...
I only mention this because seeing his name in this context reminded me of the young Christopher Hitchens, the one I adored for so many years, the one who helped teach me that men are not often as miraculous as I always thought. I mean, just being male didn't get my admiration, but the males who managed to get my admiration seemed always to be mythical creatures. Real men are mythical creatures... both ways... in the way I originally thought, miraculous, and in the way I came to see far too late, myths.
Christopher Hitchens was an over-the-top case in point. I flat out didn't believe people could really switch from liberal to conservative, that only the weaklings and greed-debauched could do that, that selfish liberals turned conservative when they finally got their piece of the pie, but not the gods, and he was a god. I'm still reeling from how that turned into such a sweaty incarnation of everything awful, but the realization that the gods were faking came way late. My stubborn habit of bringing my klieg lamp and full-length mirror with me to every interaction with the gods was not going to help them keep godly.
It was going to piss them off.
They were going to feel threatened.
It was not going to turn out well.
Unfortunately, I won't live with mere mortals, and there has never been any question about that... for anyone who knows me. This is very attractive to alpha males, almost any males, but there are levels of meaning it that just do not work, no matter what, no matter how godly. I am really hard to fake out.
Anyway, there was a time, say, thirty-five or forty years ago, when Christopher Hitchens would have been deemed a good match for me... my kind of guy... and he ended up being such an extreme example of the opposite that it's packed with Zen lessons... and still a dollop of real sadness... and seeing his brother's name, and being relatively sensible, just hit me.
