Wednesday

A strange day. I awakened in my room in Rancho Mirage, looking out at the swimming pool and the golf course and the brown, barren mountains. I made myself a fried egg, ate it, and then went swimming. Our gardener has put a fake owl on a rope near the swimming pool to scare away ducks and every time I swim by it, I think it’s going to be a golfer looking for his lost golf balls. But it never is.

I took a shower in my immense shower, marveling as I do each time I am in the shower, that all I have to do is twist a knob to get torrents of clean, hot water for as long as I can stand it.

Then, off to my 12 step meeting. I’m not allowed to say what I hear there but I guess I can say that all during the meeting I drank mint herbal tea. What a great invention that is. When I drink it at home, I take honey with it. At the meetings, I take sugar. In either case, I am staggered that I can just reach out my hand at home and get honey — which has to be taken from millions of vicious, horrible bees and which I get at the supermarket for virtually free and no bees around — and then I can get unlimited sugar, which has to be hacked from the Cuban sugar plantations by the Venceremos brigade, for literally nothing.

After the meeting, I brought dirty laundry to the dry cleaners near our house. Again, I am amazed that I can find three super hard-working, capable Korean women who can get my clothes, smeared with honey and sugared tea, clean for a few dollars. And there is great free parking.

Then back home for a long talk on the phone with my psychiatrist, my super great psychiatrist. He’s having a fit about the “sex scandals.” He has a low opinion of the trustworthiness of Hollywood women. He thinks that believing their stories is foolish in the extreme.

Then lunch of leftover “flatbread,” which is really just another name for pizza. Wifey joined me and we lay out by the pool and watched the airplanes fly into Palm Springs International Airport. Fun, fun, fun. Jets coming over is pure romance.

To think that I used to spend my days at the Federal Trade Commission, where I worked with incredibly smart men but in miserable conditions, in a building at 11th and Penn. Winos openly urinated against the walls of the building as we pitiful swamp dwellers walked in. Now I get to lie with my wife under the California desert sky.

The catch is that I was young then and had a super great time and now I’m old and good only for lying by the pool.

Then, my pal J. arrived from L.A. to celebrate Chanukah with us. He and I had a luscious dinner at Morningside overlooking the lagoon and the golf course.

I told him how I had a friend who was once a prosecutor in a large city. This woman told me many times that the great majority of rape complaints were ill founded. They were based on anger over not getting a call for another date or jealousy of another woman or some generalized sense of grievance, so said the prosecutor.

“True enough,” said my pal J., a VERY smart guy. “And I am sure that most of the women in the Weinstein cases and all of the other cases are at the very least greatly exaggerating their complaints. And the most important thing is that every single man accused so far is innocent. Every single one. Because in America, we’re all innocent until proven guilty.”

“That’s the catastrophe here,” I agreed. “These cases are destroying the law itself and the Constitution. In a mad rush to please the feminists, we are saying that the merest accusation, even by the most clearly dishonest liar, is now equivalent to a finding of guilty by a court of law. To appease a huge voting bloc known as ‘women,’ we have abandoned the rule of law. That’s a major disaster. The horror is worse because every woman I know in Hollywood says the whole story is phony and that the women were as guilty as Harvey. They were happy to trade sex for favors. Most of the men in their lives took the sex and did nothing but drink and get high.”

“The problem,” said my brilliant pal, J., “is that for every ten crazy women in the Weinstein affair and others like it, there are two who are sane and are telling the truth. Some really bad things did happen. But that’s for a court of law, and innocent until proven guilty is still sacred or should be but the media never liked it and now it’s the media whom the other media are eating up.”

I couldn’t really concentrate after that because I had a call from my wife’s nurse that she was feeling terrible. I packed up her Wienerschnitzel and headed home… a drive of less than a minute. Cars. Another gift from God.

Now, here’s the miracle. My wife, J., and I lit the Chanukah candles and prayed. J. left to go home to L.A. Then my wife ate the meal I brought her and soon she was feeling right as rain. She doesn’t eat unless someone else sets it before her. Not a great plan.

Anyway, she and I watched a documentary about Task Force Taffy and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Those were some super brave men in those little destroyers and escort carriers. It’s an amazing story and new for my wife.

She asked a million questions about German colonies in Asia before World War I and about the Russo-Japanese War. She’s reading a book she loves called “The Wehrmacht Retreats” and that’s left her with many questions. I answered her and she thanked me. Then she fell asleep.

There have been so many wars. So many men have died and so many women have been raped and murdered. So many Jews have been killed over the genetic misprint known as anti-Semitism (yes, I think it’s genetic). And here I am, sitting at my computer with my wife snoozing peacefully nearby and our German short-haired pointer zonked out next to her. God has let me live this fabulous life. I’m humbled with gratitude.