La journée de paperasse — that’s what today was. I don’t know if anyone born to speak French would put it that way, but a day spent with envelopes and catalogues — spent at the very bottom of the sea of intellectual life, in a stream of picayune decisions and stamp-pastings, paying bills and renewing magazine subscriptions, wondering if I can get Kathleen to see Hamlet and Wishful Drinking, or if I ought to settle for matinees; that sort of thing — requires the compensation of a bit of pretend glamour. 

If I do see Hamlet at a matinee, it will be the second time that I have seen Jude Law onstage in the middle of the afternoon, as well as the second time for seeing him onstage at any time of day. In Hamlet, I expect, he will keep his clothes on; in Indiscretions, lo these many years ago, the second-act curtain went up to reveal him wearing nothing but socks. The ladies sitting around me found this very distracting. I was reminded of the “wild on the beach” joke, the one about the male model who had to do something about his tan lines, covered most of himself in sand, and was espied by a once-sportive old lady, who ruefully remarked that, now she was too old to benefit from nature’s fecundity, &c.

They say that nudity on the stage is no longer shocking. I say that, if this were the case, actors wouldn’t go in for it. Nothing is more unnatural than public nudity, especially on the stage, where the appropriate reaction is no longer appropriate. A normal person is either going to be mildly disgusted by an actor’s undress, or else, less mildly heartsick. I resent all attempts to denature the naughtiness of nakedness.

Perhaps I’m the one who’s not normal. I have never gotten the fantasy thing down. Very attractive people make me want to start a conversation. Very attractive people who are falling out of their décolletage make me want to call for first aid — and not for me. I’m incapable of wishing for something that I couldn’t quite realistically have. Take time, for example. What I would wish for if I could wish for anything and have it would be a reversal of the speed with which time passes in life. It would fly by during childhood and drag deliciously decades later. But while such an arrangement would make a lot of sense, I can’t work up much enthusiasm for wishing that it were in place, even though, most days, I feel that I am circling the drain, with a surfer’s dispatch.

Wednesday already! If I hadn’t spent it on paperwork — if, for example, I had yielded to the very strong but evidently not overwhelming desire to watch the remaining two episodes of Body and Soul — I’d be frantic with guilt. I haven’t written a thing this week, and tomorrow’s schedule isn’t promising. I’m having lunch with a friend, and I’ve got an Orpheus concert in the evening. Another person might be capable of dashing off a few paragraphs during the intervening hours, but not I. The only thing that I could do with a couple of spare hours would be to finish looking over the contents of my in-basket. I’ll probably spend a quart d’heure or two wishing that I could go on a Viking River Cruise. 

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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