Wednesday, July 30, 2008

XIII: In Which I Ponder an Alternative Not Pursued

I have just returned from a week at the beach with my good friend CC, my mom, my "Aunt" Carole, my sister, my brother-in-law, and, most notably, my two little nieces, ages 5 and 3, who are truly delightful girls and about whom more will be said later.

This was the first time in many years I've made this trip without wife in tow and the first time in about as many that I didn't disappear every day to a golf course (a practice that may at least in part explain why I am today a reluctant bachelor). CC filled in for my future ex and was a passable substitute during sunlight, providing sharp repartee and useful insights, but, charming though he may be, was of no value at all when bedtime came, because that's not how we do. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I do not much care for the beach, especially a beach beside a bay, which is where we vacationed, because I have shpilkes and the whole point of the beach is to sit around and do nothing. Occasionally you pretend to read but all the kibitzing around you makes that pretty much impossible, especially when there are young children about (over the course of the week I knocked off only about 30 pages of The Intuitionist, which is a pretty easy read; good too, at least so far). Ocean beaches are better because oceans have waves--I love bodysurfing--but a bay offers up little more than tranquil, cold, jellyfish-infested waters. Which is why I usually end up at a golf course, I suppose. This year I passed my days shopping for and preparing meals, taking long walks with CC, and getting to know my nieces a little bit better. I don't get to see them so often because they live in western Massachusetts and I in central North Carolina, so getting to spend a week with them was a rare treat.

The older girl is very much a first child, thoughtful and cautious and very bright. The three-year-old is what I think of as a classic younger child; she's watched her older sister and her parents carefully enough to figure out which rules must be obeyed and which can be transgressed with little or no penalty, and consequently she is the freer and less predictable and funnier of the two. They spend a surprising amount of time naked and inspecting their own crotches, reminding me once again of the fine line between small children and dogs. They are both willful, but the older one is willful in a stubborn, moody, defiant sort of way, whereas the younger one just seems to know what she wants and doesn't much care what anyone else thinks. This trait was driven home when I returned from the toy store with a sock monkey for her. She took one look at it, frowned, and pronounced, "I don't like it!" My sister seemed worried that I was hurt by the rejection, but I thought it was hilarious, and I was tremendously impressed by her candor and self-assuredness. I also took it as a challenge to get the kid to like the sock monkey. Knowing that she loves Manny Ramirez--she's about the only one these days--I dubbed the sock monkey "Manny." She embraced the name but not its new owner. Strike one.

We bond over Miyazaki movies, my special nexus with the girls as I had given them a copy of My Neighbor Totoro for Hannukah, which is the Jewish Christmas in about the same way that Purim is the Jewish Halloween. This time around we watched Kiki's Delivery Service, which the girls both loved, and so did I. I hope to see them both grow into anime geeks; it'd go some way toward convincing me that I've had a positive impact on their lives.

All this hanging around with the girls got me to thinking about how my future ex-wife and I had kicked around the idea of kids for a while. It was one of the reasons we left New York City for North Carolina, in fact; we couldn't imagine raising kids in so cramped and expensive a place. My ex had said she'd eventually want kids when we married, and I was totally up for the challenge even though I felt no compelling need to add my spawn to the Earth's population, but we never got past the talking stage and eventually decided we would be perfectly happy without. I suppose we might still be together had we had kids--I can't tell you how many folks I've spoken with who've implied or outright said that having kids has kept their marriages from falling apart during the rough stretches--and if we had, we might well be recapitulating the unhappy marriages from which we arose and which we swore we had learned from. So I guess that all worked out for the best.

While I think I'd be a competent parent, I don't understand the need to become one. I can come up with selfish reasons to reproduce, but not good ones. The former include: having someone who will care about you and perhaps for you when you are old; having a project you share with your spouse that takes your attention off of each other and focuses it on people who are much more compelling; and, having a responsibility that keeps you so busy that you can't stop to think about whether your life is going the way you want it to, whether you are as happy as you could be, etc. etc. I suspect that all parents ever think about is when they will be able to steal a few moments for a nap, and the number of days until they can pack the kids off to college.

When I left the shore, the younger girl still had a pretty lousy relationship with Manny. I was heartened the night before when she had included Manny in her game of 'Duck Duck Goose' and even hugged him a few times, but then as she headed off to bed she turned to face Manny and proclaimed, "I STILL don't like him!" Strike two. On the morning I left I explained to her that I'd like to come visit Manny in western Massachusetts, which was about the only way I could get out the door without having to take Manny with me. And I haven't given up yet. I'm seriously considering sending her a Jiji doll--Jiji is one of the main characters in Kiki's Delivery Service--along with a note explaining that Jiji is looking for his best friend Manny, in hopes of achieving affection by association.

I realize now that I have devoted a considerable amount of time and thought to trying to figure out how to outsmart a three-year-old. During that time I haven't once wondered whether my life is going where I want it to or whether I'm as happy as I could be.

Maybe I am parental material after all.

So there you go.

PS For those with 10 minutes to waste, check out this Louis CK bit on kids. It's only OK at the start, but be patient. It builds to a pretty fabulous ending.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

XII: In Which I Prepare to Say Goodbye to an Old Friend, and Wonder Whether I Haven't Made a Big Mistake

I have a capacity for embarrassing sentimentality. Just the other night I was watching The Perils of Pauline, a straight-off-the-cob, entirely fictionalized biopic of Pearl White that wouldn't be worth watching even a little if not for the presence of Betty Hutton and William Demarest, when, improbably, I started to get a little misty as Betty Hutton sang "The Sewing Machine" because it reminded me that an affinity for Hutton's zaniness is something my future ex and I share. It was a weird moment--imagine crying during an episode of I Love Lucy to understand just how inappropriate and unsettling this outburst was.

So forgive me for waxing nostalgic for Donny, my 2001 Ford Focus whom I am ready to hand off to another owner. Donny isn't just the first new car I ever owned; he is the first car I ever owned, period, the result of 20 years' residence in a city in which a car is very much a liability. You know how it is with the first one, right? And Donny was a great car who not only carted me around the Triangle but also allowed me to explore such exotic destinations as Myrtle Beach, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Lewes DE, Pikesville MD, and Montclair NJ. Donny was no snob; he would go anywhere I needed him to and never groused.

Donny was also an indicator of my grudging transition from itinerant just-scratching-by musician to responsible head-of-the-household husband who just might be a father someday, maybe. I bought him just one month after my future ex and I bought our house, another signifier of that same life change, and Donny helped me embrace my inner grownup at the same time that he added another of those monthly payments that sometimes seem to define grownup life. He was a beloved anvil. I grieved the day I stupidly slid off the road and dinged up his left rear fender, dutifully duct taped shut his rear window after the automatic opener decided that open should be a permanent setting, and celebrated the day I made my last payment on him, confident that Donny and I would travel many, many more miles together. That was a little over two years ago.

Lately, though, Donny's been showing signs of his 145,000 logged miles. On a trip to and from New Jersey last month, he hesitated repeatedly when I asked him to giddyup. On a subsequent trip to Atlanta the power failures grew more frequent and more dramatic, to the point that Donny would just decide he needed to take a little rest right there in the middle of I-85. A gearhead buddy of mine listened patiently as I described Donny's problem, said it sounded like an electrical thing, and asked when I had last changed Donny's battery, an impossible question to answer. After smacking me several times about the head he recommended a new battery, which I installed. Still, with vacation at the Delaware shore approaching, I seriously considered renting a car for the trip. I mean, what if it wasn't the battery? Did I really want to deal with a breakdown on my way to the beach? And then I realized that the rental would cost about the same as my first month's payment on a new car, and I knew it was time for me and Donny to part ways.

I've known this moment was coming for a while, so I'd been doing my research and had narrowed my choices down to two. If my pockets were feeling deep and my soul feeling mid-life crisis-y, I'd be getting a Mini Cooper. If I was feeling practical, I'd get a Hyundai Elantra, a small sedan that looks an awful lot like Donny and that received a similarly strong recommendation from Consumer Reports (which recommendation had helped me decide on Donny back in '01). As luck would have it, Hyundai was offering a $1500 rebate on their '08 Elantras, which, in combination with Costco's no-haggle price, resulted in an irresistibly low price.

I bought the car last weekend. The dealer offered to take Donny in trade, but I knew they wouldn't care for him and love him in the way he deserves. On the contrary, I imagined them driving Donny to an open field and stripping him down and covering him with honey and then sitting in lawn chairs and drinking beer and watching fire ants devour him and laughing and laughing and laughing. So instead I offered Donny to a friend whose car is even less dependable than Donny is. We've settled on an installment plan that is contingent upon Donny's continued operation: $100 every two months until eight months or Donny have expired. Donny will be in good hands.

Because I left on a business trip the next day, I didn't have the opportunity to drive the Elantra until this weekend. After taking it for several spins, I've found much to love about it. It's a cool little car. It handles well and is plenty powerful. It comes with XM Radio and a CD player that plays mp3s and the stereo sounds fine. It has cruise control; it, a stereo, and air conditioning are the only options I care about.

There is, however, one problem, one I discovered today only by accident. The windshield wipers don't work. This is frequently not a problem at all, but when it is a problem--when it's raining, say--it's a doozy. I'm glad I discovered it during a non-problem period. I spoke with someone at the dealership today and cannot say that he was as anxious to see this problem fixed as I was. He acted as though it was no big deal that I had a brand new car that wouldn't currently pass inspection, and my warm fuzzy feeling about our haggle-free negotiations dissipated. It looks as though I'll be spending Monday morning at the dealership's service center rather than on the road to the Delaware shore, and I will no doubt be worrying that I've been stuck with a lemon for months to come, as I am definitely a glass-half-empty guy when it comes to big purchases.

My friend wants to collect Donny tomorrow, but what can I do? I may need him to get to Delaware. Maybe I should rent a car.

So there you go.

PS I have not yet named the Elantra. It would never have occurred to me to name my car, but my future ex-wife named her cars and it made me feel as though I was neglecting Donny by failing to name him, so name him I did. I'm considering Walter, Smoky, Maude, and Karl Hungus. Any suggestions?

PSS Turns out the guys at the plant forgot to plug the windshield wipers in. A relief, although it has me wondering what else they "forgot." The car was a dream on the trip to and from Delaware. Two days after I got home a pebble cracked the windshield. Walter is cursed, there's no doubt about it.

Friday, July 11, 2008

XI: In Which I Ignore the Advice of a Great Man

"Don't look back," Satchel Paige once famously advised, "something might be gaining on you." He also said "Work like you don't need the money; love like you never been hurt; dance like nobody's watching," so one ignores his dicta at his own peril. The man was clearly wise beyond his many, many years.

But I have been looking back lately. Not so much in that wistful "What could I have done differently?" way that doubtless afflicts a lot of us separated folks; I do some of that, of course, but not as much as I thought I would. The time for that was back when my future ex and I were trying to reconcile, I think, and that time has passed.

No, these days I'm looking back in an effort to find an anchor at a time when my life feels a little cut adrift. I'm looking back at where I've been in hopes that it will provide some clues about where I want to go.

Some of my backward turning has been the psychic equivalent of comfort food. I've returned to music I haven't listened to in 20 years or more, stuff I thought I'd never listen to again. When was the last time you checked out Katy Lied? It's a damn good album, in case you've forgotten; I had. I dug it up because I suspected its penultimate number, "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)," might be a fitting personal anthem for this period of my life, and I was right, although I am still reluctant to embrace a personal anthem that features Michael McDonald so prominently.

I also rediscovered Talking Heads, especially 77 and Fear of Music. In retrospect, I'm glad I let these records lay fallow for so long; otherwise, I doubt I would have recaptured the euphoria I felt when I first heard "Pulled Up" and "The Book I Read" and "Animals" and "Air" and "Cities," and then I'd never have experienced the joy of driving around Durham screaming "I know the animals are laughing at us/And they don't even know what a joke is!" over the blasting stereo and laughing like an idiot, or an animal.

Both of these records take me back to a time when I was just figuring out who I was, when I was emerging from my role as my older brother's kid brother and heading off in new, unprotected directions. I was leaving behind--temporarily--the pop of the Beach Boys and the Beatles and embracing music with more obvious pretenses (Dylan was my new god), reading Nietzsche and Kafka and Camus and lots and lots of Vonnegut, and discovering 'serious' cinema by folks like Scorsese and Coppola and Michael Cimino. I was turning into a pretty morose kid who, like a lot of adolescents, found a measure of happiness in my unhappiness. The exuberant neurosis of Talking Heads and the deep cynicism of Steely Dan were great fits for me. Today, what's such a pleasant surprise is how well that music holds up outside the framework of youthful angst. The Who, The Doors, and Pink Floyd, among many others, all demonstrate that the music that meant so much to me when I was young doesn't necessarily stand the test of time.

I've also reconnected with a lot of old friends. This was mostly an accident of fate, the happy coincidence of my life transition and the ascent of social networking, but regardless I'm glad for it. There is, of course, that awkward moment during initial communication when I'm asked, "So, what's new?" and I answer, "Well, my golf game's improved. Oh, and I lost my wife and my job!" but, as previously noted, many of them have endured much greater traumas, and we are soon commiserating and occasionally competing to see who's life is more Job-like. I almost always lose, my longstanding devotion to the Baltimore Orioles notwithstanding.

These reunions too take me back to a time when I was someone completely different, someone I don't expect I'd much like--too pretentious, too judgmental, too friggin' collegiate--and yet they are extraordinarily comforting. We've all grown together; our sharp edges have worn away, our arrogance and ambitions have been tempered by real life, and the deterioration of our youthful charms has forced us to develop other assets in order to get along in the world. We have weathered catastrophes we were truly incapable of imagining back then and we have survived them more or less in tact. We have figured out how to reconcile ourselves to the likelihood that we won't change the world and even to be glad for it, as changing the world is probably a lot of work and we're plenty busy as it is, thank you. We are the grownups we despised and swore we wouldn't become, and we're better people for it. And we still think that "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" is a kickass song.

Maybe this is where I'm going. Maybe I'm already there.

So there you go.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Food Interlude IV: Chopped Liver

It would be disingenuous of me to pretend I don't understand the meaning of the old saying, "What am I, chopped liver?" I get it; liver is very cheap meat, and chopped liver mixes liver with even cheaper ingredients, resulting in a low-budget product.

My problem is that good chopped liver is delicious. As in, to-die-for delicious. There are times when I want nothing so much as a good chopped liver sandwich, or even just a bissel chopped liver spread on half a bagel, zeit azoy gut. So for me, that old saying recalls the song Tramp by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, in which Carla attempts to insult Otis by saying, "Otis, you're pure country," and Otis happily replies, "That's good!" What am I, chopped liver? That's good! At least I'm not turkey loaf, or Spam, or headcheese, or blutwurst (a food that truly puts the "worst" is "wurst").

Chopped liver is an elemental food for me, one that straddles two important strands in my life. The first is my upbringing in an insular Jewish community; the second is my later foray into the glorious universe of international cuisine. Until I encountered chopped liver in this second incarnation, I thought the first was the alef and the tof. Now I know better.

My 'traditional' chopped liver recipe comes from my Aunt Carole. She learned it from her mother, who is not my grandmother because my Aunt Carole isn't really my aunt; she's my mother's best friend from before I was born, so she's always been Aunt Carole even though, as previously noted, she is not my aunt, at least not genetically. Now, my Aunt Carole insists that this recipe can only be prepared with cow's liver, but--and PLEASE don't tell her this--I have made this recipe with calves' liver and even with chicken liver and no one has ever commented, "Gee, this tastes too young/avian." Zei gezunt.

Ingredients:
1 pound liver
1 pound onions, chopped fine
3 hard-boiled eggs
some butter, some oil, some ketchup, some mayonnaise, some olive oil, some salt and pepper

1) Sauté the onions in butter and/or oil. Butter isn't kosher, nebach, but it's sooo good! Shmaltz (rendered chicken fat) is most authentic and the surest path to a massive coronary. Olive oil works and transforms a lethal dish into an almost-lethal dish.
2) Throw the liver into the fry pan with the onions and fat. Cook until the liver is cooked through. Don't be afraid to brown the liver; the brown bits add plenty of deliciousness.
3) Dump contents of fry pan into a food processor. Add the hard-boiled eggs. Here is where chopped-liver-making becomes an art. Add enough ketchup, mayo, salt, and pepper to produce the correct consistency and flavor of chopped liver. Pulse a bunch of times, until puréed. If it looks too dry, add olive oil and pulse some more. Taste, correct, taste, correct, taste, taste, taste, taste. Serve whatever is left.

Yes, my instructions are hopelessly vague. I'm not holding out on you; I simply eyeball it every time. Perhaps this skill is encoded in my genes. Perhaps it is Kabalistic, in which case go ask Madonna. I don't know whether I'd trade this skill to be handy--which, like all Jews, I am not--but such is the fate of my people. We can make chopped liver without a precise recipe but we cannot figure out how to stop a hinge from squeaking. (Hint: WD-40).

For many, many years, this was chopped liver to me, and I was extremely satisfied. Don’t get me wrong; I still find this version rapturous. The taste of it transports me to innumerable family gatherings and to occasional visits to the Carnegie Deli, all very happy memories. And it's fabulous on its own merits as well, even without any Proustian overtones.

Years of living in marginal New York City neighborhoods, however, awakened me to the availability of an unimaginable variety of international cuisines, and before long I had joined the army of chowhounds, food enthusiasts who understand that a well-prepared dish is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God.

And so I became a devotee of Mario Batali, that rare television chef who actually cooks. I own most of his cookbooks (not the NASCAR one--oy!--and not the grilling one, but all the others) and cook from them fairly regularly, as they are pretty darn good. This is how I found the recipe for Chicken Livers Toscani, which I will not reproduce here for fear of copyright infringement, but which I can link here because it was reprinted in The New York Times (scroll about two-thirds of the way down the article). Batali's recipe balances the gaminess of liver with red wine, capers, anchovies, onion, and crushed red pepper--the final ingredient really puts this dish right over the top. I prepared some tonight, then cooked some fettucine, thinned the Livers Toscani a little with some pasta water and butter (Shhh! Don't tell God!!!!), then dressed the pasta with the Livers Toscani, and it was divine. As in, to die for.

So there you go.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

X: In Which I Pander to Current Trends in Publishing

I admit it. In my fantasies, The Reluctant Bachelor morphs Pinocchio-like from a blog to a book, I make a kajillion dollars in book sales, the book is optioned for an equally successful movie in which Buddy Hackett returns from the dead to portray me (Hackett has always been my stock answer to the surprisingly frequently asked question "Who would you want to play you in the movie of your life?" and given the absurdity of the question's premise I see no reason to move off my position simply because Hackett is deceased), and I retire to a golf course. Don't tell me I'm not ambitious.

These days it seems everyone is writing a best seller about his or her--usually his--dog. I haven't read any of these books, but I've read about and around them enough to glean that they typically recount how a dog miraculously, unexpectedly, and at exactly the right moment changed the author's life. The dog may be incredibly smart, like Peabody; heroic, like Tippy the Wonder Dog; or just flat-out annoying, like Scrappy Doo; but in the end, the author learns A Valuable Lesson From a Most Unlikely Source. (My gut instinct, for what it's worth, is that men tend to be the authors of these books because the relationship between human and dog is about as complicated an emotional bond as most men can handle or understand. Men would write books about the women who have changed their lives, but the truth is that the subject is simply too complex for us. It's as though those changes occur on a frequency we can't hear. Maybe our dogs can hear it? This is a line of inquiry worth pursuing, perhaps. When my book is sold, I will set my assistant on the task, right after she makes my tee time.)

As luck would have it, I am a man in possession of two dogs. When I was a married man, my wife did the heavy lifting in this area and so I was in no position to write about the canines, as our interactions were as infrequent and impersonal as the hallway passings of boarding house residents on their way to and from the bathroom. But for the last five months--since my future ex-wife and I separated--I have been the dogs' primary caretaker, and I have had ample opportunity to observe them carefully. Here is what I now know.

Since the departure of my future ex-wife, Daisy has been the girl in my life. She is a mix breed approximately nine years old; she was fully grown when she was found on the streets, so no one knows exactly how old she is, but the vet tells me that her tartar buildup is about nine years' worth just before recommending that I have her teeth cleaned, which I pretend not to hear as it usually comes at the end of a visit that has already lightened my wallet by a couple hundred dollars. Besides, if I had her teeth cleaned, how would I know her age? Daisy has some pointer in her, but after that her lineage is a crapshoot. American Foxhound? Perhaps. Greyhound? She's dumb enough and high strung enough. Brittany? Sounds too exotic, but the hair color and length are about right. I've taken to describing her as a 'Carolina bird dog' and leaving it at that.

As previously mentioned, Daisy is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. She is also hound-dog skittish and, when agitated--which is pretty much whenever anything at all unexpected happens, no matter how trivial--she whines loudly and does a spastic dance my ex and I call her "full-body wag." She needs wide berth for the full-body wag because her tail whips furiously this way and that. She really could put an eye out with that thing, if that eye belonged to a child or little person. People who do not like dogs feel justified in their prejudice when they see the full-body wag.

Daisy is a meticulous self-groomer, to the extent that guests unfamiliar with her routines may blush. She operates a full wash-and-dry cycle, first licking and then huffing and puffing into her unmentionables without the slightest trace of self-consciousness. It is not her only obsessive behavior; there is also her pre-poop routine, which is as inscrutable as a David Foster Wallace novel. When she feels the moment approaching, she starts to pace an area no larger than 10 square feet, sticking her nose into various nooks and crannies in the turf as though attempting to determine la place juste for her deposit. There is no discernable difference between the spots she investigates, and yet her explorations usually go on for several minutes and can be alarmingly frantic. At times she will hunch and her scat will poke out of her sphincter, but then she will retract it as though to say, "No, not here, not today, not this poop," and her search will continue. Encouragement, praise, and offers of bribes are useless in hustling her along. I sometimes imagine flying Cesar Millan across country to see this ritual, not so that he could correct it but simply to hear him say, "Dude, that's one fucked up dog you've got there."

Daisy has a Buster Keaton face that bespeaks a resignation to life's unfairness. This is largely genetic, but it's hard to shake the feeling that it is at least partly the result of her having been placed in a home with a relentless tormentor. His name is Lebowski, and he is a Boston Terrier. Bostons come in two basic varieties: scrawny, and fullback. Lebowski is a fullback, with a low center of gravity that he uses to great effect. Although he weighs only 23 pounds, he can be quite difficult to move when he sets his mind to it.

Mostly, though, he sets his mind to making Daisy's life miserable. He waits until she has settled into her snuggle ball, then stands eight inches from her head and barks and barks and barks and barks and barks and barks until she resignedly picks herself up and moves to the other, smaller snuggle ball. Ten minutes later, Lebowski barks her back to her original spot. This can go on all night. Sometimes Daisy looks up at me from a snuggle ball and I say, "You may kill him if you like, no one will blame you," but she is generally a gentle soul and so demurs.

Lebowski is not much for tricks, although he has a few. He does a splendid impression of the baby from Eraserhead; he lies on his back, wriggling and making a very strange gurgling sound and will not stop until a belly rub is administered. He can walk and poop at the same time; in fact, it seems to be the only way he can poop. Despite his being quite small, he seems to have an endless supply of pee, some portion of which he can hold in reserve for as long as you are willing to walk him. (I realize that many of my observations have to do with my dogs' voiding habits. Dog owners understand; for the rest of you, much of the quality time spent with dogs occurs during walks, the purpose of which is to empty the dogs so that they can be filled again come meal time.)

Lebowski's greatest trick involves tormenting Daisy, or so I imagine its purpose to be. When Daisy returns from a walk, Lebowski makes sure to get a good whiff of her butt before I leash him up. Once outside, Lebowski is on the hunt, and no matter where on the block Daisy has placed her leavings, Lebowski will find them and pee on them. This is no mean feat, as he accomplishes this over great range and sometimes in strong, swirling winds. Perhaps I am projecting but Lebowski always looks especially pleased with himself when he finishes his work. He has trumped Daisy's mark with his own, and the all-important Fields of Defecation now belong to him.

I could go on and on about my dogs, but I believe this is enough of a teaser to get publishers flocking to me. Don't you? Now for the $64,000 question: have I learned Important Life Lessons from Daisy and Lebowski? I don't think so, but I'm willing to work with a good editor who believes otherwise, who can find and cull--or, if necessary, invent--those lessons from my stories. They may already be there; I may be that 'two standard deviations to the left of norm' male who is too obtuse even to appreciate the shallow emotional depths of my relationship with my dogs. The kind of guy, perhaps, who needs to be retired to a golf course as soon as possible. Which would explain why I am today a Reluctant Bachelor.

So there you go.