I met another woman this week who is very interesting, but (again) there are complications. It's a variation on my bent coin theme. Let's not discuss it, if you don't mind. I'm saving myself for marriage. Heh!

Maybe I'm saving myself for that book some people think is still inside me. Or saving myself, more reasonably, for The Last Woman who will act as the Muse for the book. You must know by now that I write everything for some woman somewhere.

Paolo is not like any other person I have met. You will understand why after reading his story. When I met him, there seemed only one thing remarkable about him in comparison to all the other people I have met in this city: he was fully unself-conscious.

Paolo had moved here after growing up in a smaller place, a place he knew like the back of his hand, like most of us know our own reflection in a mirror. That is why he left, but also, like many of us, because he believed it would be easier to "get over" -- make a better life for himself -- in the city.

The remarkable difference between Paolo and the rest of us, as I mentioned, is that he did not seem to have any problem with himself. He did not question who he was or what he did or worry over how others viewed him. Paolo just was. I do not think that he spent time, as most of us do, taking inventory of his features in the mirror and thinking "My ears are too large" or "My lips are too thin. I wish they were fuller. Then I would look more attractive." Nothing like that. In fact, looking back on the time that we were together, I cannot remember ever seeing Paolo linger before a mirror. It was as though he had the image of himself as he presented to the world immutably imbedded in his mind and anything the mirror might say to the contrary was simply irrelevant. One could intuit this by the way Paolo lived. Nothing seemed to shake his confidence in the least.

Paolo was also a criminal. I do not say this lightly or because he was ever arrested. I say this because I know that Paolo and his friend, Alan, were that worst kind of petty crooks, swindlers. They would not have had any compunction about taking the pennies from a dead person's eyes while attending the funeral. (Of course, no one uses pennies anymore, do they?) You still understand my meaning, I think. Paolo and Alan were always taking this one or that to restaurants or nightclubs spinning yarns of the wealth to be had in some venture they had planned. The next time you saw this one or that one, the person would be looking for Paolo and Alan and they would be separated from their money. I did not hold this against Paolo, since I know that you cannot cheat an honest man.

What happened to Paolo in this city is something that could only happen to a unique person like Paolo. It would not happen to you or me because we are far too self-conscious. We are far to full of doubts and worries and bad thoughts about ourselves to ever have the type of extraordinary experience that Paolo had here.

The day that Paolo's self-contained world was turned upside down was the most unusual day of his life for another reason, too. He also fell in love with the legendary beauty Mona that day.

I do not use that word "legendary" for Mona unadvisedly. Mona was one of those women that are destined to become legends and to appear in many of the stories that men tell each late at night and in their cups because of her incredible beauty. It was as though God had been playing Alchemist the day he mixed that combination of colors and scents that would produce the woman Mona grew to become. Her hair was raven black and only served to set off her pale skin and headlamp-bright green eyes. Her skin was like warm milk. Her laughter reduced stern men to embarrassed schoolboys. Many women hated Mona for what she was, what everyone could see she was, a prodigy of desirability, but as many women loved her because she never acted as if she knew how beautiful and desirable she actually wasŠ.

Mona and Paolo met by happenstance. One of the "marks" which Alan had arranged a month earlier frequented a restaurant where Mona was the hostess. On the night that Paolo and Alan were to meet the man to "play" him again -- spinning new smarmy yarns about all they had also lost in the deal, telling him that there was yet a way to recoup their losses, producing new proofs of a solid chance to make lots of money -- Mona was working.

Like any man, Paolo could not but notice her. Unlike many men, Paolo had the advantage of being a grifter and spinner of tales meant to win over people's trust. He was a master of seeming sincerity. But he had not met Mona before and had no idea what effect she could have on a man in a brief encounter.

But there was still the problem of the angry mark and how to deal with him and win him into another swindle and Paolo was nothing if not a man who could keep his "eye on the ball."

There was almost a fight. At some time during the "pitch," the mark had pulled a revolver from his jacket and the restaurant had gone crazy.

When Alan told me about this, much later, there was something vague and strange about his description of the events. There was something that set me on edge at the time, but I did not think to pursue it. Now I wish that I had.

This all took place three days before the extraordinary experience in Paolo's life. During those three days, his whole mind was on nothing but those brief moments he had spent with Mona, to the exclusion of everything else including his swindling business.

When thinking about Mona, what Paolo could not seem to get off his mind was that a woman could exist who seemed so unlike all the other people, of either gender, he had ever known. Mona struck Paolo as a woman who could not be swindled. His spinning of dreams and tales and adventures and promises had seemed to have rolled right over her as insubstantially as a cloud, as fog in the morning. This agitated Paolo, even as he was spinning his promises for her attention.

Most people were mesmerized by Paolo's talent was pleasing words and the pictures he painted with them of a wonderful future together. Mona was not. He might as well have been reading the telephone book to her, Paolo felt. Not that she was curt or snide or sarcastic; no! she was as sweet as honey towards him.

It was more like she was not worried for her future and as though no prospect of the moon or stars would be enough to move her.

For Paolo this was not only a unique circumstance but also one that unnerved him to his very core. It turned everything he had cynically and criminally believed about people and the world on its head. Paolo knew that he had to find some way to get past this curse of agitation that meeting Mona had placed upon him.

The three days had now passed. And that's when what could only happen to Paolo was brought fully home.

Paolo was sitting reading the newspaper, checking the obituary pages as he did every day, looking for the Main Chance of a new mark who had come into an inheritance, and old mark he need no longer avoid, or some other great opportunity which only death could provide. His eyes widened as he came down to his own obituary. There it was right there in the newspaper, including the time his services would be held at St. Anskar's.

Paolo laughed and laughed! He imagined what new and greater swindles he could achieve now that he was deceased. Vistas of opportunity and mischief danced around his head like dervishes.

He got up from his armchair immediately to telephone Alan and share the "good news" that would commence their new adventures together. He got no answer at Alan's telephone number. It simply rang and rang.

He decided to go around to Alan's apartment.

Oddly, he found no one on the streets and no one, not a single soul, in Alan's building. Either that or those left in the building were too deaf or too infirm to answer their buzzers. He had rung them all.

Very well then, he would go around to the services and see who, marks, friends or bulls, had had shown up to see him off. It would be a good laugh.

Though a person like Paolo is unusual to you, as he was to me, I know that stories such as this one are not. You know, as I would, that the memory of the shooting came back to Paolo when he saw himself lying in state surrounded by the sad or vindicated people viewing him. You know, as I would, that it was only then that such an unself-conscious man could accept his own death. What you would not have known, I think, is how maddening it was for Paolo that Mona was not among the mourners.

"Welcome to Your New Home, Fool"

I had raced to California in order to receive Henry Miller's blessing before he passed away. I'm sentimental like that.

Back-in-The-Day, when people still hitchhiked places, hitch-hikers would leave messages for each other behind the signs at the on-ramps to the highways. Bits of advice or warning. This particular warning did not sit well with me.

That's how I feel about my life in New Orleans, I've joked more than once. A place you end up that's horrible and that it's hard to escape.

We're only six days into 2002 as I write this and I already feel like I've been beaten down. I can only think of one good day I've had so far this year. That's why I thought I'd tell you a little story.

Until next week...

THINGS ON THE ROD-LIST THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. The new home of the magazine. But he plans to return to Serbia next year.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

| HOME | THE PREVIOUS GLASS HOUSE | THE NEXT GLASS HOUSE |

CREDITS || AWARDS || SEARCH ENGINES || LINKS ||
VOX POPULI is YOUR PAGE to talk back to us. I'm glad you're not bashful. Keep those cards and e-mails comin', Kids!

Our Editor