Page 8 - Asheville NC Revised2

“I’ve long ago learned to appreciate the values of family and country,” I said. “Each day I start fresh in the search for truth, and am well on the way to a synthesis of me and my culture.”
“Ahhh. A rebel with a cautious cause,” she said and laughed with unexpectedly macho ho ho’s. “Tell you what. Give me an hour of your melodramatic time soon and we’ll see whether we dwell on the same philosophical continent.”
“Done. Next Thursday at one.” I felt a tingle in my loins and a flush on my face. “Now I have to fill this trash bag with shredded secrets like Olli North’s secretary babe or my many bosses may send me back to the mean streets.”
“Au revoir,” she said, flowing out the door. I turned on the loud shredder and contemplated the joys and sorrows of our possible future. Perhaps she could convert me to monogamy. And even if it didn’t work we’d at least learn something. The greater the philosophical difference in love, the more you can discover.
***
So you see, not only was I eccentric in my sexual practices, I’d also grown uncomfortably into a radical liberal, trying to believe that society urgently needed profound transforming while preserving the noble good that was.
But how could I maintain my revolutionary edge when Americans seemed happier than ever, the Cold War over, and technology uncovering ever larger gold mines of life transforming products? Was I just a bundle of reactions against some childish resentments as Grave implied.? Or even worse, was I a zombie of what they say is the liberal media? After all, the most profound emotional moment of my childhood was when they had to shoot rabid Old Yeller. Before grade school, my true love was a cinematic Shirley Jones in the River City moonlight being conned and wooed by the phony music man.
And, unlike most radical liberals who wanted to shoot their TVs, I loved my seventy channels. It was the one constant of a sad social life. And easily rationalized by the fact that twelve stations were documentary and news, six sports and one weather. Not to mention unlimited Star Treks, M*A*S*H-es, and live, from New York It’s Saturday Night. All the while wielding a nimble remote ensuring that one rarely had to watch, and never had to listen to, the ever more insulting commercials. “Don’t shoot it, mute it,” I maintained.
The answer to these questions of commitment and authenticity lay somewhere in my past I was sure.