The Dichotomy Of Being Me...

When I was just coming of age, I dated a Catholic girl with big breasts and the uncanny ability to have more than ten orgasms at a sitting… (In fact, I remember her chastising me through happy tears one night after I triumphantly called out the number 16! to the Gods of teen--age lust and new experiences…)

Her father was a victim of polio and unarguably the best lawyer in town. I used to say he was “a man in which his tie hung crooked when he walked, but whose moral compass was dead on…”

Or something to that effect.

He had the distorted body of a polio victim.

And the intellect of a great man.

I worked much, on his house, and did work for him on his assortment of rental houses he owned. His daughter and I used one of his rental houses for debauchery quite often, back in those days.

The thing about him that I remember most, was the debates he used to have at dinner with his wife and daughter, and the debates were centered around and focused mainly on-- ME.

You see, I was a bit of an enigma to this family. I worked with my hands. I loved working with my hands. I got dirty. I sweat and stank. I crawled around on my belly beneath their house. I got covered in paint and caulking and whatnot.

And I could hold my own in a debate…

So the debate they had was-- WAS SCOTT SMART?

I met J in an English summer school college class, so she heard me crawl up the professors nose a time or two. Her claim was that yes, I had some smarts, but that I preferred the physical life and so it didn’t show all that much.

Her father felt like my “mechanical brain” was stronger than my intellectual brain, or else I would have chosen a more suitable field…

J’s mother just thought me to be the funniest boy she had ever met. I could make that woman cry with laughter if she let me. And quite often, she did.

J had a younger sister who thought I was a prick and an asshole.

So that was heart-warming and sobering simultaneously.

The point of all this recollecting, is that I was culling through You-Tube videos the last few nights and found part of me completely attracted to intellectual debate, while another part of me just wanted to watch stand-up comedy.

This reminded me of J and her family.

I remembered the night I shouted out 16!

I remembered the night I made her mother laugh so hard, she blew a jalapeno pepper up into her nose and out onto her plate.

I remembered the great words of wisdom her father gave me two days before he died.

He said- “Scott. You have a great outlook on life. You make people glad to be alive. Don’t trade that in for anything.”