![[sic]: A Memoir](https://fs.collectorofbookboyfriends.com/474711/thumbs/152x264/sic-a-memoir.jpg)
with about a dozen plates of dim sum in front of her. She hugged me tightly and gave me a deep kiss, then handed me a martini; and the second act began.
•
SHE HUGGED ME tightly and gave me a deep kiss, then handed me a martini—freeze it there for a sec. This should not be taken as a value judgment, but just as lives may be thus bisected, so doth humanity divide itself, for some inscrutable reason, between people who seem illuminated from above, and those who seem lit from below. (I mean “seem illuminated” literally , like with light gear you see on film sets.) Either quality is no particular indicator of either intelligence (although a case could be made for a statistical correlation between intelligence and the former) or beauty (same for the latter), and anyway—thankfully—beauty and intelligence are unmasked as the combatants they truly are only upon reaching their very extremes. The above-lit slash below-lit continuum is, like virtually every other orientation (whether political, sexual, ethnic, religious, technocratic, melodic, whatever) (televised, aquatic, whatever), exactly that: a spectrum, on which the vast majority of us will fall somewhere in the middle, more or less. But God bless America. Gimme your tired, your poor. I became tired, and poor, due to treatments for a disease, and due to a disease, that had everything to do with genes and nothing to do with the environment. (“If anything,” my bow-tied oncologist said once, “you could suggest a socioeconomic bias,” and he smirked. That was the point where we really bonded. Even more than when he said I could keep smoking. “Quit after. Don’t worry about it now. One thing at a time. Do that next.” Or when I asked him about diet, herbal supplements, red cabbage, flavenoid-rich kale, antioxidants, sulfuric garlic. “Yeah, that stuff is just terrific, the whole idea’s great, the only thing is that it makes absolutely no difference and it doesn’t work. Listen, don’t eat any of that crap. Okay?”)
But back to Carmilla , sitting at the glass bar at the restaurant in Chelsea, smiling her perfect smile and kissing me and handing me a martini that gleamed: then another, and then—quite predatorily, in a way; both overflowing with kindness and embedded in herself at the same time—grabbed my wrist with her lovely hand and gave me the first real kiss. Oh and speaking of bars and restaurants, any club or bar or restaurant owner will tell you that the two most important factors for success in their field in America are (1) music and (2) lighting. The music should not be subtle, but the lighting may be subtle, hidden, even, in a warm coven: perhaps a lightweight, easily installed, energy-efficient LED strip, recessed along the edge of the bar to produce elegantly dramatic effects. Take, for example, a person whose above-lit/below-lit quotient ( a lit /b lit ) is just slightly, and to the untrained eye unnoticeably, “south” (i.e., low) of the apex X = 1 of the standard normal distribution curve—that is, just to the left of the tip of the top of the pear or the bump ( a lit /b lit < X ). Place this person—who in the banal light of day is so normally, neutrally, unassumingly attractive—place him (or her) at the bar and what happens? Genes and environment will mix like memory and desire, slightly accentuating the inherent, latent below-lit factor that, when paired with the perfect musical accompaniment, should produce the desired effect for patron and proprietor alike: just a hint of darkened, enlarged eyes, the gentle emphasis of the cheekbones that cast shadows that trail upward. It’s a win-win.
And so what of the person for whom
a lit /b lit > X
holds? The opposite case. This won’t be on the final, you don’t have to take it down, but if the bar owner is any good, then this person’s natural propensity to illumination from above will be gently, safely, environmentally nudged toward the center, just as the universe
•
SHE HUGGED ME tightly and gave me a deep kiss, then handed me a martini—freeze it there for a sec. This should not be taken as a value judgment, but just as lives may be thus bisected, so doth humanity divide itself, for some inscrutable reason, between people who seem illuminated from above, and those who seem lit from below. (I mean “seem illuminated” literally , like with light gear you see on film sets.) Either quality is no particular indicator of either intelligence (although a case could be made for a statistical correlation between intelligence and the former) or beauty (same for the latter), and anyway—thankfully—beauty and intelligence are unmasked as the combatants they truly are only upon reaching their very extremes. The above-lit slash below-lit continuum is, like virtually every other orientation (whether political, sexual, ethnic, religious, technocratic, melodic, whatever) (televised, aquatic, whatever), exactly that: a spectrum, on which the vast majority of us will fall somewhere in the middle, more or less. But God bless America. Gimme your tired, your poor. I became tired, and poor, due to treatments for a disease, and due to a disease, that had everything to do with genes and nothing to do with the environment. (“If anything,” my bow-tied oncologist said once, “you could suggest a socioeconomic bias,” and he smirked. That was the point where we really bonded. Even more than when he said I could keep smoking. “Quit after. Don’t worry about it now. One thing at a time. Do that next.” Or when I asked him about diet, herbal supplements, red cabbage, flavenoid-rich kale, antioxidants, sulfuric garlic. “Yeah, that stuff is just terrific, the whole idea’s great, the only thing is that it makes absolutely no difference and it doesn’t work. Listen, don’t eat any of that crap. Okay?”)
But back to Carmilla , sitting at the glass bar at the restaurant in Chelsea, smiling her perfect smile and kissing me and handing me a martini that gleamed: then another, and then—quite predatorily, in a way; both overflowing with kindness and embedded in herself at the same time—grabbed my wrist with her lovely hand and gave me the first real kiss. Oh and speaking of bars and restaurants, any club or bar or restaurant owner will tell you that the two most important factors for success in their field in America are (1) music and (2) lighting. The music should not be subtle, but the lighting may be subtle, hidden, even, in a warm coven: perhaps a lightweight, easily installed, energy-efficient LED strip, recessed along the edge of the bar to produce elegantly dramatic effects. Take, for example, a person whose above-lit/below-lit quotient ( a lit /b lit ) is just slightly, and to the untrained eye unnoticeably, “south” (i.e., low) of the apex X = 1 of the standard normal distribution curve—that is, just to the left of the tip of the top of the pear or the bump ( a lit /b lit < X ). Place this person—who in the banal light of day is so normally, neutrally, unassumingly attractive—place him (or her) at the bar and what happens? Genes and environment will mix like memory and desire, slightly accentuating the inherent, latent below-lit factor that, when paired with the perfect musical accompaniment, should produce the desired effect for patron and proprietor alike: just a hint of darkened, enlarged eyes, the gentle emphasis of the cheekbones that cast shadows that trail upward. It’s a win-win.
And so what of the person for whom
a lit /b lit > X
holds? The opposite case. This won’t be on the final, you don’t have to take it down, but if the bar owner is any good, then this person’s natural propensity to illumination from above will be gently, safely, environmentally nudged toward the center, just as the universe
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