The Pleasure's all Mine

Have you ever read On the Pleasure of Hating by William Hazlitt? It’s a little book of essays by a very brilliant guy and it’s lively and relatable and inspiring because he says stuff like this: “Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men. The white streak in our own fortunes is brightened (or just rendered visible) by making all around it as dark as possible; so the rainbow paints its form upon the cloud. Is it pride? Is it envy? Is it the force of contrast? Is it weakness or malice? But so it is, that there is a secret affinity, a hankering after evil in the human mind, and that it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction. Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.”

Inspired by Hazlitt, I am making a list of things I hate and love which is fun and actuated by two feelings: hate and love (or, looking at it another way around—love and hate.) The list includes things excrescences like Wagner and that one writer who I really, really loathe but whose name I can’t say because I did once before and it upset some people who really, really love this writer and I’m worried if I do say it that you won’t love me. To him, this writer, I would like to say, go fuck yourself, but I can’t, because he’s dead. Tough luck.

Which brings me to a writer I love who is not dead. I love many writers—of varied living status—but at the moment I’m thinking of Karl Ove Knausgaard. If I could meet him I would say “hi”. He’s a genius and seems like a likeable guy and I’m so lucky he wrote his memoirs and I get to read them. (That’s how I feel about his memoirs but don’t ask me about his apocalyptic novels.) I know a lot of people don’t like Knausgaard to which I just say “it takes all kinds” and since I’m feeling combative I will also take this moment to mention that Joseph Mitchell is still the greatest American writer of all time and if you disagree I challenge you to a fist fight atop a table in Mcsorley’s Wonderful Saloon. We’ll duke it out. Say next Tuesday? Let me just move some things around first (I’m very busy) and I’ll try to be there.

Back to Wagner: if you want to talk to me about Wagner, don’t. I don’t recommend it. It won’t do you any good. His music is puerile, maudlin, pretentious, smarmy and false. He’s not another composer that isn’t Wagner, which is his fault. He’s not Schubert or Brahms or Bach. What more is there to be said?

I love Bach. Which brings me to have you heard the pianist Glenn Gould? Here’s a photo of me dressed up as him for Halloween, which is, in retrospect, total sacrilege. Because I love him. I was made to love him. Worship and adore him. Hey, hey, hey. At least when he is playing Bach—don’t listen to his Mozart; he has no idea. Just ask Evan.

Last on my list: 2 that I love, 3 that I hate, which makes 4 altogether. You do the math.

Sushi. It’s food wrapped in seaweed. What? Disgusting! Unimaginable! Even the name: Sea Weed. You’ve got to be kidding me. My partner to whom I am married (hate the words “husband” and “wife”) whose name happens to be James (which happens to be a name that I love even if it is eerily close to my first boyfriend’s name which was also James except with a “y” at the end which actually made it “Jamey” which is totally different so I guess it’s ok?) wanted to meet at a Sea Weed restaurant I mean Sushi place when we first started dating and you know what I said? I said okay because they also had beer. When we were there I just drank beer and ate pickled ginger and hoped James wouldn’t notice my lack of seaweed-encased-food-eating but he did and was surprised nay dismayed but by careful stratagems and management on my side, laced with false promises to “give Sushi a chance” (as if!) I eventually convinced him to marry me anyhow. Which just goes to show you that even Sushi lovers—who tend to be the kind of misguided people who think they could never be with someone who doesn’t like Sushi—sometimes get taken in. To make things even, I guess, James doesn’t like pie. Even or especially not Cherry pie. But I still love him. I do…

Ah, love. Which brings me to another time when James had had a lot of beer because it was his birthday and I was trying to get him out of the bar and home to sleep it off but he was a happy, childlike drunk who kept dodging me and sneakily ordering more beer and laughing at everything, including me as I tried to convince him that he’d had one too many and it was time to reel it in. I did finally get him out of there and we were ambling along toward home when suddenly we spied—looming gigantically through the hallowed mists of downtown Portland—a cherry-picker; not bothering anybody, just quietly parked alongside the sidewalk …asleep by the looks of it, probably recuperating from a long days toil. James lit up at the sight and stopped in his tracks. I could tell he was thinking about scaling it and hopping into the cab. It’s a thing we all think about, of course, but we don’t do it, probably because we haven’t had enough beer. Nine times out of time that’s the reason. But that wasn’t James’s problem and I could tell right away that it was going to be a struggle between him and the cherry-picker and the cherry-picker was, although still groggy, clearly becoming annoyed at having been roused from what must have been a delicious slumber. James looked up at it fondly. No no let it be, I said, but before I could stop him, up the picker he went. Which wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world except that he couldn’t seem to work out how to come back down. I stood below, calling him—by turns encouraging or admonishing—but he wouldn’t budge. He just clung to the top of the thing, giggling like a drunk baby.

I was working as a nanny at the time, so finally, out of ideas and recognizing the undeniable similarities between my young charges and the inebriated specimen with whom I was now dealing, I had a brilliant thought. “Well, I’m leaving now, come on,” I said, and simply walked away, all purposeful and like that was that. I knew or hoped I knew that he would come down …as long as I didn’t look back. I longed to turn around and see if my plan was working, but if I did, the game was up. Sure enough, down he scrambled, “hey, wait!” and came stumbling up beside me. All was well, we were making good progress toward home, where I planned to have a long pee followed by a longer sleep, when I suddenly realized he was no longer beside me. I turned and spotted him a few yards behind, lying on his back on a parking strip. I went and stood above him, hands on my hips, clad in nothing but a frown and also my clothes and shoes that I had been wearing all along. James peered up at me from the dewy grass. “I’m done walking,” he said. “I’m tired. I’m going to take a nap!”

“You can nap at home,” I said, reasonably. “Get up. You’re probably lying in dog shit.”

Compelling as I thought this sounded, he did not move. He seemed irritated.

“Why are you so bossy? You’re always telling me what to do!”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Get up and I’ll stop.”

He got up, we made it home, and I’m happy to report that I kept my promise.

Just kidding. I hate Promises! And Cherry-Pickers. But I love Cherry Pie.

The End

---

great minds, etc.

James Dreams of Sushi

---

Please sign my petition: Get Rid of Slimy Wagner, that scumbag, once and for all!