The Late-Afternoon of my Discontent

Rowboat, won't you row be back to shore? She don't want to be my friend no more. I had a decent writing project come to me recently. Not really a project, more of a damn book. I won't ever go anywhere, but it seems like a good idea. Of course, I have a lot of good ideas for books, what I lack is the discipline to maintain an emotional state for more than about six hours.

The idea of the book occurred to me while I was writing a letter I'm not going to send. I had a friend decide not to be my friend anymore. Honestly, I don't blame her. Sure, it frustrated me, but I think women continuing to talk to me is probably evidence of a severe breach in their judgment.

I wrote her a flowing letter thanking her for what she was and is, and then I told her why she was better off. She's not the only girl who deserves one of those letters.

There are four women who deserve letters. As of the inception of this idea, only one still talks to me. The letters would be my last will and testament to them before I die completely in their universe. A nice little epitaph to whatever we may have been to each other. The book would aptly be titled "Four Letters." It would have a maroon cover and be on Oprah's reading list. When I would go to Borders, there it would sit on the shelves I always walk by on my way to the real literature, hidden from the pop-reading browsers by being placed without display onto the racks.

I would go on Oprah and look terrifyingly handsome in a gray suit with a blue shirt, open collar. I would not have the ragged unkemptness of the other authors. Vital and in shape, in stark contrast to everyone's preconception of the Author of so fine a book being old and stuffy. I would draw female fans into my clutches and amass an army of semi-literate groupies. They would make a movie out of my book starring Caroline Ducey, Keira Knightly, Alexis Bledel, and Scarlett Johansson. I would start lecturing on campuses. I have no idea who would play me in the movie.

Eventually, I would tire of the droll repetition of lithe, young college girls and clandestine thirty-somethings, just as I tire of writing a string of earth sciences based best selling novels. I would meet the raven-haired love of my life in Rico, Colorado gassing up my 1965 International Scout. We would settle on a huge ranch in the San Juans where I would take up wood carving and raise between two and four boys in the way they should go, so that when they are old, they should not depart from it.

As I get old, I will take up sailing and sweep my now silver-haired bride around the world. We will have a full selection of wine aboard with which to entertain foreign celebrities and sound engineers. 20/20 will interview me on the deck of my yacht while I am moored in Turkey. I will be humble and gracious. Honest and open. The reporter would call me the "John Steinbeck of Geology."

Somewhere in the back of my mind, four women would live. Memorialized in letters.