E. Gets Witty

I have posted less the last two weeks than in time period since I launched this noble blog with a sprightly tune and cracking a magnum of champagne across my head.

Metaphorically.

I've missed it. It really is a public journal, a useful reminder: 1) that no one gives a damn; 2) that still it's nice to be reminded what I was thinking about at the time as the time recedes; 3) that one reason no one gives a damn is that I'm pretty careful to keep it in my pants, "it" meaning anything really personal and "pants" meaning the world of discourse outside this blog.

So I've missed this exercise in compound-complex sentences. It almost seemed as if I was having an argument with myself, and that we had quit talking.

Talk to me, I was saying to myself.

Not till you apologize, I said back.

So I said: Did I say you look fat in that? That's not what I meant. I don't know what I meant.

And I fell into my own arms, and all was forgiven.

You see? Where other than one's own blog can one goof like that!?

I could, of course, write some interesting shit. This is my second and last year as chair. In a work of fiction, that statement would be a bit of nuance -- if followed by, "Chairs usually serve a term of three years."

Nuance (like ripeness) is all.

Oh I'll write more about this in a code that years from now only I can break.

But wait. The post title is "E. Gets Witty." We were talking about Tiger Woods and his bimbo eruption (a phrase students of the Clinton presidency will recall). E. said two funny things. One was that she was waiting patiently for the announcement that Tiger was going into treatment for sex addiction. Which made me laugh, and which prophecy I do not discount, not yet.

The second was more convoluted. I was saying that I was disappointed in Tiger in a very special and personal way. Let us concede that his desire to wander was overwhelming, irresistible right up to the point of inevitable and predetermined. One is still disappointed in what seems to be an inclination for kind of trashy women.

Look, I told E. He could have had quality women, brainy, accomplished women with exciting careers and hectic schedules, mature women of substance where post-coital pillow talk would have approached the level of a graduate-school seminar.

Look E., I said. He could have had women like you (though not specifically you, I said, you being loyal unto death, like a Roman matron).

Oh, E. said. You mean we would now be talking about Tiger and the Cougars.

At which point I laughed and laughed.

Okay, the code talker says one more thing about "things." Imagine coming into a close game as a relief pitcher. And you get bombed. You take some licks. Really, now the game is lost. But your "manager" wants to save arms, to write this one off, to get ready for the next one. So he asks you to stay out there in the service of a hopeless cause, to take the blows, get slapped around, eat up some innings.

And you do.

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