The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

by Neil McKinnon

  “What’s that, Purveyor of Pet Pie?”

  “I generally preferred dining at Don Emilio’s as, frankly, the food was better.”

  Dear Loveworn

  IT WAS THE RAINY SEASON. MY father, only ten years old, sat near an open doorway and tried to guess the position of the sun behind the elephant-grey blanket that covered the sky. Water ran over his feet below the edge of the sidewalk. He heard the squeak before he saw the small bedraggled creature and without a thought he reached out and snatched a mouse from the swirling current.

  “Did you get it?” asked Ramon, aged eight, who was passing by on his way to buy corn so his mother could make tortillas.

  “Yes I did. Stay and we’ll catch one for you.”

  Fleeting, but it was the first meeting between Papa and Ramon Ortega. Years later Señor Ortega would bear the weight of my life in his hands much as my father had held the tiny mouse.

  Alphonso’s success in court made it necessary for me to seek regular employment. I had accumulated a great deal of insight into the art of love, or rather on the difficulties that love poses, so I determined that I could be useful to both humanity and my bank book by sharing my expertise.

  I was approaching the midpoint on my journey to the three score and ten that we have all been promised. Most commentators say that males reach the peak of their sexual ability at a much younger age, but just as acquiring new knowledge opens up more knowledge to acquire, I maintain that a properly informed and practiced man never reaches his peak. This claim, of course, is predicated on the expectation that a lover will continue to widen the scope of the subject by memorizing new landmarks in the dominion of passion and learning by heart every significant signpost on life’s erotic highway.

  I was a social person and did not relish the idea of putting in the hours of solitude required to transcribe the entire body of lore that I had accumulated. Therefore, I decided to approach Señor Ramon Ortega who was the senior editor of El Plagio, the largest newspaper in the country — the same Señor Ortega who, as a boy, watched my father catch the wet mouse and who became his lifelong friend. To avoid creating a book I had decided that the best way to reach a large audience was to write a regular column. To this end I constructed a sample and made an appointment. In retrospect I’m afraid that my small column was too sophisticated. I had titled it The Odds of Love and the señor read it out loud:

  Three aspects of any romantic association are love, friendship, and sex. Each partner brings into the alliance different expectations concerning these factors. For each individual there are fifteen possible ways the expectations can be combined, and thus for two people, there is less than a four percent chance they will see eye-to-eye. Given the myriad of other issues facing any couple, it might be safer to bet on the exact moment of a shooting star than to wager on the prospect of a successful relationship.

  Take, for example, the curious case of Harriet and Salvadore, both immigrants to our nation and both lonely people. Outwardly they had much in common — each had a desire for love and friendship. However, the third factor proved problematic.

  From the time of his earliest memories people had marvelled at certain of Salvadore’s physical features. Situated on top of his average-sized body was an extremely tiny head matched perfectly at the other end by a pair of the smallest feet anyone in his home town of Plonsk had ever seen. The Lord had compensated, however, by being overly generous in another area. From the first “My God it’s gargantuan” expleted by the midwife who delivered him, to the “It’s really true” uttered in awe by the housewife who had perched in a tree outside his bedroom window, he had grown used to hearing exclamations of surprise, jealousy, lust and all other manner of emotions. The appendage that caused such outpourings grew to be Salvadore’s proudest possession. Sometimes, to counter the feeling of inferiority occasioned by malicious comments about his head or feet, he would surreptitiously display his famous accoutrement. The predilection for public display would have landed other males in difficulty. In Salvadore’s case, however, people came from miles around just to see if the rumours were true. His family, tired of being spied upon, encouraged him to emigrate.

  Señor Ortega stopped reading, shook his head and looked at me with a sad smile on his face. “Did you really write this?” he asked.

  “Of course I did. I don’t know any ghostwriters.”

  “Perhaps you should find one,” he said. “I knew your father for years. He caused me to forget my mother’s tortillas. Are you sure you’re not adopted?”

  “I don’t know why people always ask me that,” I said but the señor had again started to read:

  Harriet came to this country because she had over-imbibed vino at her close friend’s wedding — over-imbibed to the extent that she had carelessly unlatched the gate on her moral fence. It swung open and the groom’s best man tip-toed through, and then he wandered into her uncharted territory. The journey happened at the reception as they giggled together under the banquet table where they had crawled to tie Father Daniel’s shoes together. She preserved no memory of the event and thus, when she found herself pregnant, Harriet surmised that God had chosen her for the next virgin birth. Father Daniel, fully recovered from a bad fall he had sustained just after the wedding banquet, assured her that this was unlikely and that her condition probably had more to do with the Devil than with God. Her mother, who had fainted at the news, took Harriet aside and added her own morsel of wisdom. “Every man has some of the Devil in him,” she said, “and the size of a man’s organ is a barometer which measures the extent that the Devil has gained possession of his soul. The bigger he is the more Satan has a foothold. Remember forever, the smaller the better.” Both her mother and Father Daniel encouraged Harriet to move away to have her baby. The groom’s best man, who was married, decided that discretion was an attractive characteristic and chose to remain silent.

  Harriet met Salvadore a few years later when she stopped her Volkswagen to rescue him. He was being pursued by a few overheated matrons intent on a second look after he had carelessly dropped his bathing trunks at a local beach. He jumped into her car and the attraction was instant. Harriet, brimming with loneliness, had much to give. Salvadore, always an object of curiosity, was starved for affection. They became friends. Then they fell in love and soon they were making wedding plans.

  Harriet had not forgotten her mother’s words, so on their wedding night when Salvadore revealed the enormity of his desire she knew that it was not God’s generosity that was involved. It was clear that the Devil had staked out his territory, and a very large territory it was, too. Salvadore, oblivious to her consternation, assumed that she was as amazed and proud as he, and he whispered in her ear that she was a very lucky girl, indeed. Harriet donned a bathrobe, left the hotel, and walked to the nearest church where she took refuge until the marriage could be annulled.

  In any romance there is both a giver of love and a recipient. Unfortunately, these two look at their relationship from distinct angles. Just as two people standing back-to-back on the top of a mountain have differing views of the world, so too will a couple poised on the crest of love experience disparate vistas. The perspective of the lover is never the same as that of the beloved for it is not possible for one individual at the same time to act as both purveyor and object of love. Therefore, as with Harriet and Salvadore, expectations will always differ.

  Señor Ortega put down my manuscript. “Do you think you could keep this drivel up for fifty-two weeks a year?” he asked. “I can’t allow tripe in my publication. We would lose our readership. The illiterate do not buy newspapers. And your statistics … they remind me of an old lunatic I heard of years ago who wrote an entire medical text based on the fact that each human has on average one breast and one testicle.”

  He then contorted his face as if he had just discovered a dead mouse on his doorstep and said, “Out of respect for your father and against my better judgement, I’m going to hire you. My advice columnist, Señorita Gloria
Amorio has just quit and moved on to work for a prominent politician. Her job is available if you want it.”

  “What did she do?” I asked.

  “She dispensed counsel to readers who sent in problems.” She did this by doing research and interviewing experts. She then wrote a succinct reply to each letter. We publish a selection of the letters and replies in every edition of the paper. It is similar to what you are proposing as many of the letters deal with problems encountered in the various stages of a relationship. Taken together they constitute a primer on how to bewitch, hitch, bitch, and ditch. We call the column Amorio en amor although around the office it is popularly known as The Bellyachers Guide to Boffing.”

  When I related all this to Adriana she said, “You mean you were hired after he read that?” She shook her head, not unlike the way Señor Ortega had all those years ago. “Did you take the job? What became of Salvadore and his gigantic friend?”

  “If you’ll bear with me, I’ll tell you.”

  But Adriana’s train of thought rarely stops for a crossing. “I know all men aren’t created equal,” she said. “I discovered that God wasn’t fair when I met you. If He truly did compensate for a person’s shortcomings, you would wear the largest hat in the country.”

  “No one has ever complained, my little glue pot,” I said.

  “Maybe they were left speechless by the sheer disappointment after a large expectation,” she chortled.

  Not being the type of man to throw his last dollar into the pot when the game is lost, I accepted Señor Ortega’s offer. I soon discovered that the letters submitted for my advice ranged from the mundane to the erotic and covered subjects as widely disparate as animal husbandry, political associations and the location of the most sensual spot on a lover’s anatomy. I also determined that research was unnecessary as my life experience covered such a wide range of territory that I needed no further study in the areas where questions were posed. For the same reason I had no need to consult experts.

  My column became popular. I was soon receiving queries from abroad in addition to the ones flooding in from every corner of the country. I will not bore you with too great a selection as many of you no doubt recall reading them when they appeared in El Plagio. However, I have chosen a few that demonstrate my wide knowledge and illustrate my unique ability to rescue travelers stranded by all sorts of life’s predicaments. The paper gave me the name Loveworn:

  DEAR LOVEWORN: I am an eighty-two-year-old widower. I suffer from haemorrhoids, arthritis, flatulence, diabetes, heart disease, dizzy spells, halitosis, high blood pressure, and incontinence. My problem is that my hair is thinning. Do you think it’s a sign of something serious?

  HAIR TODAY DEAR HAIR: Yes I do. Thin hair will definitely reduce your sex appeal.

  DEAR LOVEWORN: I confessed to Father Gregory that I indulge in what he calls the solitary vice. He said it was the most destructive pastime ever practiced by sinful man and precipitates warts, blindness, impotence, sterility, heart disease, deafness, and cancer. I’m twenty-eight and according to Father Gregory I should be dead by now. Is he pulling a fast one?

  SOLITARY SAM

  DEAR SOLITARY: No. I think you are the one doing the pulling. You should know that self-abuse is precipitated by eating the wrong foods. Candies, cloves, peppermints, tea and coffee have sent thousands to eternal damnation. However, research has now shown that peppermint is okay.

  DEAR LOVEWORN: My husband, Alex, asked me to buy some sexy underwear. I thought it would spice up our marriage so I did. When I went to put it on, I couldn’t because Alex was wearing it. This caused a big fight which only ended when we agreed to take turns wearing the underwear. Everything is great when I have it on, but when it’s Alex’s turn all he wants to do is look at himself in the mirror. Any suggestions?

  TAKING TURNS DEAR TURNS: You only have a problem if you hear the mirror tell Alex that he is the fairest one of all.

  DEAR LOVEWORN: Last Friday was my husband’s birthday. After work a bunch of the guys took him out for drinks. He was feeling no pain by the time he came home so he stopped on the doorstep of our house, exposed himself, and tied a pink ribbon around his you-know-what. Then he rang the doorbell expecting me to answer. Unfortunately, I had arranged a surprise birthday party. All of our friends and neighbours were inside waiting to shout, “Happy Birthday.” They were the ones who were surprised. He’s done stuff like this before, Loveworn. Do you think I should leave him?

  SURPRISED

  DEAR SURPRISED: No, I don’t. A boy wearing pink isn’t that much of a faux pas.

  DEAR LOVEWORN: How big is an average penis?

  SHORTY

  DEAR SHORTY: The size of a penis depends on its global positioning, the phase of the moon, and a multiplicity of metaphysical factors. For example, during January in Saskatchewan the penis becomes completely dimensionless. Similarly, its magnitude has been known to go missing around the time of one’s second anniversary.

  DEAR LOVEWORN: I’m a male student in my first year at university. In my program I’m forced to take a classics course which I don’t think is relevant. Can you tell me why I have to know about old Greek guys like Pericles or Sophocles when my main interest is athletics?

  PERPLEXED

  DEAR PERPLEXED: The ancient Greeks have much to say to people in today’s world. For example, Pericles was a famous statesman who pioneered democracy for ordinary citizens. Sophocles wrote incredible plays. Themistocles was a brilliant military man. If you are not interested in politics, literature or the military perhaps you may find inspiration in the life of another famous Athenian, the great Greek athletic supporter, Testicles.

  DEAR LOVEWORN: What is a ménage à trois?

  CURIOUS

  DEAR CURIOUS: Ménage à trois is a French phrase used in the science of climatology. It means when hell freezes over.

  We were sitting on my patio. Adriana scooped salsa onto a taco chip and said, “It’s unfortunate the paper didn’t call you Loveworm. The image would have been accurate.” She cackled and reached for another chip. “Thank God no one would be silly enough to take your advice. How long was it before Señor Ortega lost his patience?”

  She had accidentally driven down my hidden street. One morning, after I had been working for a few months, Señor Ortega visited my desk carrying a newspaper clipping. He got right to the point. “We’re being sued,” he said. “Did you really advise Cecilia X. to hack off her boyfriend’s penis?”

  “No, I didn’t. There must be some misunderstanding.”

  “She says you did. What was her query?”

  I looked in my files. “She wrote that she was in a brand new relationship and that she had just discovered that her boyfriend liked to sit next to old ladies in church and expose himself during the sermon. She asked me what she should do.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her to end the relationship.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he said. “I have your reply here.” He read from the clipping. “Dear Cecilia: When something in a relationship is inappropriate, you must cut it off.”

  “I meant the relationship,” I said.

  “So do I,” he replied. “Consider ours severed.”

  Adriana choked on her taco chip. “Most people use their brains to survive. It’s easy to see that you have a death wish. Was that the end of your newspaper career, or did you continue to ride on the coattails of your father’s friendships?”

  “No, my tender taco, I never wrote another column. The paper lost the lawsuit but Señor Ortega forgave me. In fact, he promised to help me find other employment.”

  “What do you mean, other employment?”

  He said to contact him if I ever needed a job in the future and he would be happy to recommend me, but only as a taste tester in a cyanide factory.”

  “You deserved that,” she said.

  “I disagree. What did I do wrong?”

  “Yours was the sin of omission. You neglected to educate and enligh
ten. There are many ridiculous myths about sex and intimate relationships that are held by otherwise rational people. You let them down.

  “In the last century physicians believed that excessive chastity could be harmful to men because it was thought that stored semen turned to poison. Did you know that at one time religious law decreed sex to be illegal on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, that departure from the missionary position carried the penalty of seven years penance, that uncovered piano legs were considered shameful eroticism, and the one that really irritates, that the word hysterical is derived from the Greek word for womb, hence the word hysterectomy?

  “The old mythologies have been replaced by modern ones — masturbation and homosexuality are considered wrong in many religions for no logical reason. Likewise, so is birth control. Admit it. You had an opportunity to enlighten and you wasted it.”

  She was right, of course. Through all these years I have carried the awareness that I did not use my time productively and many of my answers were too simple. I fully realized that a husband wearing pink in public could cause deep rooted psychological trauma.

  Bingo

  AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, Gandhi owned few worldly goods: a pair of glasses, a bowl, a spoon, and sandals. Unlike Gandhi, I am much too fond of comfort to throw away the few material possessions I have left. Instead, I have made it my life’s mission to unburden myself of many of the inhibitions that one accumulates simply by living in this world. I have done this hoping it will help in resolving the paradox one encounters with the realization that sex is simultaneously necessary and sinful, two attributes that can combine to put even the most mentally aware individual into a quagmire of guilt and indecision. Adriana scoffs: she says that removing inhibitions resolves internal conflict in the same manner that cutting a power line removes the requirement to stop at a red light.