the sheets? Are all of the guilty pleasures now coming from sitting at a desk rather than laying back on a pillow? Are we training a generation of lefties because mouse pads tend to be on the right of the keyboard? Has the thrill of finding the well-thumbed, used porn mag and smuggling it back to your room gone the way of the buggy whip? I told you it was strange to think about, but you just had to go on reading, didn't you? These are the questions we older wankers ponder. "Kids these days, with thier RedTube and thier Fleshlights. They don't know how good they got it. Why, back in my day . . ."
Which reminds me of a line I never got to use on stage:
I gave up masturbation. Now I've got nothing but time on my hands.
I know, "Ew." Still, you grinned.