Chapter 2

Right, where was I? I forget. Then again, it's not like anything unique ever happened.

I had a few notes come my way asking why I was such a pussy and running away all of the time. Simple: I don't like pain, scars, and having to heal every so often.

And it's not like I ran away from EVERY fight. I just ran away from the ones that I knew I couldn't win.

Think of it this way: Does Nigeria go to war against the United States of America? Nope. Why? They'd get their ass kicked in a week. Maybe two these days. Does Nigeria fight other countries on the African continent? Sure. Why? They have better than even odds of winning.

If I didn't have pretty good odds of winning I passed on the opportunity to test my immortality.

Romans? They were organized, well equipped, and didn't care. Note: never fight someone who doesn't care.

The Picts? Those mothers were just crazy. Crazy people take shit personally. That's even worse than fighting someone who doesn't care.

Druids? That is a religious war waiting to happen and can't we all agree right now that those never end well?

Moors? They were like a combination of the Picts and the Druids. They were crazy, passionate, and religious: three things you don't want to be against on the field of battle. In the stands at a football game? Yeah- they're great. On the field with weapons? I'll take a pass.

You might think that my attitude carried over into my personal life. Did I play the big bad ass immortal dude as I moved around Europe, the world, and then North America?

Nah, what's the point? I had nothing to prove. All I had to do was wait 20 years (at most) to crap on their graves and rape their wives (if they were still alive) and daughters after they died. Unless they were married to nice guys. Then I gave them a pass. I really only fucked the "daddy's girls" of the people who pissed me off.

George Carlin, rest his soul, had it right on his album "Class Clown." Hey, I may be old but that doesn't mean I'm not "with it."

Anyway, George said about being the comedian that he got to go to all of the parties. He got the last of the girls but he went to all of the parties. That's the attitude that I've taken, sort of.

And let me tell you- pretty often it is those "last of the girls" that are the most appreciative of being picked at all. While a gentleman never tells ... let me just say that they would get downright freaky in showing their appreciation of the attention you were giving them.

They were like the dark age widows. Only with better teeth, fewer kids, and less of a need to move in with you the following morning.

So have I married again, you ask? Nope. How could I? Every anniversary they'd get angrier and angrier that I don't look as old as them. And being immortal doesn't come up in conversation easily. "What do I do? Oh, I'm in long term planning. Yeah- I know that someday all of these farmers will be dead and their kids will want to go live in the city so I'm just waiting them out to see if I can buy the place on the cheap. It's easy to do that when you're immortal, don't you know."

So there was no second wife. These days I leave the singles bars alone. It's too expensive. I go for hookers instead.

Wait- you say- a woman having sex with you for money is cheaper than a woman having sex for you without paying money? How is that possible?

I'll skip the remedial economics class and just say that it is, it was, and it always will be that way. When you go to Church and sit in the pews on Sunday mornings and the minister talks about all of the things they want to do they talk about your ability to give your "time, talents, and treasure." Dude- lemme tell ya: chicks are the same way.

Let's look at them.

Time? They want your attention because, hell I don't know, they are lonely and want someone around. Unless you are me, time is a relatively scarce resource. You want to waste it chatting with some insecure chick instead of doing something fun?

Talents? That's right up there with your time. Are you a good handyman? Or a chef? Or can fix her car? Or a guy who can take her away from abusive in-laws who are upset that their son/brother died and left her in their care? The funny thing is that after over fifteen hundred years you see that human beings and their motivations haven't changed one bit, no matter how clean our clothes are, how long we live, or how many pixels we can fit on a computer screen.

And Treasure. I saved the best for last. Let's just say that you want to get laid on any given night. You can pay for it and have it delivered to your door in one hour or less. You even get to pick the hair color, body style, and types of gymnastics on the menu. And you know exactly what the out of pocket expense will be. Hitting a dance club, the singles bars or even the internet? It's dark so you don't see the blemishes or wrinkles. The hair color? Well, the drapes may not match the carpet. The body style? Goodness only knows how much girdle technology has advanced in the last hundred years (Spanks, anyone?). And you have to pretend to like them and THEY have veto power over you! Then you add in the fact that you may not get a taste the first night. Or the second. If you have to wait for the third night you are just throwing good money after bad. And don't even get me started on the "jewelry" black hole.

Nah- I just pay up front and am done with it.

Now, I know there are millions (billions?) of men out there that want the love and the relationship and the kids and the long term "for life" deal that I had with Jenny. That's fine. You go right ahead. I'm purchasing a different product. I don't judge you, feel free not to judge me.

Another question I've gotten in my mail bag was: How have the women changed over time?

Well. I admit that I'm biased on this one. But it depends. Women today are more interesting to talk to and have intellectual conversations with. Except for, I mean, the courtesans of eighteenth century France. But they were a bunch of know-it-alls so I guess it is a wash with today.

So today's women are more interesting to talk to about politics, the liberal arts, economics, and stuff in general.

But they can't fuck worth a damn. Remember my comment before about third generation rich brats who think they are entitled? Same story over here. Times ten.

Honestly, I break women down into four distinct time periods, really. There is "the day", which I consider everything before about 1100 AD. Life was, to steal a phrase from Mr. Hobbes, "nasty brutish and short." If you had no money or looks it was also solitary. But if you had any sort of rap with the ladies (or had gobs of gold) you got while the getting was good and that often meant satisfying your carnal lusts with whomever was available. Would you want to discuss the decline and fall of the roman empire with them? Nope. But women were good for an exhausting roll in the hay, to take care of your house, and to raise your kids. They were warm to cuddle with in the winter, too.

Then there is Hildegard von Bingen. I gave her a category all her own. We "hung out together" back in the early twelfth century. Forget a guy three hundred years later being a Renaissance man. Hildy was the original Renaissance woman. Look her up on Wikipedia and you won't be able to begin to understand how awesome she was. Sure, she was a nun and thought she had visions but, honestly, that was the only door open to her at the time. She wasn't royalty and there was nobody rich enough to give her the lifestyle she wanted (the Medici family didn't have their money yet) so the church was all that was left.

And don't think for a minute that nuns were celibate. No; no they weren't. None of them were: the priests, the nuns, the bishops, the popes. All of them got it on and they got it on on a regular basis. Trust me; I was there.

I told you I lived in Rome for a while, right?

This whole celibacy thing was meant to be a joke. The original idea behind it, as near as I can tell from chatting with the abbots and cardinals back then, was that it meant that you weren't supposed to get married. Just as a man cannot have two masters, he cannot be devoted to two "things", either, so if you gave your life to God you couldn't really give yourself to a woman (or a man). That's just the way it was: no marriage if you were in the church. But you could still screw the live long day on the reasonable sly and nobody would care.

Then someone in the fourth century thought there could be a conflict of interest. You know: "She gets to go to heaven because she gobbles the goose in the confessional and I don't because I don't? That's not FAIR!!!"

I swear: Fairness is the dumbest human construct ever. Ask an antelope in a lion's jaws if life is fair. Or the salmon that just wants to get upstream to spawn as it enters the bear's mouth. Or the "almost alpha" lion who just wants to get laid but can't because the alpha of the pride won't let his women loose. OR- even worse- ask the young offspring of the former alpha as he is killed by the new alpha. Why does the new guy kill the old? He won't like the competition and he doesn't want anything to get in the way of his genes moving forward.

Life isn't fair. Get over it. But anyway...

The "no sex at all" thing started at the Council of Elvira but the ball really didn't get rolling until the council of Nicaea. Then that whack dude, Epiphanius of Salamis, gave up servicing his wife and raising his kids because of this prohibition and went off the deep end sexually. He got into some kinky shit, even by today's internet standards. Instead of going home to his wife and kids and saying "I did it; I screwed up," he decided to go screw anyone else in a skirt. And some not in skirts. That was a "bridge too far" for the church and they called him a heretic. After that the die was cast for the clergy: If you were going to bang, you had to do it on the double secret down low QT.

Nobody wanted to admit it but when the Catholic priests were caught diddling choir boys nobody was really surprised, either. Pressure doesn't go away just because you close the faucet and when it comes to biological imperatives I think it was Jeff Goldblum who said it best in "Jurassic Park": "If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously...". It's the same with sex. Fuck with biological imperatives at your peril.