embracing your inner mediocrity

Since I was a small child, I've had the feeling that simply by clenching my jaw and visualizing an explosion, I could blow up planets or stars in galaxies thousands of light-years from earth. Megalomaniacal delusion or fact? I've been lucky enough over the past few years to have developed a very close friendship with the acclaimed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking ... recently, I was seated next to Stephen at the Evander Holyfield/George Foreman bout in Atlantic City, and I mentioned my suspicion that I had the ability to destroy celestial bodies just by willing it, and not only did Stephen find this plausible in the abstract, but actually correlated it with several heretofore unexplained supernovae.

-Mark Leyner, 1992

I used to go to a therapist. 6:30 every Thursday morning. For like four years with a couple of breaks thrown in there. New York City at 6 am is a different town -- people on the street either really want to be there or got no damn choice.

I guess I really wanted to be there. I was a pretty happy dude but like a lot of people I stupidly thought I deserved to be happier. And for those 45 minutes a week, I generally was. I'd bitch about my stupid problems, the therapist guy would make sense of it all, and I'd come out of there charged up and ready to break the world's jaw in seventeen places. Then I'd go home, dick around on the computer for twenty minutes, eat a bagel, and catch an extra few minutes of sleep, still managing to get to my shit-sacking job only half an hour late. Somewhere in this two hour time frame I lost my superhuman confidence and ended up right back where I started. I think that's actually how therapy is supposed to work.

One thing my therapist was always preaching about was grandiosity. Apparently it was my subconscious belief that my decisions and actions had huge implications for the human race. If I was erased from the planet, everyone I'd ever crossed paths with would be doomed to confusion and failure. And I had a suspicion that there was more out there waiting for me -- great triumphs were always right around the corner.

Basically, my attitude was, This world is so average, it's just a matter of time before I begin to dominate it. And the therapist guy was like, Dude, you're doing pretty good, and you should be happy with that, because you ain't all that special. Concentrate on enjoying your life as it is, stop thinking about some fantasy life you're not capable of attaining.

This came as a surprise to me. Huh. A regular life. A regular job. A regular everything. Sounds lame.

But eventually the message got through. Greatness was not going to call me up out of the blue so we could hang. I was a regular dude. And I could be a happy regular dude if I stopped thinking about it. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Live. It's not boring, it's heroic.

But you can't help but wonder. Was I always meant to be a mid-level shitsacker with a pathetic blog read solely by my friends? Or could I have been great at something? Could I have been great, period? Thinking about it could drive a man nuts.

The trick is to never let go of your grandiosity completely. Find ways to remind yourself that you are, indeed, great. That the world would be a mess without you. That you are capable of anything even while doing nothing.

This is why we drink. And why we drink more than one drink when we drink. This is why we rock out at 4 am and say all sorts of embarrasing shit to one another.

This is why we douchily blog on for a handful of friends.

This is why we play basketball against people who are terrible.

And this, bitches, is why we grow moustaches.

After some negotiation with the wife, mine is now scheduled to launch on July the second. It should be pulling into the station on July 23rd. I heard Beefsteak Charlie is so scared he's getting testosterone injections.

Let's start distributing those genius points again. For those of you who heard me tell this story in a bar over the last few days, consider yourselves ineligible. The rest of you, twenty points if you can tell me which British singer (his band had a couple of minor hits in the 80's) is being interviewed in the following TMI-style exchange. As always, no googling.

So what kind of crazy, “rock-star life” question should I have asked you? Was the groupie sex all it was tarted up to be?

I wasn’t a groupie sex man, actually. I was very, very well behaved. There was all sorts of talk of girls being accommodating to most of the band, roadies, lighting men all at once, and, “Oh dear, she’s had her period, it’s all over the walls. Oh dear.”

Or the Led Zeppelin shark story or some such.
Right, although the nearest I could get was my rubber shark story. That was my notorious way of not being unfaithful when I was on tour.

Come again?
It was the best blow job I ever had! I bought it at a Woolworth’s in Melbourne, Australia, on tour. I was thinking, “How am I gonna be good?” I had an afternoon off, wandering around, and was amazed that they had a load of stuff in this store that you just couldn’t get anymore, like a time capsule or something. I saw this soft, rubber shark about a foot long and I thought, “Wow, if I stuck my dick in that, it’d feel really good, and I could be faithful and not tempted by all these women now that I’m married!” So I thought, “I’m gonna buy this rubber shark and fuck it!” I bought the shark, and it felt great. You’d get some suction going, a vacuum effect, just terrific. I used to wedge it under a cushion or a chair and I’d fuck this rubber shark. My suitcase was full at the time, so I had to buy an extra box to take it around. I had this blue fiber-board suitcase, and I’d keep this rubber shark in there. I remember going through New Zealand with it and the customs agent asking me, “What’s in the case, mate?” And I said, “Well, it’s a rubber shark.” “Wise guy.” Then he’d open it up and it’d be a rubber shark! It was great.

Did it have a name, this shark?
Not really a name. Sharky. [Laughs] Although after a while that stopped because then I’d think of Feargal Sharkey, and the last thing—literally—you want to be thinking of when you’re blowing your wad is the lead singer of the Undertones.

Did you ever write a song about the shark?
Never did, although I guess I should slip him in somewhere there, no pun intended. [Laughs] I once went for a dinner in Hamburg with Julian Lennon; he wanted to write some songs with me. We got rather drunk and ended up talking about masturbation technique. And he was trying to top me, and while I’m not going to tell you his stories, he couldn’t top me. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a front-loading washing machine full of warm liver, or something.

Well, now there’ll be a run on rubber sharks on eBay.
Well, I did go and try to look for one, but they make them out of denser, harder rubber now, with a kind of squeaker in the mouth. And that just won’t do now, will it?