This Guy’s Feeling Pretty Lucky

My column about the four women who dominate my life was applauded by many readers, but disparaged by some.

Perhaps its harshest critic was H. Abigail Bok of Altadena, who failed to realize, as the four women did, that I was trying in my way to show my affection for them.

Displaying a formidable felicity with words, Bok called me “childish, selfish and offensive,” and said: “You’d be hard-pressed to find any men willing to show the patience or make the kind of sacrifices the women in your life do so that you can sit around feeling sorry for yourself and scheming to obtain more of the things that probably destroyed your health in the first place.”

What I scheme to obtain, of course, is my daily bottle of beer, given to me about 4 o’clock by my chauffeur-keeper, Eleanor Gabourel, and the vodka tonic mixed for me by my wife every evening before dinner.

I really doubt that it was beer and vodka that caused my stroke and my Parkinson’s. If anything, they are helping to keep me alive. Or at least making life worth living.

“And how do you reward them?” Bok asked. “You resent them and try to sneak ‘treats’ that harm you and make you more dependent, so that they’re forced to serve you all the more assiduously. You even go to the bizarre length of renaming two of them, as if that gives you power to define or control them.”

I call Eleanor “Ellie,” which is what her husband calls her and what she calls herself.

There’s less justification for calling Christine Steffanus “Cookie,” while observing that she is not sweet and does not crumble. Christine is my gymnasium instructor, and she is a hard taskmaster. But she is not mean, and she is, in fact, pretty and sweet.

I should have noted that my physical therapist, Kathy Doubleday, has a spectacular figure, but I didn’t know that before she appeared in a bathing suit the other day to take me swimming in the pool.

As for the fourth woman in my life, my wife, of course, I admit I would be virtually helpless without her. Not only her physical support, but also her indomitable disposition are the mainstays of my existence. I call her Denny, by the way, short for Denise.

There. Have I made amends? Not enough, I’m sure, to pacify Bok, but enough to reassure the four women and to make me feel benevolent.

Meanwhile, I may be forgiven for quoting from a more favorable letter, just to balance the accounts.

“I’m just writing to let you know,” writes Tilda De Wolfe of Monterey Park, “how much I enjoy your column and how much I admire you, your wit, your tenacity, your adaptability and your flexibility.

“Although both you and your wife are probably surprised by my perception of the last two qualities, you must possess them to put up with your physical problems and keep them in perspective and see the humor in same.

“I wonder if you know how much good you are doing by writing about these things. People in similar circumstances can relate to what you say, and others, like me, will remember your attitude if such happens in the future.”

There, I feel better. I don’t often print favorable letters like that one, but to offset the “childish, selfish and offensive” evaluation by Bok it seems fair enough.

While I’m waving my flag, I might as well quote a letter from Byron Goodrich of Oxnard. “You lift my day . . . because what you say sends my mind sifting the ideas and seasons of my life. I always find the same thing; the worldly values of the moment end up dross and the little amusements of the day possessing no worldly value end up jewels for eternity. . . .

“You, of course, are the cause of much jealousy since you spend your days with four beautiful women of varied talent and ethnic variety and yet must only be married to one. I have found solace in the losses appended to aging since I have discovered that a greater and greater percentage of women are beautiful.”

Seems so to me too.

A letter from Evie De Poister seems to take a sensible view of my situation:

“I’d say you’d most likely die an old sot in a very short while if left on your own. Your wife doesn’t want you to have two beers or those extra cocktails because she’s selfish. She wants to keep you around as long as possible, but she doesn’t want to take away all your fun. So she rations them. She indulges you and makes a reasonable compromise between what’s best for your health and your enjoyment of worldly pleasures. . . . So quitcherbellyachin.”

Yes, I’m a lucky man.