Never, even in my most legally wildest dreams, did I ever think I’d be saying this, but here goes: Tom Cruise once said (albeit as Jerry Maguire), “Have you ever gotten the feeling that you aren’t completely embarrassed yet, but you glimpse tomorrow’s embarrassment?” I have glimpsed, looked, and fallen flat on my face in the puddle of embarrassment that formed such an integral part of my youth.
In my younger years, I was given a rather pithy bit of advice: “Be embarrassed, by what you do, never by what someone else does.” Now I can’t remember if the bearer of this lesson was a gorgeous psychologist or ophthalmologist, but either way I dismissed it with regrettable aplomb.
Growing up, I had friends who would partake in my embarrassing shenanigans with a youthful gusto, so missed in our fogey years. A journalist friend, and myself would spend many an hour in his flat regaling (or so we thought) all sorts of people with our erudition and pontification on subjects as diverse as Leibniz, and Captain America.
Our inebriated dialectic method meant we never had the same guest twice (we deemed that a sign of our wealth of acquaintances). Eventually, the truth dawned, and we realised that the guests were fleeing, rather than dashing out because their baby was on fire — I still can’t believe we bought that excuse.
One irate visitor, after hours of being subject to our discourse on Descartes’ method — superbly interspersed with an acoustic rendition of Johnny Lee’s Looking for Love — resorted to literary sabotage. It is alleged, he ripped out the wires of the computer on which my friend was writing his magnum opus, hence depriving the world of a classic in the Joycian mold. I did, and still do, believe my friend, even if he now — years later — ignores my calls and writes about dogs and their toilet habits (Ignatius Reilly IS having the last laugh).
My girlfriend at the time, refused to join in our discussion for a number of reasons (“there’s not enough alcohol in the world” and “because being bored into a coma is not my idea of an evening out” being just two of them). On the rare occasion that she did pander to her masochistic tendencies, she would be overwhelmed by the misogynistic tirade that usually emanated from two dipsomaniacs with a steamer trunk full of insecurities. This often resulted in her hiding the courage juice, or, heaven forbid, the guitar! We have since parted ways, and she is currently basking in the eternal sunshine of her spotless mind.
By the time my friend and I realised that people were laughing at us, we were reduced by our carnal and intellectual vices to quivering masses of anti-social ectoplasm. Our embarrassment has been unsurpassed. He learned his lesson, I, however, did not.
Over the next few years, I was the Sundance Kid going solo, while Butch got married and seems to have opted for those simple canine pleasures. I partied hard, and annoyed harder, and unfortunately still do.
A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune of visiting one of the city’s colleges and saw a young man telling a group of girls why Sartre was the father of Existentialism (he pronounced it ‘eggshilism’). They sniggered, and looked longingly at the four aces smoking in the corner talking about Eat My Decaying Corpse or some other new metal band.
I wanted to walk up the lad, and tell him that it would all be for nought; that they too would run and he would suffer humiliation and embarrassment that would resign him to a shrink’s couch for aeons. But I didn’t. Any idiot who didn’t know that Søren Kierkegaard was the father of ‘eggshilism’ could go to hell.
