Author Unknown One of the ongoing themes of my life over the last few years has been to be a transparent person, that is, to be my true self, warts and all, to disclose the good and the bad I've done in my life, to mention the stuff about myself that gives me the heebie-jeebies in equal proportion with the stuff that makes me proud. It's been a journey.

Ultimately, that is the place where freedom lives. To stand up in front of the world naked, as it were, and say, "This is me." I'm reminded of the saying, "A person that won't be blackmailed, can't be blackmailed." Once you disclose all the stuff you're afraid people will learn about you, then what's left to fear?

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About lunch time on Saturday, Wendy calls. Wendy does catering, and is in a bind. Can I work a party that night? She quotes a tasty hourly rate. Since I had no plans for the evening other than to write some stuff for this journal, and the place is just down the street, I said sure.

So I show up at the appointed hour, at this mansion, ready to sling whiskey.

As is usually the case with this sort of thing, it's a completely disorganized Bohemian ClusterFuck. The hostess has decided to purchase all the whiskey and setups herself, rather than delegating that chore to somebody that actually has a clue. Consequently, there's boodles of stuff that we don't need (gallons of apple juice???) and not enough of what we do need, (unimportant stuff like ice).

The party started at seven, and was scheduled to run until midnight. We were out of stuff by eight-thirty. My efforts to push the apple juice went for naught. Why do folks with boodles of moolah think it makes them an expert on everydam thing?

The folks throwing this shindig were Indian, and he is a doctor. The party guests were evidently all contributors to some charity thrown by the host. They were uniformly rich, Indian, and in the medical field. His swankienda was located in just about the most prime real estate in this very exclusive subdivision, right on the shore of Lake Woodlands. The bar they'd set up for me to work was just a few scant feet from the water.

Across the lake and behind some trees is the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, a major concert venue, and there happened to be a concert that night. The music came bouncing over the water to provide the soundtrack for the party.

I felt like I'd been airdropped into some Fellini film with no subtitles. Here I am, surrounded by turbaned, nehru'd and sari'd Indians, bejeweled and shining, chatting in a mix of urbane English and some native dialect that was, of course, totally incomprehensible to me, handing out gin and tonics to the tunes of the Scorpions, Dio, and Deep Purple.

One of the things we were chronically short of was pitchers for refilling water glasses. We had only two, in fact, for over two hundred guests. So we kept two waiters running around full speed trying in vain to keep up. In my conversations with the thirsty guests, who were crashing the bar thinking, incorrectly as it turned out, that certainly the bar would have water available, I had to bite holes in my tongue several times to keep from referring to the waterboys as "Gunga Dins."

I wasn't too sure how a joke related to the British colonial period would go over.

None of them seemed to be very concerned over the recent unrest there. One guy told me he was going to leave for a vacation back in the old sod later this week. They were to a man convinced that the Pakistani Poobah, Musharaaf, was playing both sides of the street, and using the States like a cheap whore. To a man, they blamed the haphazard way Great Britain precipitously abandoned their colonial possessions without ensuring peaceful transitions for the trouble in the area.

It's interesting to note that of all the hotspots burning holes in the peace, three of the major ones, Afghanistan, India/Pakistan, and Israel, all were British possessions until shortly after the end of WWII, and all experienced wars within months of England relinquishing soverignty in a hasty manner.

One of the more interesting conversational threads was one I had with the head of anesthiology for one of the major Houston hospitals, in fact, the one where my father had a quadruple bypass a few years back. The guy told me that if I was ever there, to ask for him. I told him that I hoped he didn't take it personally if I told him I hoped I never saw him again. :-) He said he understood.

As an aside, am I the only person to notice that Indian women can be amazingly, wondrously beautiful? In my chequered past, I've had the good fortune to have a fling or three with women of nearly all flavors, but I've never enjoyed the company of an Indian woman. I need to work on that. :-)

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I was doing really well in progressing toward my goals.

In the roughly three months since I'd started eating right and working out, I'd lost somewhere around twenty pounds, put on some muscle, and was just feeling a lot better. I don't think I'd missed two days of workouts the entire time.

Then the move came. I had to get off schedule in our frantic attempt to find a place and get moved. This also meant the diet went to hell, as there's no such thing as healthy and fast food, and with the kitchen in boxes, it's tough to cook.

As if that weren't enough, I had to go and crack my freaking sternum. That was weeks ago, and I'm just now to the point where I can sleep wthout a bunch of discomfort.

I got spoiled at the old place, which had that lovely levee for my daily walks, and a nicely equipped workout room. It's really the only thing about that place I miss.

Here, there's no gym, and the only places to walk are around civilisation, meaning streets, meaning car exhaust. Yuckapoola. I could go join a gym, but I got spoiled just walking out the door to workout, and most times worked out in the wee hours of the morning, my circadian rhythms being forever freaked from years in the club business. There aren't many gyms open 24/7.

It's gotten me down.

Well, today I resolved to quit making excuses, and get back on the horse.

So, if you'll excuse me, it's a warm and sunny Sunday morning. I'm gonna go for a walk, and create my own little service in the Church of the Corporal Resurrection. :-)

Addendum (ninety minutes later): Woohoo! I walked a half-dozen or so blocks through a neighboring subdivision, and stumbled across a bayou that winds for a few miles around the area. I've found a place to walk. Not quite as nice as the levee, (no breeze and the ground's uneven) and there's a coupla loose dogs that wanted to eat me behind this one house, but no biggie.

I'll just walk with a treat in one pocket, and a slingshot in the other for a few days - I'll let them pick how they wanna play it. Love me or fear me. :-) Kinda like the Xians see dog, err, god.

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