High life
Flying high
Taki
Iwrite this 30,000 feet in the air, on board a KLM 747, sitting next to a pleasantly plump American lady with a ham-like face who began the conversation by informing me that she had been celibate for six months due to a bladder infection.
Now for the life of me I don't know what comes over people when they're up in the air, but it's definitely something unnatural. To brag to a total stranger about one's celibacy is understandable — I do it all the time — but to go into details about bladders and things is a no-no. The rot, of course, began with LBJ, who made it a habit to drop his trousers in front of the press and show them his latest scar. Thank God my neighbour was a bit more res- trained.
Flying, I guess, makes many Americans nervous nowadays, and I don't blame them. Being blamed for all the world's ills as they are cannot be conducive to going up in the air, what with bombs, doors that fly off in mid-air and the odd swarthy type holding a hand grenade. But fly we must, and my fourth vodka of the night is starting to make me feel omnipotent.
Mind you, I was very sad to leave the Big Bagel this time. Although I complain about it non-stop, this year was so much fun I finally left under doctor's orders. It began with the Christmas parties, was followed by the Washington inaugural, and continued along the Mortimer's, Canal Bar and Nell's axis. Which meant I slept less in 1989 than I did that infamous week nine years ago this July when I a) fell madly in love, b) rented Bruern Abbey, c) lost everything gambling in one night, d) gave away an extremely expensive Van Dongen oil painting to a hustler who complained that I had so much and he had nothing; which led to e) my father finding out how generous I was with strangers, thinking I had turned queer and cutting me off for a year or two.
Oh, well, this time there was no financial damage. There are no casinos in the Bagel, so even if one gets totally drunk and the worst comes to the worst, one goes home to the wife. And as I am having these parting thoughts about the Big Bagel, I must say the last thing I will ever say about my old friend Salman (better read than dead) Rushdie. Two weeks ago PEN called a rally on his behalf, one that turned into an anti-Bush and anti-American tantrum by the scribes. Christopher Hitchens gave such a fiery speech, he had even me ripping up Bush posters. He quoted Heine and Shelley, and his 'hesitant, poltroonish noises from the man who styles himself the leader of the Free World, had the crowd racing outside and throwing their old type- writers (not their word processors) against cops, soldiers and other figures of the establishment.
All this was fine, but the good writers forgot a few simple facts. First, if Rushdie is allowed to go underground and be protected at taxpayers' expense for having `oversold' his book, why can't booksellers be allowed to protect their employees, who for some strange reason cannot be pro- tected by taxpayers' money and are in the forefront of the Muslim attack?
Second, if America was the first nation to sever diplomatic relations ten years ago and label Iran a terrorist nation why was so much dirt heaped on poor Uncle Sam? Liberals, as they like to call themselves, adore to excoriate the West even when the East is at fault, and find fault with the system even when it is the greed of a Rushdie that started the whole mess in the first place. In my next book I have a dream sequence in which I name PEN members who are practising necrophiles, and if one of them sues me I expect a rally in my favour for a change. (The seventh vodka was the best one yet.)
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