A Final Farewell to Horatio Alger

A couple of days ago, I had an interview with a production company. Executive Assistant - the same position in "Swimming With Sharks." (Nicer boss, though.) I was the 45th applicant; the job is very desirable. If I get it, I'll be handed my dreams. After working very hard for three to five years making coffee and walking the dog, they'll set me up to direct. Or act. Or produce. Whatever I ask for.

Understandably, I am once again thinking about the New American Dream. I think I'm right about what I said in the Manifesto -- it isn't about freedom or self government. It isn't about picking yourself up by the bootstraps, rising to the top through talent and hard work. The New American Dream is about luck.

We don't want to earn lots of money; we want it to be given. Marry rich, win the lottery, be picked out of a crowd by a talent agent. Luck into the right amount of the right corporate stock. Forget about learning curves and dues-paying; that stuff is for suckers.

It's the same with beauty. Models aren't supposed to work out and starve themselves anymore. Read any recent starlet interview. It's about pigging out on burgers and staying stick thin - "blessed with a high metabolism." They're all very "down to earth." None of them wear makeup, or dye their hair, or have stylists. None of them had liposuction or breast implants.

Right.

It's something I don't understand, this national preoccupation with luck. Divine mandate, perhaps. The arbitrary favor of God. To me, luck is a let down. Luck means you haven't done anything right - you just got lucky. How stressful to have so little control over your life, never to point at cause and effect. How impossible to learn without If . . . Then.

I can't envy the lucky because I don't respect them for it. Yes, I was born very smart. That says nothing about who I am. What's wortwhile is how I use it, the hours I spend reading and where I choose to apply it. Val is incredibly beautiful; she's also spent many years practicing the bassoon. Which, in the end, reveals her character? For which, conversely, does she get the most compliments? Why is the value in fortune, not choice?

I can't imagine how we came to this point. Game shows, perhaps. The population explosion. Slient Majority homogeneity.

Maybe it's just an excuse for failure.

Whereforeword

Today, I slept with Patrick. This is not in any way an unusual activity - in fact, it is the official pasttime of the Trick Household. Our rabid interest in sex has rendered other forms of entertainment obsolete, and may bode a complete collapse of the home electronics market. We might spend more time engaged in bed than most people do eating.

I doubt this is relevant to your life, unless you are Patrick. Bear with me.

Afterward, sprawled naked across the bed and unable to move my legs or form words, a very strange thought occured to me. Roughly translated, it was, "how can I possibly do anything after this? What is the follow up?"

I think I have spent much of my life trying not to be satisfied. On a certain level, it's just that I like to improve my surroundings. If I could make something better, why wouldn't I? Satisfaction nulls drive, and without drive, wherefore creation?

Here I am, lying in bed, more relaxed and happy than I've ever been. Here of all places, I stare in the face of my greatest fear. The thing about climbing a mountain is you look down from the top and think, "where do I go now?"

This may be why some people OD on drugs.

I'm not all that scared now, not really. I still have my work; I still have my teeth. Tomorrow, my life will go on in valiant struggle for all that is good and noble. But as for tonight . . . I'm completely ruined.