The Weekend Eudemon
Father's Day Weekend. It's not just Father's Day around here. Eric Scheske demands about two-and-a-half days of celebration, and his family humors him.
Today is filled with . . . nothing. Tomorrow? Nothing. That's a slight exaggeration. He'll be reading and writing, opening some gifts, going to church, dining out with his wife tonight, spending time with his father. But other than that, nothing.
It'll be a nice prelude to a change of pace. From late April to early June, Eric is blitzed with responsibilities: the office cranks up and the children's activities flurry. Things lighten up in early June, but are still plenty hot. By the end of June, however, the office work is usually caught up and the children's activities are done for eight weeks. It's then that Eric Scheske can do some serious reading.
Which is good. Eric has a nasty habit of not finishing books. If books were women and the last page marriage, Eric would be a gigolo (without the monetary compensation). He's really trying to be more faithful, but when reading time is limited to thirty seconds between innings while working as the bench coach at a little league game (while other coaches ask if you've sneaked porn into the dug-out), it's hard. With the summer opening up shortly, though, he hopes to finish about three books that he has started, and then to undertake a review of Thomas Molnar books, starting with The New Paganism if it ever arrives.
Change of Subject: Things are popping at TDE. We passed the 300 daily visitor mark twice earlier this week. Previously, we had passed that mark only once. We're also regularly posting daily visitors in the mid-200s. A month ago, 200+ visitors was common but not the norm.
As always, anything you can do to spread the TDE word is appreciated. We don't ask for PayPal tips, but we do ask for referrals. If you enjoy TDE, others might too. Please forward the URL. Tell them we send free beer to our readers.
The Punchy Journal
The Rambling Narrative of Nate Brewer
I dislike divorces. I try hard not to dislike my divorce clients too, but it's difficult because divorce is one of the most self-regarding actions possible.
It's even worse when children are involved. And it's not worse just because the kids get hurt. It's worse because of the level, or depth, of fault that sinks to the heart of the spouses, deeper than the San Andreas. The divorcing father is always quick to point out, with deep-felt sincerity, that he'd walk through fire for his children. But he won't stay with their mother.
That's one of the worst things about living in society. You hear some juxtaposition that is logically and sinfully lame, like “I'd do anything for my children, but my wife and I had to get a divorce.” And you're supposed to smile, or commiserate, or worst of all, give a polite rejoinder that implies you're taking him seriously. “Two plus two is five,” and I'm to respond with something like, “Yeah, I can see how that can happen.” It's like getting battery acid thrown in your face and smiling.
From the husband's standpoint, there's rarely an adequate excuse for a divorce. A wife might have intense abuse or infidelity-followed-by-spousal rape to deal with. Not the husband. With the exception of a few remarkably-wimpy guys, every guy can manhandle his wife. The wife can be a cheatin', drinkin', violent shrew, but he can stay with her. He might avoid sexual contact, of course, and romantic dinners are probably unrealistic, but he can stay without risking his health. Of course, if she starts showing homicidal tendencies, he might want to get out of there, but, within the realm of the domestically-believable, there's never a reason to bolt.
I can hear penis-obsessed critics at this point: “What about sex! Is he supposed to go without It? It's too important to go without.”
I remember an intentionally-obnoxious movie called The Toxic Avenger, possibly the most tasteless movie ever that I watched about twelve times. In one scene, a hard-body blond, as part of a practical joke, is seducing a nerd named Melvin. She's rubbing her hands up and down his scrawny body, telling him how excited he makes her, then says, “I want to do It with you Melvin.” The nerd puzzles, “Do what?” and she just excites, “Do IT, Melvin, do IT!” as though there was nothing else to add.
In Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Kerouac writes about a beatnik hero, the “wild, ecstatic” Rollo Greb, who “didn't give a damn about anything,” a “great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting,” whose “excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light.” One of the book's main characters, Dean Moriarty, admires Greb, and tells the book's narrator: “That Rollo Greb is the greatest, most wonderful of all. . . that's what I want to be. I want to be like him. He's never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out . . . Man, he's the end!” Then Dean alludes to the beatific vision that Kerouac cited as the root of the beat movement: “You see, if you go like him all the time you'll finally get it.” Sal, puzzled, asks “Get what?” Dean simply yells back: “IT! IT!” as though there were nothing left to add.
In The Toxic Avenger, sex was IT. In On the Road, the beatific vision was IT. In this connection, “Sex” is the “Beatific Vision.” It's the principle of association that we learn in fourth grade: If A = C, and B = C, then B = A.
I know this connection might seem fatuous. “It” after all is used frequently to connote something that is either understood or of utmost importance. But saying “It” when referring to sex has become commonplace. The Toxic Avenger wasn't contriving a new use of the term. “It” refers to sex because sex has come to occupy an extremely high position in our culture, so high, in fact, that it can be used to justify divorce, not to mention a slew of other wrongs. If It hasn't obtained the level of the Beatific Vision, it's getting close.
