Seth

Seth (to be played by Michael Boatman) has been a friend of mine since college. He was interested in my sister and maybe still is. He is rich and unmarried and lives in Manhattan.

Most of my other friends cannot stand him – for the very reason that I like him: he says just what he thinks. This rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

In this he is like my wife Rebecca, but with a difference: While both readily point out my faults, Seth does it as a simple statement of fact while Rebecca does it as if she thinks she is better than me and wants to improve me. So with Rebecca I become offended, with Seth I can laugh at myself.

We went to Columbia, a university which is well to the left politically. Marxist, really. But Seth was squarely on the right. People laughed at him and thought he lacked intelligence. At the time it made him seem a bit strange, but looking back I can only admire him for standing his ground.

On the other hand, what I did not like about him then and still do not like now is how he puts money above everything.

For example, at school we were both interested in computers, but for very different reasons. I loved computers. Even if you never paid me I would still work on them. But Seth was only interested in the money. “A computer is a machine for making money,” he once said with a straight face.

Even today I know more about computers than he does because I love them. He only knows just what he needs to do his work.

Life is more than money. We are more than the clothes we wear and the food we eat, as an old book says. Seth is selling computers and himself short living by the measure of money.

He finds us Abagonds something between strange and wonderful: we care little for money, valuing art and intellectual things more. (When Rebecca first met my  mother she was surprised that she spoke in perfect Standard English and yet wore such cheap shoes.)

If he were an Abagond he would write and teach about the the American Civil War, his one great passion. He would have less money, of course, but I think he would be much happier and the country better off.

He thinks Barack Obama is a lightweight. He points out that Obama did not even understand Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech.

I doubt he will ever marry. I know from my sister that he is not serious about getting married. Enough women will sleep with him outside of marriage.

I doubt he gets far with most women, beyond the physical: his sort of straightforwardness does not work with women. You never point out a woman’s faults. You must also be free with your money. You never, for example, remind her how much you paid for her dinner. Yes, he has done that.

See also:

• Dramatis Personae
• Maria
• Rebecca
• computer
• political left and right
• Barack Obama
• Abagonds

Read Full Post »

Dramatis Personae

Now that I am writing a letter to my mother every week and posting it here, I will need to write about the people and things mentioned in the letters.

Here are the characters in the story of my life. The names have all been changed, but they are all real people:

• The Abagonds
  • Grandma Rosa – my father’s mother. She lived with us for a while when I was a boy.
  • Papa – my father Victor. He is dead but still matters.
  • Mamacita – my mother.
    • Abagond – me. That is my pen name.
    • Rebecca – my wife.
      • Leonardo – also called Leo. My 11-year-old son.
      • Francisco – also called Francis. My 9-year-old son.
      • Ruth – also called Ruthie. My grown stepdaughter.
        • Ian – her husband
    • Maria – my sister.
      • Tito – Maria’s 8-year-old son.
    • Victor – my older brother. Named after Papa.
    • Mark – a younger brother.
    • Philip – my youngest brother.
  • Uncle Terence – my mother’s brother.
• Sarah – a sister of Rebecca.
• Angela – a sister of Rebecca.
  • Tiffany – Angela’s granddaughter
• My friends:
  • Hector – my best friend, whom I do not see enough!
  • Alexandria – Hector’s wife.
    • Victoria – Hector’s 4-year-old daughter
    • Cassandra – Hector’s 2-year-old daughter
  • Daniel – a friend and godfather to my boys.
  • Esther – Daniel’s wife and a friend and godmother to my boys. My wife does not like it when I talk to her.
    • Eve – older daughter of Daniel and Esther
    • Rachel – the younger daughter
  • Cyrus – a friend that I once worked for.
  • Seth – a friend of mine who once went with my sister.
  • Darius – a friend who lives in California.
• Rebecca’s friends:
  • Gina Scott – from Philly.
  • Nadeen – lives in Florida.
  • Claire – lives up the road.
  • Charmaine – lives even farther up the road.
• Mr Thayer – a science teacher I had in ninth grade.
• Dennis – brother of Rebecca
  • Adam – a son, died at 23
  • Erica – a daughter, lives in Chicago

The letter my mother gets has the real names. The letters I post here has these names instead.

Till now I have written about Francis Bacon and the city of Qom and other things far away and long ago. It is time I started writing about something I know first-hand.

But to write freely about the people I know, to write what is true and interesting and not just safe and general, I will have to use the wrong names and the wrong pictures.

Not that I have a lot of bad things to say – I like them all as they are. But everyone, you know, has faults and it is often the faults that are the most interesting.

The sex and age of the people in the pictures will be right, but maybe nothing else. I use pictures as a prop to make them seem more real and help you to remember them.

One of the first websites I saw where someone wrote about his daily life was “The Semi-Existence of Bryon.” Sadly it no longer exists. Part of what made it interesting is that Bryon told you about each of the people in his life. Maybe because he used the real names and pictures his friends made him take it down (that turns out not to be the case – he just got tired of doing it). That is just what I want to avoid.

See also:

I may have made some of these private. I go back and forth on whether they should be public.

• The Abagonds
• Abagond
• Rebecca
• Leonardo
• Francisco
• Papa
• Mamacita
• Maria
• Victor
• Hector
• Seth
• Francis Bacon
• Qom
• film
• Web

Read Full Post »