Bruno

Prologue

    I once had a girlfriend who persuaded me — with adulation, sex, gifts and financial assistance — to elope with her to Las Vegas.  She was convinced, I later found out, that I was Shakespeare (in a former life).  The night she admitted her motive, after some fairly raucous fun, she allowed as how she had tried and tried and tried to marry me in several different lifetimes, and, having succeeded, she now was fulfilled.

    Wishes do come true, at least if they are backed up with the unambiguous, precise and unflaggingly resolute intention that they be so.  The reason you can’t ’win the lottery’ has nothing do with the mathematically astronomical ‘odds’ of winning.  You don’t win the lottery because you hope, or wish, or think it would be nice to win; or desperately need to win (you tell yourself) … you do, literally, ever single thing you don’t need to do to win the lottery, and you do not do the one thing you do need to do to win the lottery:  Intend to win.  Know you HAVE won.  Buying two Quick Picks guarantees that you will not win (except purely by chance, like everyone else), because purchasing the second ‘draw’ means that you have doubts about the first draw.  And so, you’ve lost before the numbers are drawn.

    My once-upon-a-time girlfriend’s intention to marry me, in this lifetime, was sharp and strong.  She was resolute in her goal to persuade me to marry her.  What she was not so precise in was the intention to stay married to me, or to have a happy and fulfilling marriage. Consequently, having sated her lust to wed (and repeatedly and vigorously bed me) we parted ways not long after — she hired a lawyer, without discussing the matter with me, and surprised me with divorce papers while I was at work, claiming that I had had intimacies with other women (I had not — why would I?) so that I would not get any of her money — or at least the money the cult she joined wanted her to give to it.  She eventually found another husband, and she died an early death some ten years after we parted.  I wonder if he got all of her money, or if she managed to ‘donate’ it to that cult, who feeling threatened by me, succeeded in persuading her to change me out for someone who was more obedient to its goals?

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Chapter 1

    It's critical to understand, something at least, about the power of intention.  Pure unwavering, clear and precise intention.  Intention need not be “strong” or “forceful” to be effective, and indeed, the best and most effective intention is fairly quiet, calm and unenturbulated.  It is also persistent.  Sometimes even the best of intentions do not produce the intended result -- like the proverbial rabbit being pulled out of hat ‘right before your eyes’.  Sometimes the material world has to be brought into alignment with your intention.  

    Let me offer an example.  Some years before my-once-upon-a-time-soon-to-divorce-me-girlfriend came along and snared me, I had become disillusioned with my lot in life.  It was not that it was a bad lot in life; and in face, a lot of people would have envied me.  I had two beautiful children who I adored, with my first wife, Janice, who, while she did not really value me, and who avoided having sex with me in favor of the lover she had taken and for whom she eventually jilted me, at least allowed me the consideration of watching me jerk off there in our marital bed.  

    I sometimes think that Janice's one driving intention in life was to have children to keep her company.  She didn't really need, or want, a husband, mind you.  One time she said to me that if life were perfect, she'd have her own house next door to mine, and our two darling children could go back and forth.  She wouldn't, then, need to put up with a husband, but she would have someone to share the child-rearing responsibilities ... and of course help pay for it.

     The clear headed understanding that getting someone else to pay for your life, could be a good thing, was what guided my (then) wife for, I think, most of her life.  Even after she threw me over for a man somewhat more compliant even that I had been, and even though she stayed with my replacement for the rest of her life (before she met an untimely end), I (like to) think that had she found it convenient, or if she had been able to find a better deal financially, without having to be entangled with him, that she would have taken it.

    Of course this is a not especially charitable construct which maybe I have imagined just because it relieves me of the responsibility for having married her in the first place, not realizing that she did not value me but yet still having children with her because she wanted them, and not having the gumption to move on to someone like my (good) wife sooner rather than 20 years later than I should have.

      But, if I had done that -- seen things clearly and unapologetically ... wife of my children and I once screwed at a friend's wedding in the groom's bedroom whilst everyone else was out at the party ... I thought no one would realize this ... but, everyone did ... proof certain that lust is the handmaiden to a vast array of stupidity -- I would not have the wonderful children I somehow lucked into fathering.

    By, the way, I think it is not true, as Eddie Murphy once joked that men will 'fuck mud'.  Well, it IS true that some men will not just fuck mud, but sheep, eletronic masturbation machines and, probably, guacamole.  But, not all of us.  Sometimes we are like what women are imagined to be: romantic nudkins who are loving, warm and want like the dickens to have a family, but we are afflicted with hormones that coerce us into 'fucking anything that even remotely resembles a warm squishy pussy'.  Alas.

     The wife-of-my-children, nevertheless, had what I would imagine she would consider a fairly successful life -- until she didn't.  Not wanting to seem like someone who enjoys others misfortune, I will not say -- and I do not think, actually -- that she got what she deserved when, some two decades after we parted ways, she came down with some kind of incurable illness that always results in an appallingly painful death.  But, she did.  And, the fellow who was 'lucky' enough to have supplanted me and got the privilege of spending more time raising my children than I did, had the privilege of nursing the wife-of-my-children through her dying years, months, weeks, days and hours.  I am sorry he had that burden, because I am sorry that she contracted that disease, because I am really sorry my children lost their mother when they did.

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Chapter 2 

    I have this recurring dream … which I only have when I am in a deep, deep sleep and I wake up all of a sudden, like “What?” … “Oh, noooooooo ….”  The funny thing is that this actually happened to me once … or I think it did ….  I’m somewhere … the place varies … this time I had just left where I worked, or had worked, where I had been trying to beg my job back from my boss (with whom we obviously exchanged tender feelings) … the car varies … this time it was a brand new white something swoopy … usually “they” just steal my battery, this time not only did they steal my battery, but they stole all the credit cards out of my wallet, but left the cash in my wallet and my (very expensive) MacBook Pro 16”.  I’m like ‘Shit! No battery! AND, I HAVE TO CALL THE CREDIT CARD COMPANIES!!!’.  Well, I wake up to the alarm on my watch, and it takes me 20 minutes to fully realize I am actually awake.

    What would Freud say?  Who knows.  Who cares.  But, it is odd that I rarely dream about, anything.

    On the other hand, my wife says that she can think about what she wants to dream, and she'll dream about that!  Wow.  Who knew that you could entertain yourself at night when you are asleep?  She is the second woman I've known in my life who could control their dreams.  As an undergraduate, I was a philosophy major.  One of my teaching assistants, Nina Tia Appelonia (yep), in my introduction to philosophy course, was tall, slim and wore the most provocative long brown dark hair.  

    We became good chums, later after I had moved on from her course, of course.  She was also chums with another graduate student -- which I can't lie, made me a little jealous.  But, what startled me was her admission one day that, just before she went to sleep at night, she would think what she wanted to dream about, and would dream exactly the 'play' which she set out for herself ... just like she was laying our her clothes for the next day.

    Being the remarkably naive (albeit horny) fellow that I was then, I didn't realize that what Nina was telling me, possibly to get me revved up for our next chumming, was that she could write her own pornography.  Hmm.  All there, inside her head.  No video.  No trace.  Nothing for Big Brother to hold over her head.  Sex dreams.  Who knew?

    My naivete' did not stop with Nina.  Some years later, I was a young associate attorney in a big snooty law firm in San Francisco.  I was friendly with all the Staff, but I definitely hit it off with one of the Staff, Elaine, who was in charge of the law firm's IT department.  We would talk all the time when I was between assignments.  I thought she was just being friendly, since, as I was married to Janice, and we had two beautiful little girls who I just (and still do) adored!  And, Elaine had two beautiful children of her own, lived in a fancy schmancy house in one of the better areas of San Francisco with her husband.

    So, one day we were sitting in Elaine's office, shooting the shit, and she says to me, casually, "Do you think it is wrong to have an affair?"  To which I replied: "Wrong?  No, I don't necessarily think it is wrong.  But, it would be a lot of trouble.  Right?  Having to sneak around, lie about what you are doing.  Right?"  Elaine let the subject drop, and I left as I had to get back to work.

    No sooner than I had stepped outside her door and closed it behind me, did it dawn on me WHY Elaine had asked me that!  Well, that was that, the moment had passed even if I had wanted to take her up on her offer.  Not three days later Elaine had taken up with another fellow at the Firm.

    Not sure what was 'in the water' at that law firm.  Over the seven years I worked there, there were affairs of influential partners and associates (one such pairing stayed together, divorced their spouses and left the firm ... they would come in early in the mornings and 'chum around' in the partner's office!), among married associates, among the principal partner's daughter (also an associate) and several other male associates, two of the three of which were eventually forced out while the 'victor' married her and himself became a partner.  And, surely there were other flings that weren't so widely known.

    It's a little odd congratulating a fellow for becoming voted in to be a partner, when he's sleeping with daughter of the founder of the firm.  Oh, sure, he was a good lawyer.  But, will he ever know, in his heart, that it was his skill and not his dick that led to his success?

    One of the Founder's Daughter's Lovers, who was also married when they had their fling, had a beautiful wife of his own and a beautiful daughter.  He became bitter and morose and, while he was the most talented of the associates of his era, left to pursue 'other interests'.  In the meantime, the Firm had hired a no-talent hispanic fellow just for the sake of what we now call "diversity".  He was the laughing stock of the associates.  Not because he was Mexican, but because he was, actually, stupid.  One wondered ... several of us did, how on Earth he could have ever gotten through law school, and what for Christ's Sake led the hiring committee to hire him in the first place?

    Eventually, he was 'persuaded' to go elsewhere, but in the meantime, it became clear that he really, really, really was only a 'diversity hire' and everyone had to re-do his work to avoid mal-practice suits.  But, that was the era of the beginning of 'diversity' or 'reverse-discrimination' and there were not enough 'minorities' that were smart enough, to go around.  As time wore on the 'minorities', especially the smart ones, began to realize that if they perservered there could be a place for them, and then, as that Indian Lawyer/Attorney General in the Yellowstone ... we were told a Harvard Law Graduate ... could work themselves up to the top and stick it to the man.  So, what 'we' created was a class of people bent on vengenance, instead of simply bent on what everyone I grew up was bent on, which was to support their families well.  What started out as a way to 'level the playing field' (as the playing field should have been all along) became a Marxist harangue to upend the entire economic system so that people with no talent, no guts, no drive, no conceivable idea about how to contribute to the common good, could get their vengenance on people that had done nothing to them.

    I do not know what happened to that law firm.  It was built by an astonishingly talented white man, who pretty much held sway over its management until he died at the very ripe old age of 93.  When he died, lawyers from all across the United States of America flew in to his funeral to honor him for all he'd done for them over the preceding 65 years.  Me, I stayed home, as I didn't want to have to face the Founder's Daughter and pretend that what we had had had not mattered.

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Chapter 3

    Another thing about that law firm in San Francisco ... I was well thought of ... very well thought of ... for a while.  Several of the partners thought I was the best thing since sliced cheese.  I was one of the main recruiting associates -- the associates the Firm used to lure candidates to the Firm.  I was so well liked by the main recruiting partner, that when I repeatedly overspent on recruiting dinners, he defended me.  Hell, I could have been a partner.  Hell, I ... WAS ... a partner, for a little while.  

    And, then the partner who I'll jocularly call 'Snape', got it in for me.  Snape was a tall, dark-haired somewhat muscular man in his late 30's, who fancied himself an athlete (he disdained me because I was not suitably competent to play on his softball team) who probably had a small weenie.  He had a studied, intentional, 'severe' countenance, and used his large physical size to intimidate new associates.

    Snape also happened to be adept at getting a specific kind of business, which led the other partners to overlook his overbearing, childish and abusive demeanor.  I suppose they rationalized allowing a bully to handle their associates with the thought that 'He can't be all bad, after all he does have a wife AND he does bring in lots and lots of money.'  Indeed he had what one would have called a 'trophy wife'.  She was also an attorney, bright red hair, vivacious and almost certainly ruled their roost ... given his tiny weenie.  But, she -- I never knew Mrs. Snape's name -- did know when to massage his ... ego ... and on his 40th Birthday, she gave him 40 presents.  Cute.  I am sure it was the nicest thing she could think of to do for him to make up for his tiny weenie.

    I left the Firm after it (nearly) imploded because of the incompetence of the Chief Financial Officer ... a smooth talking blonde bombshell who seemed to have a thing for Snape's weenie ... who allowed the Firm to go, basically $10,000,000 in the hole by overpaying the partners for a period of four years.  Any minimally competent H & R Block employee -- even the night guard -- would not have allowed this to happen.  But when Blonde Bombshell-who-liked-Snape's-weenie was found out to have screwed the entire partnership, of course, big tough man Snape defended her.

    As a result, the Firm fired 1/3 of its associates (including, thankfully the Mexican Diversity) and 1/3 of its secretaries, and several of the biggest business getter partners left (and took all their business) for greener pastures.  Eventually, the Management Committee found their balls and fired Blonde Bombshell.  But, by that time it was too late.  And, I left, too.

    So, if I were so well liked (well, by nearly everyone except Snape, and, by the gigolo who eventually married the Founder's Daughter on his way to becoming a Partner), why did I leave?

    To understand this, to really understand this, you have to understand something about Scientology.  Not that I then knew anything about Scientology ... in fact, I didn't hear the word 'Scientology' much 'L. Ron Hubbard' until October 1998.

    But, Hubbard, being a pretty smart fellow (despite what all the News Outlets may say) did explain with remarkable accuracy the variety of factors which bear upon how people act and why.  One of his revelations was the concept of an "Overt".  An Overt is not a wrong.  It isn't a lie, necessarily.  Although lying could be an Overt, it might not be.  Take for example the old moral puzzle about whether, in Nazi Germany, it is wrong to lie to the Gestapo and tell them that you are not harboring any jews.  Well, lying is 'always' wrong, right?  Lying to the Gestapo is a lie.  Lying to the Gestapo is wrong. Right? So, by doing the 'right thing', you end up being responsible for the death of a frightened jewish man and his wife and six children.

     That doesn't seem right, does it?  No.  It isn't.  A lot of moral theorists try, but, really none of them succeed in solving this moral conundrum, except Hubbard.  Hubbard defines ... more or less, don't quote me ... an "overt" as an act that is not just injuring someone or something ... it it an act of omission or commission which does the least good for the least number of dynamics or the most harm to the greatest number of dynamics.  

    We can get lost in the weeds here on the topic of Scientology.  But, that would be counter-productive.  For my purposes, it's pretty clear that the reason it's ok -- nay, morally required -- to lie to the gestapo is because whether something is 'wrong', whether something is an 'overt' depends on who it affects and how.  People are part of the world as themselves; people relate to life as a member of a family; as a member of various groups; as a member of the human race; people relates to the animal and plant kingdoms; people relate to the physical universe as a whole; and people -- some say -- have a spiritual component or orientation.  Sooooooo an 'overt' affects you,  your family, your groups, the population of the Earth, animals, plants and the stars in a worse way than some other act.  Telling the truth to the gestapo would arguably, affects all of these 'dynamics' (or at least the first four) worse (via the death of six or eight innocent human beings) than misleading that group called the Gestapo.

    Soooo, an Overt is doing what least helps you and all the people, plants and animals you know, love and are responsible for.  And, the other thing you need to know is that when you have committed 'overts' in a particular area, if the overts are big enough (in your mind), you have a tendency to "blow", meaning run away without facing and/or repairing your overt.

    We see this all the time.  A child caught playing video games instead of doing their homework blows up and stalks out of the house.  Not because mom or dad are being unreasonable.  But, because they were caught in the act of doing something that would contribute to them being on public assistance in their old age, instead of being able to intelligently care for themselves.  

    Married men, and women, who rail about how evil and awful were their spouses, as the explanation about why they 'had to' divorce them, are admitting that THEY committed a variety of 'overts' against their spouse, and they were unable to face themselves ... or rather face their spouses daily because everytime they saw their spouse's face, they were reminded of all the things they have done wrong TO the spouse.  So, they "blow".

    I didn't "blow" in exactly that way.  Sometimes people "blow" by doing MORE things 'wrong' and getting caught (on purpose, actually).  They can't actually hold their own ethics in, so they give the job to someone else.g

    In my case, I 'blew' by making friends with people who did not have my interests (much less best interests) at heart, and who were not especially honest in their own lives or with their own families, and of course we also not honest at work.

    I don't mean that they cheated their clients.  Or did not work hard.  They did not.  They did.  But, amongst their fellows, they are catty, back-biting and unsupportive.  They hadn't learned that the best way to do better in the world is to help as many people as possible to do better.  They thought that you 'get ahead' by tearing others down, talking behind their back, scheming against them, and minimizing them.  How wrong they were.

    You can, and should, blame them.  They chose how to live and what to believe.  Yet it is understandable -- an much more so today -- how weak and small minds would, seeing the examples of their 'leaders' ... the great politicians of the day ... the ministers ... the religious leaders ... who trade in self-aggrandizement, crowd control and the 'minimization' or what their paranoia perceives as a threat to their perverted way of life, rather than honest forthright help ... would emulate their 'leaders' in the disgusting patterns of power they saw 'succeed' every day.

    Of course, 'success' for these pretenders to the thrones was/is purely about power, money and subjugation of others.  Success for these sorts -- including most of the partners and associates where I worked -- was not about building a mutually cooperative and rewarding association.  Success was just about beating others down, by any means, but just enough that the subjugated kept trying to achieve the same hallowed holy grail.

    So, thinking I had made friends with two of the most likely to enter the inner sanctum, I let my guard down.  In saying this I don't mean to suggest that I was a 'victim', totally innocent and 'taken advantage of' by my 'friends'.  The consequences of my (mis)trust were not hidden to me.  I just had to look.  But, that would not have given me a reason to blow.

    So, we sat about my office ragging on Mr. Mexican Diversity ... how stupid he was (and he was) ... how incompetent (and he was) ... how his place in the firm was due solely to misguided gifts he received from what we used to call Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity:  Giving the unqualified a job and overlooking all their mistakes.

    And, one of my 'friends', after he had goaded us into a frenzy of childish insults about Mr. Mexican Diversity, suggested we (anonymously, of course) tell MMD to 'fuck-off'.  So, one of us three, I don't recall which one ... wrote "fuck you man" on a Memorandum which had been sent to all the firm's associates, and the ringleader wanted one of us to drop it in his mailbox.

    But, I said, no, we'd had our fun, and tossed the paper in the trash.  If I'd been smart, I would have shredded it.  But, again, there are various ways to 'blow'.

    A few weeks later, Snape shows up in my office, showed me the paper with the "fuck you man" and tells me that he has been to every other associate and they all had their copy of the Memorandum, and he wanted to see mine.  Realizing I had been had, I told him truthfully that I had thrown it away.  What I did not tell him was about the bitch-session with Friend-1 and Friend-2.

    To make a long story short, while it took a few years, eventually Snape forced me out of the Firm ... because ... wait for it ... I refused to rat on my two 'Friends'.

    To this day, I do not know who took the Memorandum out of my wastebasket, and who put it into MMD's mailbox.  And, to this day, Snape thinks that Friend-1, who eventually married the named partner's daughter, and became a partner himself, was an honest, upright man.  So, all these years Snape has partnered with a back-stabbing, mendacious, home-wrecker (it was for Friend-1 that the named partner's daughter divorced her husband).

    Well, what happened to me?  Turns out, life has been good, and has gotten even better, after a few lean and stressful years. 

    I

    

    

    

To be continued.