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"'...a man need wish for no more than this: a sword in
the hand, a horse between his knees
and the woman he loves at the battle's
end.'
'By the Gods, Kerbouchard, that was well spoken!' said the Rajput
captain."
First a Few Relevant Words About My Tract
These are difficult times; indeed as we appear to be turtling determinedly towards imminent end times, the world cries out for the superior man to step forward. But be that as it may, here I stand in youthful middle age and wonder: is it too much to ask to be able to urinate without requiring rapt
visualizations of pitchers tipping forth to pour out their liquid abundance; or of mountain spring water rushing frothily through steep timber chutes on its way down to old man river? To face the urinal without mantric limericks to get things started ("One, two, three, four, open up the bladder
door"), or the machismo motivational affirmation my therapist taught me
("I am Black Stallion, Lord of the Herd! Behold my mighty
stream!"). Something's gone wrong down there and I'm feeling a bit disgruntled. Hopefully, this can be elegantly tied into our discussion of the superior man a few paragraphs down the highway.
Let us set the scene: Every morning, once the day's (required) program of caffeination is under way, a painful urgency grips my
lower tract like the squeezing fist of an epileptic lunatic -- every thirty minutes or so. It's not even 10 AM and I've embarked upon
my sixth trip to the steamy, loamy, vent-less men's room (on the other side of the building), still trying to keep up the dignified facade of being engrossed in
business planning, crisply striding someplace important - instead of
galloping bent over and grunting like Quasimodo late for the church bell.
The end result, as I stand and moan with eyes clenched shut -- even with a imagined tsunami boiling down the log chute -- is no tropical monsoon to make the world fresh and new again, but only the meagerest of summer rains, a few disconsolate drops on the hot
dirty pavement. "Please, please, please," I mutter. ("Not you" I say to the concerned gentleman at the adjacent porcelain.)
And when the condition hits in the car with a long way yet to go and not a rest area, Starbucks or large shrub in sight, anguish pools in my loins like thin, fiery magma seeking an outlet. And my squeals get so high pitched that only dogs and bats can hear them. I can't honestly represent that I feel like a stallion, whether black, bay, pinto or appaloosa.
According to trustworthy sources, Napoleon suffered the same condition, so perhaps it's a common one among great men, something tied to the pressures of being superior. Even at Waterloo one could glimpse the
diminuitive Emperor leaning against a distant oak, trying to shut out the
distractions - " Merde! Leave me alone! And stop with the fucking cannon!" - while dreaming wistfully of soft cheeses and the burbling, trout-filled brooks of Corsica. If close enough, one might hear him begin to sing under his breath, "I'm a little teapot, short and stout...just tip me over and pour me out." Over and over again in a childlike pleading tone. Meanwhile Blucher's Prussians have arrived on his right flank.
Maybe that time has come "To talk to
your doctor about the benefits of Nestle Quik-Flo." As it says on the
cereal box: "When was the last time your bladder jumped up and said, 'Send
me in, Coach!'" Long time. The smug, ruggedly handsome fellow in the ad
looks positively ecstatic about the
impossibly heavy cascade - they must have used a fire hose - he's arching over the cliff into the magnificent waterfalls of Iguacu. Head thrown back laughing; winking one eye as if to say "How about this, eh buddy?"; one arm, wearing a platinum Swiss chronometer, thrown in the air like a triumphant
broncbuster. To the side, an entire team of buxom, pony-tailed cheerleaders enthuse admiringly from the passenger seats of a long, classic, 1972 Cadillac DeVille Convertible. While munching on my Extra-Crusty Bran Kibble, I find myself staring hungrily at all that rushing, free-flowing water pouring over the edge into eternity (and those appreciative young women), for twenty-thirty minutes at a time. It looks like...the relief that surpasseth understanding.
My friend Mr. O yodels that broccoli is the best thing for a healthy prostate,
except, that is, for tomatoes. Every time we lunch together, or even drive
past a vegetable stand: broccoli and tomatoes, tomatoes and broccoli. If it's not magic vegetables, it's green tea, fish oil or pomegranate juice. Dear
Sweet Jesus, I got it, now shut your damn yap! That's not going to happen, he doesn't even hear me, his eyes glowing with crazy light. Like
virtually all my friends, O has gone around his own obsessive and malignant
bend where he ducks, bobs, weaves and jigs unceasingly -- to avoid mortality grabbing his earlobe and pulling him into darkness. Good luck with that, O.
However, I do find myself, grudgingly, like a morose cow chewing its cud, eating a lot more broccoli and tomatoes. And saw palmetto tablets, whatever the fuck they are.
Sometimes, wearying of the relentless back and forth (and the pathetic charade that none of my office mates buy anyway), I'll perch in the office restroom for hours -- cell phone off,
voicemail filling up, intercom pagings disregarded, (other real estate agents howling, cursing, begging, and pounding desperately on the stall door), chin on palm, elbow on
knee, staring into timeless infinity (or more specifically, the cave paintings
of grotesque genitalia on the panels around me), letting the creek flow at its own lazy-day pace, sounding like wind chimes in the mild breeze. It's so safe
and quiet in that small, grubby cubicle with its sturdy latch. Hidden from a crazy, demanding world, waiting for the glorious Rapture to raise me up -- right off the toilet seat -- to
paradise. And mulling the dreams I cherished at thirteen.
One of You Guys
At that loathsome pre-pubescent age, I was an eclectic goal
setter, wanting variously to be a Kerouac-ian dharma bum, a Herman Hesse-ian Steppenwolf, Paladin from "Have Gun, Will Travel," Ilya Kuriakin of the "Man From Uncle," Judas from "Jesus Christ Superstar"
and Earl the Pearl Monroe of the World Championship Knicks.
Who I should have wanted to be is Mathurin
Kerbouchard: proud Breton, swordsman, scholar, galley slave, cocks-man,
philosopher, druid, mountebank and magnificent hero of Louis L'Amour's
brilliant and meticulously researched 1984 masterpiece "The Walking
Drum." Mr. L'Amour, now deceased and better known for his
lonesome-prairie westerns, here stretches his legs in a fully realized
medieval world, as his Kerbouchard strides, fine Damascus steel in his
hand, from Gaul to Hindustan, Cordoba to Constantinople. He even storms the
Rock of Alamut, impregnable fortress of the Old Man of the Mountain and his hashishiyya henchlings.
(Each age, it appears, has its own Old Man of the Mountain and his rascally entourage of religio-death-worshipping thugs. But who shall be our Kerbouchard to smoke the latest nest out of its rocky lair?)
What Women Want
That brings something to mind which I think pertains nicely to our topic. There's a
genre in popular music that has always bemused me. Its
exultant theme might best be described as "I'm a pathetic loser
who's going nowhere 'cept down the toilet, baby, but I'm holding on to
you with both hands." A daring and ingenius argument, which,
sadly, has never worked for me. (Women nowadays - cold brutal realists/materialists -
catch on to the drawbacks of self-obsessed, minimum-wage, basement-dwelling
anti-heroes pretty damn young in life. Frankly, I blame all those glossy fashion magazines and "Sex & the City.")
The most anguished paean of this musical substrata must be the Righteous
Brothers' wailing anthem: "Just Once in My Life." He ain't never
going to rise above that greasy bottom rung - he's just barely holding on
to that, and the sewer water and doggy-paddling ratties are up to his chin.
He's failed at everything he's ever put his slack-mouthed mind to,
but... "Baby, say that you'll be staying." It's not hard
to visualize the panic and desperate calculation in one young woman's eyes as she strokes the
snot-nosed face slobbering against her sternum. The flinch everytime he repeats, "Uh uh, don't you never leave me!"
And she's thinking, just one more night, Kit Kat, just make it through one more long night,
"There, there, my little piggy, Momma's here." Dawn's pallid
light illuminates his dog-breathed, yellow-toothed head on
the pillow next to you. ("Come on Adonis, rise and shine.") But when
Gomer Pyle heads off in his orange jumpsuit to sweep cigarette
butts in the subway - "You want to watch Porky's again tonight, babe,
get a bucket of KFC and a sixer of Colt 45? Hey babe? Love you." -
when he turns the fateful corner by the Kut 'n Kurl (wiggle the fingers one
more time, blow a last kiss: toodles!), Tweety's cage door is left ajar and baby's a
free-range chicken hightailing it for Cancun, filled with randy, young hedge-fund managers!
Hola muchachos! Let's lambada!
One of the more delightful aspects of these freakish ballads is the
implicit competition to be as sorry, wretched, pitiable,
feeble, unattractive and contemptible one hombre can be. Mr. Seger, in
perhaps his most famous lyric, details a woeful litany of one man's slumped-back, sag-bellied,
shit-faced inadequacies (poor fella's plumb wore out from running against the wind), even lists a few of the lady's (a strikingly counter-intuitive strategy, Bob,
if you want to get laid). He then peers up blearily to the adjacent
barstool with astounding optimism, "We've got tonight, sweet pants, why don't you stay?"
"Stay! Tonight! Um, gee, wow, Bobby, I'm flattered...overwhelmed!
You're a sweetheart - but shit! - tonight I can't. No can do. I've got toenails to clip, the ice tray to fill and, umm, I've got to pull the tuds off my old ski sweater. Damn! Can I take a rain check?"
American men are a sad-sack lot of putzes. Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirts and turned-around
baseball caps (unforgivably lame on anyone over the age of 12); hair removed here, planted there, or shaved altogether
("I'm not bald; I've made a cutting edge fashion decision!"); the inevitable goatee for that distinctive ex-con look (what Jeannine calls "the De Niro pussy beard"*); pockets filled with penis-extension and hard-on pills; the steamer trunk full of shabby,
discount, "three-pack" porn in the guestroom closet. Always the fucking cell phone -- with the self-important yap, yap, yap. The pathetic bravado that yet asks apologetic permission for
everything they want: " Would you mind if I turned you
over? Why? I don't know, it was just an idea. I can? Sweet! Ummmm [mumble mumble]...may I fuck you in the ass? I'm just kidding!... Unless it
sounds good? I'm kidding, forgodsakes!... Well, how about a
strap-on and you do me?"
* Footnote: Jeannine believes the modern plague of pussy beards was initiated by Robert De Niro's special-forces goatee in "The Deer Hunter." This is one of the fiercer debates currently roiling the film-crit community.
You know what women want, ravenously, deep down, body and mind? Kerbouchard!
He's not going to croon some whiny song about the unplumbed depths of being
a comprehensive putz. He won't show up outside your bedroom window with a sad, mopey puppy face and a giant boom box playing "In Your Eyes."
Listen:
"The Comtesse of Saone, 'If you come near my bed, I shall scream for
help.'
Kerbouchard, 'Comtesse, if I come to your bed, I won't need any
help.'"
Simple, strong, confident in his abilities: soon La Comtesse is as happy as a plump,
frisky pony being hard ridden after a long winter in the stable. This man
has Toledo steel in him! (Damascus and Toledo steel were the two premium
brands of the time - the historical detail in this book is stupendous!)
A Flesh & Blood Fellow
But, make no mistake: Kerbouchard is no cardboard-cut-out,
Panglossian gigolo. No love-lift-us-up, don't-give-up-you've-got-friends Barney Google. He's a complex,
hard-edged, uber-realist, who keeps his powder dry in a world where people
get their intestines wrapped around the maypole for not tugging their forelocks fast enough, and those
with elbow eczema are whipped into the desert for the hoo-doos to eat (a misidentification with
leprosy, still common in India).
"'Can you see the future, Kerbouchard?'
'Who would want to? Our lives hold a veil between anticipation and horror.
Anticipation to keep the jackass moving forward as a carrot before the
eyes. Horror is what he would see if he took his eyes off the carrot.'
'You are gloomy, Kerbouchard,' said Phillip of Byzantium."
Well, that rings true to me; I keep my eye nailed to the carrot; though
small as it's dwindled over the decades I'd need tweezers to pluck it out of the dross.
But it's not that Kerbouchard didn't have doubts. We all have doubts. Let's eavesdrop
once more:
"I was a fool, a paltry fool, a miserable fool, a fool who marched to
the sound of an empty drum he called destiny"
Hey, maybe he should write for the Righteous Brothers after all!
But Kerbouchard got back up on his feet, knocked the heads off a few
swarthy Hashassin, poked the lovely Sundari until she was delirious, drank
a case of Sam Adams, took a long, thundering piss, left the seat up,
and got back in the race!
Why? Because that's life, Dick-less!
Buy Mr. L'Amour's marvelous book. Pattern yourself on this exemplary man's man.
Get behind the Walking Drum, lengthen your stride, guzzle some Quik-Flo, bellow
a manly oath like Yosemite Sam. Make your bold mark in the world like a Great Dane in the virgin snow, and...do it your way! And for a hale and hearty prostate: tomatoes and broccoli. Lots of 'em.
All quotes regarding Kerbouchard are from "The Walking Drum" by Louis L'Amour, Bantam Books, 1984
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