Mom calls. upset. Finally opens her heart up to men for the first time in years... and has started dating. She is happier than she has been in many years. shines. Glows. Smiles even more than normal, which says a lot for her. she is a very happy and bubbly person already. How is it to talk to your mom about her dating men... having your mom call you crying because she is breaking up with a boyfriend... not as bad as one would think... its easy for me. easier than I thought. She's cycling through boyfriends now. dating. Fun stuff. she still has a tendency to date down rather than up. ‘mom, please. just keep going through them. please don't bring the bloodline down any further. For gods sake...’ I joke. ‘don't be ridiculous Fishy. You're bigger than that honey.’ ‘Mom why am I the only who seems to be bothered if you and Beaver forget who we are and where we came from and keep bringing people into our families who are beneath us...’ I bite my tongue. I regret what I say immediately. I am a monster. Listen to me. isn't it love that's all that matters? Am I wrong to want to keep the blood.... ‘people are not beneath people because of money Fishy. you know better.’ ‘well I'm not talking about money here mom. You know that...’

‘Mom study history. Whole kingdoms have been brought down because of someone marrying the wrong person. that's all I'm saying. just please bear that in mind. We were raised a certain way. we came from a certain breed. Why am I the only one that remembers that?’ ‘honey you think too much about that. beaver is happy. don't pester the boy for that. don't ever talk this way to your brother.’ ‘mom he eats white bread and yellow mustard for gods sake....’ I'm an idiot I think... ‘honey your bother would eat like that no matter who he married... things like that are not important to Beaver. He doesn’t have the same tastes as you. there is nothing wrong with that. Look at his soul dear. He is more than all of that. He is a real gentleman. You need to see that...’

I do see it. I am just reacting to an unconscious resistance to being common. Probably because our family never lived up to our own upbringing... when our family came to America they came with a lot less than what they left behind. But they did this in order to find freedom and even more prosperity, as so many millions of people did and still do. This was how it was when you left your homeland and came to America I am told. But still they did well. Until the stock market crash of ‘29. My grandfather’s father lost everything and shot himself at the age of 35 leaving his wife and seven children behind. A weak man, and a coward. But still, my grandfather, the youngest, managed to climb back up and became very successful. Ironically he worked for the United States government for forty years as an attorney and judge. If he could only see me now. he would be chasing me around the house trying to hit me... But the family never regained the prestige or the resources that they had back home. that's the point.

I will never forget my grandfather and grandmother sitting us down one summer day when we were children and showing us our great great great -- I don't know how many generations back -- paternal grandfather’s name in the encyclopedia Britannica. This did not mean much to me at that age because I assumed that everyone had family in those big black books.... but later it became something very important to me. He was a famous mathematician who discovered many very algebraic formulas and theorems that are used and taken for granted today. then my grandmother showed us the name of her great uncle also in the Britannica who was a famous composer and musician who is not much remembered today except in scholarly circles. Again, I did not quite get the importance of this until much later. We were too young... but I gathered that it meant something...

But then they showed us the pictures of their parents and grandparents and told us the stories of how grandma’s parents were a baron and baroness of the Tuscany region of Italy... explained the difference between royalty and aristocracy and nobility, and instructed us to assume that everyone else was “not that.” Now this did affect me deeply. I will never forget that day. I sat there at the kitchen table looking at the photo albums and the family trees of both families – the proud faces, the furs and top hats and canes and large mansions and villas.... sitting there as a young boy... comparing what I was seeing in the books of our family in the home country to looking about the modest house they lived in now in America... wondering where did all the money go... where did all the power and prestige go... it was in that moment that I committed to getting that back for the family. I was ten years old I believe.... It wasn't conscious. It was just a thought. A flash in the moment. I've spent my entire life despising the middle class, even though and probably precisely because of the fact that I was being raised as middle class as one could be. that was the truth. I could think anything I wanted to about myself because of what was spoken... but I was growing up middle class despite what I felt inside about who I was or who I thought I was or who I was being told I was by my parents and grandparents. There were no limos or mansions or villas for us when I was growing up.

‘there's a certain sense of propriety and tradition that one would like to keep mom. That's all I'm saying. perhaps that's something to honor. I'm just saying it would be nice to get our bloodline back. am I the only one who thinks this is important?’ I plead... certainly Beaver could care less. He is much more interested in just being a good person. in raising his family the best way he possibly can. and one cannot fault him for that. in fact, I find him one of the most honorable people I have ever known.

It’s me who is fucked up. I have made two fortunes in my life already and blown both of them trying to live a life beyond my means in my attempts to deny and resist that I was still in the end a rather common person, much like everyone else. always trying to get back to those pictures I saw in the photo albums of my ancestors. Always spending more than I had, no matter how much I had, I always found a way to spend more... I always felt frugality or prudence was a sign of weakness, was a sign of being common. I never understood that that was what was behind my profligate spending and showboating before today. But I do now. I understand now that frugality and prudence and being practical is a sign of wisdom. It is just being real. I have that lesson inside of me now. I will never look at money the same way again. that kind of living and thinking is behind me now. I have learned some very powerful lessons the last two years.

But this still doesn’t mean that one should marry down. Oh Fishy you silly boy. Well... Call it what you will. I don't think its being a snob. I'm as big a Jane Austen fan as anyone else, and I'm not saying that one should be prejudice of people with less money than you. on the contrary. In my current circumstances I am much more like Oscar wilde in his later years...near penniless and constantly struggling to complete my work, than I am like Mr. Darcy... so I'm not speaking of money here. and this is an important distinction. In my defense. It is not about money. it is about honor and manners and class and a good upbringing and an innate ability to discern right from wrong. it is in ones actions, but it is also in their speech and in the way they carry themselves.... to live with the highest ideals and morals and manners and class regardless of ones current lot in life. if I gained anything of benefit from my insane upbringing it was this.

This is one of the reasons why I love Princess Little Tree so much I think. it is easy to be around her. There is a comfort there for both of us that makes it very easy. she is beauty and class personified. there is no compromising for me when I am with her. I do not have to worry about how she dresses or carries herself in public. I do not have to concern myself with what she will say to me in private or in public. She is perfect in this regard.

[at the Grammy's the other night, this girl says something to me like ‘what can I say? I just like cock.’ And perhaps in this day and age, with sex and the city and MTV and just the way things are in America... maybe that's normal... but my body kind of went into shock... I felt very uncomfortable... I excused myself and told her I was going downstairs to get some cookies from this tea bar they had set up.... and I never returned... I know most of my friends would have jumped at that... but I couldn’t. what do you do in that situation? I can hear the Ferret and Bas and Tortoise screaming at me now, “what do you do? what are you crazy man?! You give her your cock! That's what you do!’ But I just had to get the hell out of there.]

Cleopatra was the same way as Princess Little Tree. Just the way she walked... it was a real thing of grace and beauty. for all of her insanity... this was one of the things that attracted me so to her. I would say looking back that that was probably a weakness to a certain degree on my part. We stayed at that party too long the two of us. that's for sure. Never should have gone on for as long as we did in our affair. But I believe we clung to each other for many reasons, the least of which not being that we both came from a certain place in society that our own generation and our parent’s generation did not.... and we longed to get back to it as soon as possible.

Cleopatra reminded me so much of my grandmother. The way she walked, spoke, and held herself. Just watching her hold her silverware and eat... it was art and beauty. You cannot buy that. it is something in the blood. And I suppose in the way one is raised as well.

America is funny in that. in how fortunes are made and lost. In how Cleopatra’s maternal line is French royalty but after the French revolution, all that went out the window rather quickly. It meant shit. and within a few generations certainly all of the honor and almost all of the money was gone. And here she was just living a normal everyday middle class existence like everyone else here in the states. and so were her parents. and yet normal everyday common people amass huge fortunes in America and become the new royalty... that's capitalism... that's America. But you can see breeding still even when one does not have money... as in Cleopatra’s family.

There is something to be said in that. and you can go to a fancy black tie affair and meet people who are as rich as sin and you can tell within two minutes of speaking to them how and when they acquired their wealth. No, I take that back... not saying this right... again, its not about the money... what I mean is that they can be every bit as rich as anyone in the world has ever been, but still uphold themselves in a manner that is not befitting the class that they circle in... I think what I am understanding is that it isn't about money but about class. And again, that is not something that can be bought.

I certainly cannot say that I am a very good example of this. I spent much of my youth rebelling against the strict upbringing and all the pompous and empty pretension I thought that I saw in these elders who wanted so much to be royal and aristocratic again but who in the end were just like everyone else.... I became less than everyone else for quite some time. I became a drinking drugging buffoon for a spell out of sheer rebellion, but luckily it did not last forever. I came out of it.

I have acted like a monster for most of my life. a wild and raving hedonistic lunatic with no sense or manners or concern for propriety or tradition... but I am learning... I am trying. Slowly, I am growing up. one day I am going to become a man. First step, honor money. don't spend in order to show off or deny who you are. accept who you are.