by Ernest Olson
Facelift
By
JC Canon
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Facelift
Copyright © 2013- - Ernie Olson
This is the first in a series of books featuring botany professor
Chesterfield Belton Oldenberger, Ph.D.
“CB,” as his friends call him, is a wizard in the lab, a constant
annoyance to the administration, and terribly concerned about getting older.
It also turns out that he is pretty good at finding trouble.
Follow CB as he wrestles with getting older, stumbles into an
international spy ring, and ultimately, nearly gets the girl.
Thank you for downloading Facelift.
I had thought of adding a subtitle. Something like, “A Male Midlife Crisis Transformational Journey Thing,” but thought better of it. However, if you are currently going through a mid-life crisis, have done so already, are likely to go through such a phase in the future, or for that matter if you know someone in the previous categories, then this is a must read. It will make you laugh. It will make you feel better.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
I had an insight recently, but then I forgot what it was.
This led me to another insight: no matter the insight, if you don’t remember it, it isn’t.
My name is Chesterfield Belton Oldenberger. My 40s are passing quickly and age 50 looms on the horizon. I’m happily divorced, and I have a very comfortable job as botany professor. Yes, by all accounts, I have a good life and should be rather pleased with my status and success, but quite frankly, at this moment I am more than a little distressed. I just read a book by Erika Lopez, Flaming Iguana's, and it pissed me off. It was too damn good, too honest, too much fun, and it was about a solo motorcycle ride across America. It was similar to the book I wanted to write years ago. In 1986 I rode a Yamaha 650 from San Diego to Chicago, from Chicago to Louisiana, headed west before cold weather and ended up in Sacramento. Erika rode solo from the East Coast to the West Coast, settled in San Francisco, and then wrote a remarkable book about the experience. I frequently talked about, thought about, and occasionally wrote about my motorcycle adventure, but I never got past Chapter Three. Time flew by more quickly than I write. The book was never finished.
Of course, trying to finish my Ph.D. in botanical science, and working in various jobs to make a living didn't allow much time for writing a story about my great road adventure. It was easy to argue against venturing into the literary world when faced with the tasks that daily life foists upon you, and, of course, staying abreast of my academic career. However, the story never dimmed in my mind, and now these many years later it is as fresh in my memory as though it were just yesterday. But, it wasn't just yesterday, and I'm no longer the young man who traveled coast to coast on the back of a Yamaha 650. I am now comfortably situated, I am a full professor, and my research has given me a certain measure of status and discretionary income, and, now for the first time in life, I have time to write. Nevertheless, the idea of revisiting those early memories and writing a novel about my motorcycle adventure is just as distant now as when pragmatic concerns made it easy for me to put off writing to a later time. Shed now the excuses of earlier times, I can see a more fundamental reason for my failure to have tried my hand at writing: I lack the self-confidence, the inhibition and fundamental irreverence that characterize the work of someone like Erika Lopez. The truth is, I am a botanist who would like to be a writer, but who is more fearful of writing than I am of teaching, researching, or riding a motorcycle coast to coast.
There was another book I wanted to write. It involved another adventure, this one shared with my friend Maryann. In some ways Maryann, reminds me of Erika Lopez. When Maryann was a young woman, she was creative, bright, and as gutsy as she was pretty. One hot and humid summer, Maryann and I set out from Chicago for Seattle. We hitchhiked westward, but on our return decided to hop freight trains. We'd seen a movie about Woody Gutherie and thought it would be cool to ride the rails and see America framed by a boxcar door. While riding the rails, Maryann wore overalls, hiking shoes and a baseball cap. We tried to pass her off as my little brother. That was like trying to disguise a Mercedes as a VW by draping a car cover over it. Nevertheless, the disguise usually worked until she had to go to the bathroom or sneak a shower in a roundhouse or someone got close enough to see her full lips, the curve of a hip, a stray lock of long blond hair, or her pale blue eyes. I was going to write about the great “train-hopping-adventure” as well, but didn't even come close to getting started. I was okay with that. In the back of my mind, there was a firm belief that there was still time, and that someday I would write about catching freight trains across America with a winsome girl named Maryann.
Maturity and marriage put my adventures on hold, but not my desire to tell the tales. In my mind, there was always time to write a book about a solo motorcycle ride across America or my great train adventure. Rarely a day would go by without my reflecting on the stories I would tell once I had time. There was always tomorrow, and I knew that someday I would find both the time and words to become a novelist. Someday...someday….
I was procrastinating quite nicely when along came Erika Lopez. Flaming Iguanas was Tabasco sauce for the conscience, a literary meteorite blasting through a rock hard skull, exploding, illuminating my unconscious denial. Although Flaming Iguanas was wonderfully entertaining, it also reminded me of how quickly time passes, and how easy it is to be lulled into a fog of denial. It gave rise to insight, a clear understanding of my reality. My life flowed like molasses on a winter's day. Erika was a tsunami of emotion, energy, creativity, and productivity. I was like the old codger sitting in a rocking chair carefully considering whether to sit still or rock. And, it pissed me off to realize that it had been so many years since I took that long ride, hopped those trains, and wrote those three chapters.
I saw Clint Eastwood in a trailer the other day. You know, a preview. (Why do they call them trailers? Shouldn't a "trailer" follow a movie, not precede it? I suppose you could say that the preview trails the main production—okay, I get it now.) Anyhow, the Clint Eastwood, in this movie was clearly not the real Clint Eastwood, not the Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood, but a really old, really old person who vaguely resembled Clint Eastwood. This Clint Eastwood looked like a craggy cadaver. His face looked like an aerial view of Grand Canyon. That pissed me off too. It always makes me sad when I see actors age, and even sadder when they die. I think what disturbs me has more to do with my own mortality than sympathy for the demised celebrity. Nothing reminds me more poignantly of how quickly time passes than the death of a popular figure. I refuse to see Clint East Eastwood in whatever his new film is. I possess neither enough optimism nor denial to endure such a display of the aging process.
The light bulb that hangs over your head only gets turned on once in a while. It doesn't stay on very long either. Blink and you miss it. Get distracted and you forget it. Then Erika Lopez comes along, flips on a spotlight and there is no place to run or hide. The insight slaps you in the face, and for a few pathetic moments you see yourself in third-degree bright light and deep shadow. The inquisitor aims the bright light in your eyes and coldly asks you what you wanted to do with your life. You reply, "I wanted to be a writer." The heat from the lamp makes you perspire. The inquisitor asks what you did with your life. You reply, "I rode a motorcycle and I wrote three chapters of a book." You peer into the int
ense light and begin to make out the figure asking the questions, inflicting the pain. He has an uncanny resemblance to someone you know; you look more closely at the inquisitor and you see yourself.
Under the bright light of day, even molasses warms up and moves more quickly. Moved by the light of introspection, I warmed up and set out to write my road-novel. But, that was days ago, and I feel myself slowing down, my enthusiasm for writing a book waning.
There seems to always be a convenient excuse for not writing: I just don’t have enough time, I’m not feeling very well today, I’m not in the mood, I don’t feel inspired, I need a muse. And, then of course, there are always other things to do; things that have a certain outcome like shopping, going to the health club, and watching my favorite sitcom. Erika Lopez has a new book out, and the Book Emporium has a 30% clearance sale. If I hurry I can get a copy before the weekend, and maybe I will compromise and see that Clint Eastwood movie. Maybe I will write an article instead of a book.
