What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World Read Online Free PDF Page A

fifty-eight-year-old belly dancer. I find myself going out with younger and younger women, most of whom happen to be from Dallas and can't remember where they were when JFK was assassinated, because they weren't born yet. Some of them, in fact, would not be born until several decades later, and they think JFK is an airport, RFK is a stadium, and Martin Luther King is a street running through their town.
    "What could you two possibly have to talk about?" my fellow senior citizens often ask. It's true that the only time we ever find common ground is on her futon. She's never heard of Jack Benny, Humphrey Bogart, or Abbie Hoffman, and she thinks Hitler may have been a punk band in the early eighties. We get along fairly well, because I don't remember much, either.
    There are two kinds of people in this world, I've always believed. I'm the kind who wants to sleep late and belch loudly and sometimes quite humorously at dinner parties. There are times, undoubtedly, when I feel alone, but I've found that it's always better to feel alone alone than to have that empty, soul-destroying feeling of feeling alone with somebody else. True happiness, I often tell people, must come from within. People don't always like to hear me espouse this great wisdom, but they do seem to prefer it to my belching at dinner parties.
    The other kind of person, the polar opposite of myself, is what I like to call the marrying kind. I have three friends who, between them, have been married a dozen times, and I'm betting they're not through yet. Their names are Willie Nelson, Robert Duvall, and Billy Bob Thornton. All three tell me that they still believe in the institution of marriage, especially if it doesn't drive them to the mental institution. I think we're all probably creatures of habit, and the three of them just like being married. Or, possibly, after a failed marriage, the cowboy in them wants to get on that horse again to show he can still ride. A shrink might say they are repetitive neurotics. A shrink might also say that I have a fear of commitment. I would, of course, tell the shrink that I don't have a fear of commitment. I'm just afraid that someday my future ex-wife might not understand me. Then I would tell the shrink I want my money back.
    Edythe, however, is oblivious to my protestations and my intransigence. She has a way of approaching the subject from many angles. Don't you ever want to be happy? she sometimes asks. No, I tell her. I don't want to be happy. Happiness is a highly perishable and transitory state, and it doesn't have a balanced export arrangement from one person to another, not to mention

    that the import tax is too high. Besides, I'm concerned that happiness may have a negative effect on my writing.
    Maybe you could write about meeting a nice Jewish girl, my fairy godmother suggests. I've met a lot of nice Jewish girls, I tell her, and they all seem to me to be culturally deprived. They all grew up in this country, yet most of them appear to have never heard the three words that Americans have come to live by.
    "I love you?" asks Edythe.
    "No," I tell her. "Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers."
    Edythe usually continues nattering on until she finally broadsides me with her famous "right person" ploy. Maybe you just haven't found the right person yet, she says. I don't mention it, but I've already found the right person. Unfortunately, she was Miss Fire Ant, 1967. Things went downhill from there, both of us got our feelers hurt, and she wound up putting the bite on me.
    The conversation usually concludes with Edythe employing what I call the "true love gambit." Don't I believe in true love? Haven't I ever been in true love? Of course I believe in it, I tell her. I've been in true love many times. I just try to avoid it as much as possible. For if there's one thing I know about true love, it is that sooner or later, it results in a hostage situation. Don't get me wrong: I'm not against marriage. I'm against my marriage. Anyway,