So I labor every day, at one thing and another.
Yet no one seems to understand that a person just needs to work to be fulfilled and happy.
This writing is just one form of work I self-indulgently apply myself to nearly daily. Writing each day, after all, is the very definition of a journalist .So I suppose that makes me one.
Others talents, like acting, singing, and dancing, I intend to pick back up - just like my lousy, aging body.
I once played the character Orphan in the musical "Celebration" (by the same folks who gave us "The Fantasticks"), and I could identify quite easily with the character, having most certainly felt at times bereft of any loving relatives or significant others.
Now I am vividly financially deprived if not depraved, and bereft of adequate resources to do the things a man wants most to do at the September of his years.
Before I can accomplish anything at all, I have to accomplish a re-finance of my home mortgage.
I retain a bulldog's determination that neither any bank, nor social services will ever get the abode I inherited.
Having started this article a few nights ago, I return to it after spending about three hours on the phone with a delightful lady customer service representative for Bank of America named Kyra.
While she crunched all the numbers in an effort to accommodate me, we had plenty of time to talk. And we did so, exchanging stories of telephone marketing and customer service - at which I excelled in the 1990s.
I told her about my having sold an American Express Gold card to a fella' who must have been a Mafia Don - insisting that I ask all the questions in Italian. I did, he took the card, and luckily my supervisor was understanding - because, of course no one was authorized to speak Italian online at what was then Matrixx Marketing.
On another occasion, as I related it to Kyra, I took the application of a lady in Malibu who was flirting obnoxiously with me because she liked my "sexy" voice.
"Madam," I told her, "I'm afraid if we go on with this flirtatious line of talk I'll lose my job."
"Hell," she responded, "if you come out to Malibu to see me, you won't need that damn job."
On yet another call, I reached a man who managed the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. He remarked that I had a great voice with a lot of smooth, persuasive charm.
"Tell me," he asked, "you're not ugly, are you?"
