While Wasting Time, I Checked in with My Mancrush/Fantasy Alterego

Today I offer an ode to Hank Moody of Californication, a television character who both appeals to and disgusts me. This is no major revelation, particularly as these traits seem essential elements in the design of his persona. Still, while writing another cover letter for a job that I really do not want I decided to take a break and head over to YouTube to see if I could watch a few clips of Hank Moody. Hank's spare, raunchy dialogue, so laced with humor and cynicism, really pleases me. Duchovny's delivery also deserves credit here. When I think of Hank--I can use his first name if I have seen him have sex with all manner of women, right?--I see an alternate fantasy of myself when I was a young creative writing student. Hank was the sort of man I knew I could never be--louche but charming, sexual confident, impetuous to a fault, and completely able to surrender to his demons. Hank was that version of myself that I cultivated in my imagination, a Thesaurus without reservation or crippling insecurity, fully able to explore his libido without caution. In addition, the man writes. Even his blog postings are brilliant. Is not this what all aspiring writers want, when even our cast off prose somehow resonates with an audience? Damn, Hank, I sort of wanted to be you. But Hank would see through my fawning and tell me that such thoughts are a waste of time because nobody would really want to be him; even he does not want to be himself. Instead, he would rather be a dark piece of satin fabric hugging the sides of a beautiful woman's waist, or Hemingway's draft of a novel that he was too scared to publish. In the end Hank would tell me that if I really wanted to pay him a compliment then I should be my own man and just fucking write all the words that I held back, those intimidating phrases and ideas that I buried because I refused to own them. He would push his finger into my chest, rumpling my shirt, to emphasize his point, and then brandish a swaying a fist. Instead of hitting me he would grasp my shoulder and tell me that it might never be alright, that the world both maims and raptures, but in the end they are just words, which is all we have anyway. Drink up, saunter forth, and meet everything with a raised eyebrow and your notebook open because Hank wants it that way and sometimes I should too.