Let's go for a ride in Rod's Way-Back Machine:

And I said, "Becky, you're angry with me because I'm not having an affair with you."

She started to cry. "Yes," she said softly. "I don't understand."

I took her hand then, where it rested on the table. "My God!" I said. "You have to know I've always loved you --- but for the wrong reasons. Every year I was married to Deb she wore a clown costume for Halloween. What did you show up at the office party dressed as last Halloween? A CLOWN!

"You are the wife I always wanted, but that I already had! The ONLY difference between you and her is that you understand my corporate side. She's a country mouse, pure and simple. Why do you think I'm going through the divorce?"

She gripped my hand tightly. "You just said you love me!"

"Beck, I've loved you since the moment I met you. It's been all I can do keep our 'relationship' professional."

She lowered her head: "Then why her?" She was referring to my new girlfriend, the one everyone hated.

"Because she's nothing like any woman anyone would expect me to be with," I said. "Can you understand that?"

"Oh shit," Becky said and sniffed. She wiped back her tears. "That is so you!" Then she chuckled. "You bastard!"

"So you still love me, too?"

"I guess."

"Okay. I can live with that for now. Just don't hide from me when you're angry with me anymore."

Becky smiled. It was like sunshine. "You know what?"

"What?"

"She's going to hurt you, Rod."

The e-mails have been as freaky-deaky as ever, both to me and The World's Magazine, as our long-g-g VOX POPULI page evidences this week. Hope you like the new music.

I also got a lot of interesting and spacey phone calls from people hither and yon. One of them from my opposite number at TroikaMagazine.com. Old hands talking about how we're not making any money as Web publishers. Misery loves company. "But I'd never do a literary site, Eric!" Like doing a news site has put me in the penthouse. Heh!

THAT WOMAN telephoned last night while I was finishing up on the VoxPop page. She was loquacious as ever. She had a run-in with one of the writers here who was trying to protect me from myself -- and, I presume, people who might take advantage of a weak-minded, God's Own Fool type like myself.

I had to tell her that it was No Big Deal. She had to tell me how exercised she was. I had to repeat that NOBODY should take anything that goes on in my precarious life too seriously, not even me. I laughed.

She had to tell me how people worry for my well-being.

Now this, Gentle Reader, is the point where I could have cut in and began the story, again, about how my First Love began our reunion telephone conversation with the exclamation: "I thought you'd be dead by now!"

I must be the Houdini thing.

When people see you being manacled and placed into the trunk, hear the rattling of the chains and then see you dropped through that hole in the ice, it's only natural they say: "That's it for him."

They keep forgetting that YOU sold them those tickets.

That's how I see it anyway, Kids!

Would it be thrilling visiting this Glass House if we all, you and me, didn't expect me NOT to come up from that last trunk, not to fall from the pole jutting from that skyscraper, not to have pulled just one fast trick too many?

What would be the fun of a show without suspence?

I thought you said you expected MAGIC when you bought that ticket, my friend! Hahahahaha!

And: VAN HELSING, you ignorant swine! You can run but you can't hide!

Chronicles of The Ghost Who Walks

As I became an adult (Stop Laughing!) I tried to do what all "regular" people were supposed to do. Even when I tried my best to hide, the real regular people sniffed me out: they saw the wolf hiding beneath my sheep's clothing. I didn't want A Boss anymore than I wanted a sharp stick in the eye. I had this bad habit of looking behind the curtain and seeing that The Great and Powerful Wizard was just a carney from Kansas.

Then there was that Pied Piper thang.

Know what? I'm NOT like everyone else... Whew! I said it!

Eccentric is an operative word. Obsessive is another word that fits.

Here's the thing: when I read about, see films about or think about people who are kindah silly, and WILD, and don't want to just drift along I get a woodie. I go nuts and laugh like a chimpanzee.

When I look at or meet someone who's view of the world is slightly skewed I FEEL RIGHT AT HOME.

Everytime, all those years, when I tried to be "regular" (much as I wished, prayed, aspired toward it) I felt like somebody had put a strait-jacket on me.

I wanted to rush out on the street and chase a red balloon floating in the air, try to catch a butterfly.

In one of those phone calls this week, I told That Woman: "It's all there. I apologize for seeming simple, but there is not much more to me than this. You can see it right there on the Web. I understand that some people think that simple is shallow. I also know that some people take kindness for weakness."

God's Own Fool.

But don't you think, late at night, I've asked myself about all this globe-trotting, the new cities, the new people, the serial relationships? I'd be a very shallow idiot if I hadn't!

At the same time, I can't wait to move again. Baltimore has done nothing for me. I need a new town.

It's crossed my mind to go back to Manhattan. Act surprised.

THINGS THAT I LOVE THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000. He is now a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in papers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others.

Rod lives in Baltimore, MD, at the moment (though it seems to most people he *actually* lives on the Web,) edits the writing of people from six continents for The World's Magazine, and wonders who The Last Woman will be in his "spare time." Rumor has it he is considering moving to Tahiti and writing about what The World was like before he left.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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