epigraph

from Montaigne, our ishta-devata, our pal Michel,
the patron saint of “on the other hand –“:

We are all a patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

GREEN LUST

Randy Mesmer was alarmed to discover his lust had expanded, past men and past women and—thankfully skipping the animals—was now headed straight for the trees. The feelings once reserved for “rugged uncut Latino hunk” were now equally called forth by the phrases “stand of white birches” or “big old oak.” Horniness had expanded, somehow, so that now he found himself with a hankering for the whole green world.

Of all the ends to which people had warned his rampant lust would lead him, this one had not been mentioned. A fetish for green. Green, which presses in everywhere, which fills every crevice, every neglected patch of dirt. This devouring, insatiable green.

Funny how, it turned out to be true, the Junior High tease: green means you’re horny.

He learned quickly to beware the sexy pictures that came in brown recycled wrappers from Audobon, Orion, and the Sierra Club. He could easily be sent into a binge and find himself at the end of the weekend with an entirely immoderate number of houseplants.

If one must have this feeling, fine, but shouldn’t it be reserved for orchids, for roses, for high-end botanical woo-woo? But, in greenery as in men, he preferred the more common varieties. It was more than a little humiliating. He was not even above geraniums.

And so many things had to be reconsidered, now that the naturalists had turned out to be every bit as alluring as the naturists. Certainly he’d never look the same way at old ladies gone bird-watching, looking so pious, clad all in canvas within the forest glen. Those ladies, he suspected, were probably getting off hard as a sailor on shore leave.

And, not to flatter himself, but he was pretty sure the trees liked him too. Somehow he just knew. And there was this great benefit: the lightning-struck black walnut did not give a damn how old he was, how clumsy or unshaven.

These perversities, of course, were no more acceptable than any of his previous ones. People were appalled—this ecology goes too far!—when they found him at the party in the corner, in flagrante delicto with a potted palm.