Egoism

Officially, this is the doctrine of Objectivism, which has much to recommend it. Reality is real. The proper work of a rational being is to study logic, gather evidence, and think as clearly as possible. Yeah, well, fine. Life is more complicated than that, especially with regard to love and sexuality. In a perfect world of heroism, love is irresistible and permanent, an ideal mate for whom any sacrifice is worthwhile, however costly, provided that it doesn't tarnish one's integrity as a being of self-made soul or compromise one's career, which amounts to love at arm's length. I wasn't so circumspect. I was an emotional nitwit who chased women, dozens of them, married for heightened pleasure, privilege, and companionship. Not good policy.

That, however, is not what I wanted to speak of this morning. The interesting question is my "friendship" with other men. I had professional partners. I had mentors. I gushed admiration for gifted artists and encouraged simple souls in difficult straits. I was rescued and honored by benevolent giants, tolerated by skeptical neighbors, and occasionally admired by a few. I don't know for a fact that I deserved friendship, although many befriended me. Erik and Tom bestowed numerous gifts, partly out of pity because I was pitifully weak and needy, although creative enough to be vaguely respectable. Perhaps a better word is unusual.

I addressed friendship several times in my novels. Loyalties emerge in circumstances that test men's metal. Courage matters. Gallows humor, competition, and mutual daring greases the wheels. Perhaps if I was a better man, I could have kept lifelong pals. I disappointed and frustrated those who were drawn to side me. Women had the same problem with me -- too weak and self-absorbed to be a reasonably cheerful and reciprocal mate. I spent much of my life alone, remote, chain smoking at a keyboard or typewriter or editing bench, fussing with another project solo. I often forsook (is that a word?) the advantage of collaboration.

I like people, all sorts of people. I think I encountered thousands, certainly hundreds with whom I shared myself as completely as possible, saw the depth of their truth and honored each life as worthy of tenderness or amusement, as the case happened to be. I say "Thank you" easily when someone offers assistance, something as simple as accommodating an odd request and making change at a McDonald's, gratitude for a brief encounter. I often made life more difficult for others. Lost in thought, I forgot to put a fuel nozzle back on the pump and pulled away, disconnecting the hose, carried it into the gas station convenience store, said I was sorry. I must have said sorry ten or twenty thousand times as a distracted idiot. That was the limiting factor in forging friendships, too often lost in thought, cold hearted calculation, despair, a creative flush, or exaltation. Egoism is an internalized way of life.

Maybe I should take up religion, sit in a pew, experience something other than me, however pointless and irrational. My writing career is kaput, and my film career was kaput long ago. I don't have any desire to punish myself with television, and religion seems relatively benign. You know what's really stupid? (and often wonderful) -- I have an elderly, blind shihtzu who alternately conks out on my bed, demands to go outside, yips for attention, ignores whatever I want him to do, needs a lot of care. I speak to him daily, hourly, and he knows what I said, two dozen phrases we've shared for a decade. Shihtzus don't shed, have to be trimmed with a scissors every week or so. His weepy eyes have to be wiped each morning. I take him out at night with a flashlight so he can see where to walk. I haul his food from the country store, a variety of cans and packets of soft meaty noodles, because he lost most of his teeth. I doubt that I have time to attend church. He gets nervous if I go out in formal clothes and wingtips.

Not a friendship, more's the pity. An old dog who needs me.

10 years ago, when he could still see