The swashbuckler and the royal clown May 30, 1985

 

It’s Pauly again, the bastard, operating in self interest and excuses, covering his tracks with justifications.

By self-interest I partly mean, self-deception, his perception of interests. In this case, this lingering deadly romance he maintains.

All this duplicity shocks me. In the past, Pauly has always operated with the most open of intentions – even if they tended sometimes to be selfish, and maybe because he figured it’s better to be upfront with what he wants rather than to have it call come back and bite him in the ass later.

All that changed when he met Jessica; he sneaks around now as if he is stealing something and desperately afraid, he’ll get caught.

He’s still in control, I think, but in a sneakier fashion.

In the past, Pauly manipulated people more openly, assuming he could do so with impunity. He is notorious for using people: me, Garrick, Hank, Alf, even his one-time love interest, Carol – able to manipulate each one of us and still consider us his friends. We are all Pauly’s pawns at one point or another.

Pauly has always had it over the rest of us when it comes to women (with perhaps with the exception of Hank, whose women Pauly wouldn’t want in the first place).

Of all the women Pauly has encountered, Carol proved toughest, making a project out of manipulating Pauly, who she found as a challenge, ignoring the fact that Alf adored her and trailed behind her like a sick puppy.

Maybe that’s why Pauly tended to pick on Alf a lot, seeing him as perfect patsy until he no longer posed a challenge and went on to others.

Pauly, of course, loves Jane most, perhaps because he can’t control her at all.

An old wife’s tale claims Pauly stole Jane from Alf at a picnic to which Alf supposedly brought Jane. As it turns out, this story is untrue. Pauly and Jane hit if off right away at a party in which Jane and Carol attended. Pauly did, however, apparently, “borrow” Alf’s car to make out with Jane in, where he and Jane smoke Alf’s pot (which Alf glared outside the locked doors and pined over Carol.

So, what happened to this dashing young Pauly now headed into middle age? Where is all the swashbuckling, we knew him capable of when he was that brash young man?

Now, Pauly hurts and seems as wounded over Jessica as Alf was over Carol, almost hapless, needing to keep it all inside, even when it spills out of him from every orifice. He’s like a leaking bucket, all these feeling spilling out of him from every possible place.

He was even nice to Alf when Alf came over, Alf giving me a lecture of love as we cross over the Wall Street Bridge into Garfield to get coffee, his own wounds over Carol still obvious, and I can’t help thinking as we stroll up Passaic Street, how both he and Pauly ultimately ended up in the same place. The swashbuckler and the royal clown with me somewhere in the middle.

 

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