cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And to Kill the World's Largest Crocodile It has been a long time since I wrote anything here. I can't remember where I left off, so I will just pick up. I'm not going to read back to see where I was exactly. I think it was back in April of 2013 or so that I stopped. Since then, a lot has happened. I was b1tten by a black wid0w. That was as harrowing as one might expect. I knew at the time that there was only a small chance that I would die. That didn't bother me at all, at the time. I did eventually end up in the hospital, though it wasn't easy to get there. My nurse in the ER turned out to be the most gorgeous chick that I went to high school with. I was very popular in the ER. Nobody there had seen such a case before. I ended up volunteering to test an experimental new antivenom. We didn't really know what it would do, or even whether I would happen to get the placebo. As it happened, I got the real thing and it worked and I'm not dead. I wrote an article about this experience for the New Y0rk Times and became, for the millionth time, famous for this. I was on NPR and so forth to talk about it. Then I was briefly famous again and again for all sorts of other random things. I guested on 'B1zzare F00ds' with that guy, Andrew Z1mern. We hunted pigeons and snails together. I lost my house. Again. Long story. I got sick of being famous. Millions of people read my work every month. Millions more hear me on the radio or see me on TV. What is the point? If this was all 20 years ago then I would make a decent living from it. But fame is cheap now. I don't get paid jack shit for being famous. I decided that I wanted to stop being famous and do something that would pay for things like rent, gasoline, and health care to remove the various chips of bone floating around in my body. So I sort of did. In the midst of a lot of speaking engagements, I was asked to come to talk to the senior staff at my state's wild game management agency. After the talk (which went VERY well) I was taken aside and asked if I would please come and work for them. I agreed to apply for the position when they would list it and start the official process. Months went by. Things move slowly in state government. I had to move out of my wonderful house and into the only thing I could get on short notice where I could live month to month while waiting to find out where the state would need me to work from. I ended up in this awful, barely-habitable single wide trailer. Deer season started up again. I began my seasonal work as the only hunting instruct0r/gu1de in the world who specializes in adult beginners. This year I was booked solid and money was pretty good for a few months. I charged $250 a day and worked 5 or 6 days a week while waiting to start this thing with the game agency. I am now very, very good at the guiding/teaching business. May I detour for a moment to talk about what goes into that? The real measure of excellence in this business is to know for certain that you have given your client their money's worth even if he or she does not get a deer that day. I do that. I have to be a shooting instructor, ornithologist, EMT, survival expert, therapist, gunsmith, tracker, skinner, butcher and naturalist. And ever cheerful. I get hurt a lot. I have to navigate miles out of the wilderness by starlight with 50 pounds of meat to haul with me. If the client decides to use the bear tag that comes free with his or her hunting license, I have to deal with hundreds of pounds of wounded, angry bear in the thick brush. This season I was very, very good. I changed the lives of almost everyone who hired me. Then I finally got the phone call formally offering me the job. They offered me more money in salary than I have ever made in my entire life. Naturally I said 'yes.' I can still do some freelance writing and speaking gigs on the side. And I am still constantly beset by jackasses with TV production companies who want to develop shitty TV shows around me. My first real paycheck arrives the day after tomorrow. It has been hard to let go of my identity as a freelance adventurer. Helenah's HB1 visa was turned down and she had to go back to Sweden a few months ago. I still don't know how to be this person. I get fan mail every day from random strangers. I have speaking gigs scheduled every month around the US for the next 6 months. I tried to turn away from all of this but I don't know how. With very large paychecks coming in now, I will soon be able to move back into a very nice house. But the damage has been done. I am permanently broken. I don't think that I will ever be able to exist again as a regular middle class person. I have tried recently to go to parties and normal gatherings of regular people. I can't bring myself to care about or tolerate chit-chat about TV shows or where to buy groceries or what some celebrity said. I've gone to sleep hungry. I've lost homes. My wife is gone and now Helenah is gone. I have lost so very much. Almost everything that I ever cared about or worked for. There is no coming back from this. I don't think that there is a place in this world for me. Not now. A few women have made a bit of an effort in the last few months, but it isn't going to work for them. I look like a catch. I am good-looking enough to be offered TV shows, I've lectured at Y@le and other famous universities, I have a string of books under my belt, I've written for the NYT and the WP and I'm a little bit famous. But I have nothing in common with any other man of this era whom I have ever met. I don't belong here. These women can't relate to me any more than they could to Sir Richard Francis Burton if he came back from the grave and leaned against the bar. All that I feel is loss and hunger. I can't listen to people complain about their iphones and how long its taking for Mad Men to put out another episode. It's too late for me to belong. What I have decided to do is to save up as much money as I can from my new salary. It should take a year or two. Maybe less if I can get some big-money freelance gigs along the way. And then I am using that money to go to Burund1. There is a crocodile there that has killed and eaten over 400 people. Its name is Gust@ve. I will travel to Burund1 to hunt Gust@ve and kill him. One of two things will probably result. First, I could die while hunting it. This is probably the most likely outcome. There are many, many things there that are more likely to kill me before I ever so much as see the crocodile in question. I am totally ok with that. For me, there is no longer any such thing as family and there is no such place as home. I have nothing to lose. The sooner that I die, the sooner this shit is all over. The second possibility is that I will succeed in finding and killing Gust@ve. If I can do that, then I think it would be on par with anything that Odysseus or Hercules did. To find and destroy what is probably the world's largest reptile, which has eaten hundreds of people, and to bring its head back home with me. I would be able to rest, knowing that I have earned my place in the Elysian Fields and that there is nothing greater that could ever be expected of me or of any other man. It would be a good book if I could do it and come home. And then even if I live in the gutter after that, I would still know that I ranked side by side with Odysseus. This is now my basic goal. Just to put away a few tens of thousands of dollars that will allow me to go to Africa and hunt Gust@ve. Live, die, I don't give a fuck. I am so horribly alone. There is nothing and no one to look forward to here. I don't belong here. The only way out is through a whole lot of suffering. 9:10 p.m. - 2013-12-30 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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