ONE PART TEARS, FIVE PARTS PISS AND VINEGAR

Some days are better than others. I’m still processing the changes in my life since Savage Kitten and I broke up, as you can well imagine. The weirdest things are the obsessive mood swings.
I am not an operatic man, and I seldom ride roller coasters.
So this is a rather new experience.


THAT FAMOUS QUASI BRITISH RESERVE

As a child I remember fierce crying jags, as an adolescent those were impossible.
For one thing, showing your vulnerable side to the vicious natives ….. errm, I mean my Dutch grammar school classmates who hated my guts, was unthinkable. Expose your soft underbelly and those little brutes would stick a verbal shiv into it. Or just punch you.

My father always told me to keep my pecker up.
That was his way of communicating that a stiff upper lip was not a bad thing.

He, my brother, and I had much need for the stiff upper lip in those days. Being Yanks in the most viciously sanctimonious country on earth was not a blessing during the late sixties and seventies (America being so, SO, much worse than even the Nazis that many Dutch despised, loathed, and hated with a fierce self-righteous passion the country where they had so many investments and which was underwriting both their economic well-being and their freedom), and my mother was dying of cancer, which in the eyes of the ignorant savages …… errm, I mean my Dutch classmates who hated my guts, was probably as contagious as the black death and had all the hell-bound sinner connotations of leprosy. In that sense, they were very religious. Bibilical, even.
The Dutch are, in some ways, quintessential bigots.
My classmates in Valkenswaard especially so.

[No, I do not correspond with any of them, and yes, I have tried to forget most of their names.]


KEEPING MY PECKER UP

When my mother died in 1977, I managed what now seems a rather gentlemanly bit of weeping, and that was it.

My grandmother with whom I lived for three years in Berkeley died in 1981.
I managed what now seems a gentlemanly bit of weeping, and that was it.

When my father passed away in 1990, I managed what now seems a gentlemanly bit of weeping, and that was it.

My brother died in 1992, so did my father’s wife. I was very fond of both of them.
I managed what now seems a gentlemanly bit of weeping …………

Not really comfortable with emotions. Not an expressive person. Rock of stability and all that, dontcha know.
I keep my pecker up.


THE WARM AND FUZZY BITS

So you can imagine how disconcerted Savage Kitten was to discover me a few weeks ago on the kitchen floor bawling like a baby.

["Oh for crapsakes, Old Toad, what are you doing down there? Come on, get up off the floor! Please!" "But I like it down here!" "It's not right! Get your a** up! " " 'z okay, it's all clean and sh*t..." "I just washed the floor!" "I know! Nice!" "Whatever... get up!" "No! It's warm down here!" "But it's the floor!!!" "Your point is ..... ?" And so on... ]

Damn, I though she wasn’t going to be back for a while!

After twenty years of being with that woman, I have finally learned to have emotions. It just took me a while to realize that.
It’s a bit disturbing, but I am convinced I am a far better person because of it.
There’s an excitement to feeling things – she may not think so, because she has been desperately unhappy at many times in her life (do NOT ask about old-fashioned Cantonese mothers, you don’t want to know!).

This is so much better than a gentlemanly bit of weeping.
Liberating, even.
Thanks, hon, I feel more human now.


Someday, I may go back to Valkenswaard with a Glock 17 to confront those beastly aboriginals …… errm, I mean my Dutch classmates who hated my guts. No discussion necessary, I am in gonzen not interested in what they think. Just some payback.
And yes, that will be a very good day.
They will be expressly permitted a gentlemanly bit of weeping.
Should be a totally new experience for the swine.


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