And what madcap years they were! Every night the house was thronged with the great and near-grear: Ramon Navarro, Fatty Arbuckle, Pola Negri, Ronald Reagan! Even Rin Tin Tin would drop by occasionally to pay his respects to my purebred Österreichischer Verdammte Falafelhund bitch Mitzi!
I didn't know it at the time, but what at first seemed to be a catastrophe from which I could never recover turned out in the end to be a period of trial from which I emerged a stronger and a better person. I know now that those dark days which seemed as if they would never end formed the foundation of all my later success.
The seemingly interminable and ever higher-pitched whine suddenly was transformed into a deafening concussive blast. Someone screamed, and I felt the warm dampness of blood shrouding my face. When the smoke cleared I saw that a squad of despereate Tanzentruppe were advancing frantically across the barren chaos of the battlefield. As if in a dream I slid a hand grenade off my belt and felt the cool steel of the pin between my teeth….
As one who has seen much of life in all its varieties, who has consorted with the wise and the powerful, scaled the fabled slopes of Langpyungchung, paddled a frail native fpirtlaq up the muddy waters of the Sullamangundy, spent weekends in cheap motels with Brazilian manicurists, experimented with the rarest and the commonest of consciousness-altering substances, I now realize that these and the myriad other adventures with which I crammed my life were but desperate attempts to fill the spiritual void in it. But how can a hunger for the spiritual be assuaged by the sensual?
Today I have found the path. I fast on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. On each of the other days I allow myself eight soda crackers and a sip of Vichy water. I see visions, and the visions see me.
Twice a week God drops by for cribbage. He's into me for $135.
Autobiography © John FitzGerald, 2003
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