My World, Shaken not Stirred

I’ve ridden every horse I’ve seen. I can see in the dark. I can read every work of Proust in under an hour and can do so while pleasuring a woman. I leave nothing to be desired in the bedroom. I eat a raw steak once a month at Mastro’s and I never wait for a table. My therapist asks me for advice. I’ve fought in fourteen wars, shaken the hand of 42 presidents, I’ve dined with everyone from Godard to Tony Hawke. I’ve given gonorrhea to whole continents. I’ve seen rivers run red with the blood of my enemies. The Pope once compared me to Christ and I punched him in the face. I’m not like Christ, I’ll never die.

Michelangelo sculpted in my image. I am the Renaissance, a deity. My hair gets thicker with age. I don’t mourn the dead, I pity the living. I’ve cried only once in my life while watching a particularly beautiful sunset. I have one dream every night in which I am the last man on earth thus the richest and the most poor, the strongest and the most weak, both good and evil. I wake up at 7am. I make myself climax with my mind. I’m at work by 8. My company grossed more than Apple within its first year. I make all my assistants learn latin.

At the club I order an Old Fashioned, neat, and think about the human stain that is man. I wait for emotion to be bred out of humanity like body hair on women. When a woman says, “I love you” I say, “I am Lazarus, come from the dead.” When they ask what I find beautiful and I say paintings of falcons.

There is a harp player in the vestibule of my office. HR hired her after too many of my agents had heart attacks. They say that music is calming. Music is the sonic personification of emotion and that disgusts me. You know what I find calming? Order, fear, dominance, Russian Literature. The harp player is a distraction. I throw coins at her when I pass through the lobby.

Her incessant machine is turning the work place into a chapel. The noise like a battering ram beating its way into my office. I imagine bludgeoning the harp player with my awards from MIT. She holds the instrumenting gently but with pride. You know what should be held like that? Assault rifles, Rottweilers, Swiss prostitutes. Not harps. I hate her and I tell her so. Not with words. With my eyes.

The harp player is with me even when she’s not. In the silence of my penthouse I hear the insidious instrument. It’s invaded my head, the inside of my skull a cacophonous amphitheater, a tiny harpist inside. It’s spreading through me, a thawing feeling, like hints of spring. I have the strangest urge to donate to charities and call my mother. I pass a shelter and bring home a kitten. The music only gets louder. The strings laugh at me, wretched hyenas. “You don’t control me. I’m an island!” I punch the granite counter top. I free the kitten into the street.

I tell the harp player she must find a new office to torment. Her ceaseless playing is unraveling me. I haven’t eaten or slept. She quiets her strings and they obey her, the witch. “Would you like to try?” she asks. I don’t talk to women this long without the promise of sex so I leave. It starts up again.

I give the harp player a poisoned beverage and she’s out for 3 days. When she returns she is weak and her music reflects it. The notes are somber, sickly. I feel accomplished and buy a new suit.

I sit court-side at the Lakers game. The heaving athletes make me think of primordial man. Man is made for sport. He is given a grueling task, which he’ll either succeed or fail in. It is not obscured by ostentation or subterfuge. I think of the Coliseum. I think of trench warfare and sip my Old Fashioned. But the panting of men in front of me and roaring crowd go quiet. The game continues but in silence, like a television on mute. And then it begins. Harp music, soft at first but with growing tenacity. Each note lingers in the air, vibrates, it’s laughing again, the strings are being tickled. The celestial music is billowing out of the speakers. It drifts out of the mouths of screaming fans and through the coach’s whistle and from the rubber souled shoes that bounce off the court. The players aren’t playing anymore either, they’re dancing. Not even dancing like you do at the club, they’re dancing on point, ballerinas in jerseys. They’re doing Swan Lake. It’s disgusting. I open my mouth to scream, “prevail, men, we dance for no one!” but only more music comes out. There’s a string quartet in my lungs. The louder I scream, the more angelic it sounds. It’s clouding my vision. I’m no longer sure what thoughts are my own. I try to conjure images of nude women, whaling ships, animal pelts. But all I see when I close my eyes are waterfalls.