So the wonder of intense aggravation, if you live through it, is verification that you are still alive, or you wouldn't be aggravated. This is like the verification that they send you from Google or Apple or any of the myriad technical systems that have ruined our ability to be present and make eye contact, that you apparently need to survive in today's so-called society. Or, as my friend Steve calls it, anti-social networking.
Having spent the entire morning, after my early swim which I imagined would leave me clear-headed for the day, at the Apple Store, I forgot all my passwords, being a victim of exhaustion, I hope it is, and not (if I could make the print smaller, I would, so see it as small:) age. The computer stuff has driven me almost to the brink of madness, or perhaps I have slipped over the brink, and simply imagine I can still function.
The Good News, though, is Ricardo, a truck driver I picked up during my move, I can't remember exactly where. But he gave me his number, and so, though I have perhaps lost my mind, I did have my own truck, which came to the Target-- or, as they called it at the nail salon-- Tahr-zhay-- in Westwood to pick up the furnishings I bought. That is my decor, along with some stuff from Ikea which will comfort me except they sent three duvet covers and no duvet. Oh well, it's a challenge being young, especially at my age.
The one book I thought to order ahead of coming here, to have on my desk which is yet to be assembled, is J.I Rodale, The Synonym Finder, that I have always used, and which says on its cover "ALL TIME CLASSIC SINCE 1961" which I guess, in my way, I, too have been. So I am going to study it for other words besides hardship, that I prefer not to think in terms of, and challenge, that sounds really boring, especially when you have been through several days of them.
But there is the blessing of Ricardo, and more, the Apple store, which even as it was driving me crazier, afforded me a glimpse of how lucky--perhaps even blessed-- I really am. In my late youth, when I was staying at my loved friend Diane's apartment in San Francisco, I actually went out with Larry King. I know-- but I was lonely and desperate and I had done his show in DC I think it was though I can't remember clearly where. I was on the air with one of those fascists who were in charge of our government at the time, and still being cute, though I don't think it would have mattered, Larry King hit on me.
You need to understand that I had prevailed against this official-- I can't remember who exactly it was, as names elude me at this bend of the road, but I'll remember later. It was one of those Nixon guys, and I had been prepared for the show by Floyd Abrams, who was then considered out great 1st Amendment attorney, though it was before I met Gary Bostwick who i think unofficially can claim the title. So I actually put him away on the air, this-- wait, I have to look up a synonym for fascist so I don't repeat myself--autocratic, that works I think-- bastard-- that one I didn't need to search for. I know he was high in the cabinet of Nixon. But I bested him on the air, and Larry passed me a note--this was his radio show-- that read "Want to fool around?"
Well, understand I was long a widow and lonely and still publicity mad, so I agreed to go out with him. He caught up with me in San Francisco, where I was temporarily in Diane's apartment on my way to wherever I was going to live next. You need to know about Diane that she has exquisite taste, and had decorated the place past beauty, and he was sitting in one of her great high-backed chairs and I wouldn't let him smoke, while he waited for me to finish up what I was working on. Not being able to smoke, he said "What'll I do?" And I said "I don't care." So not being able to smoke, he fell asleep.
Then we went out to dinner, and he was a complete putz. But I was still lonely. So I agreed to go out with him another time, at which moment he had to go to another city from which he called me and talked dirty. And I still didn't hang up.
But then, Fate, or God, or Luck, or all of them, intervened, and he had a heart attack-- not that I wished it on him. Right after that Angie Dickinson took charge of his recovery, and afterwards he dumped her anyway. The power of the Media.
So there I was in the Apple store in Century City, when who should be leaning against the wall looking REALLY old, which if we are lucky we all become, and REALLY shriveled, which if we use enough Kiehl's we can perhaps mitigate, but Larry King himself. The only good thing about him now that I could tell, was that he, too, hates technology, and was fighting the Apple guy who was trying to help him. By the way, all those incisive questions he used to ask were handed him by his staff. I don't think he ever understood anything, really, about anybody. Thank God, if She's there, he never got a chance with me.
One of those attorney generals under Nixon. That's who it was I was smarter than on his radio show. I'll remember later. Or maybe I can Google it. I do remember the name of one attorney general I sat next to at a dinner at whatever high-end club it was that Tongsun Park, an old friend before he got into all the trouble for bribing everybody, gave, where I was seated next to ex-Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. As I had become loving friends with Diane Brown, she was at the time, I subscribed to her philosophy then, -- that there was no evil in the world-- only the absence of Good. So at that dinner I expressed that view aloud. And Richard Kleindienst said, "Oh there's Evil in the world-- you better believe it." I guess he was in a position to know.
