She introduced me to someone as a Liberal because I had already explained that’s what I am, and what I always have been. But people won’t leave me alone. That’s what I want. I want to be left the heck alone. You see? We’re always messing with definitions, and it’s rubbish. As a Liberal I believe in freedom for myself and anybody else who wants it. I’d like to get through a day, a week, a year, or a lifetime without really being aware of the existence of the government, just to do my own thing, decide my own destiny, without any help or interference from anybody. That much hasn’t changed. That’s always been what I wanted. I haven’t really changed in that regard, not since a lad. But now, apparently, that makes me a Conservative. OK, it’s a stupid game and I’ll play it for the sake of argument, but I’m just as much a Liberal today as I ever was, if you want to know the truth of it.

I think what happened is Liberal became confused with Progressive, and they’re two completely different things. Progressives are interested in only one thing progressing: their own political power. That’s not me, obviously.

But we have some interesting allies when we fight for freedom. We don’t bother fighting for freedom unless it’s being threatened, first of all, but then when it is the only things many of us might have in common are the desire to be free and the desire to be left the heck alone. Everything else falls under the “So what?” category at that point. So it is with Clover and me, who are more often in agreement these days, which may just be a sign of the Apocalypse. But we’ve had a good week together – or almost a week. I’m feeling very close to her right now. The truth is I always did.

Clover and I have a lot in common. Our ideological differences have always been superficial – sort of overlaying a much deeper connection as clothes cover up the body. But underneath our clothes we’re always nude. Most of us don’t see each other that way, and then after a while we forget the clothes are not the skin. So I guess you could say that Clover and I see each other nude all the time, and as a result we are always aware of how much alike we are. Every time we meet the first thing we do is take our clothes off. What I mean is that we see the world in our way.

She’ll say, “Let’s not fight today. We’ll make it rain in Norway.” And I get that.

The Squabbler’s way of seeing the world is unique. Clover’s way of seeing the world is unique. In our uniqueness we have much in common; we’re unique together. And it is more than our common synesthesia – hearing colors, seeing sounds, tasting words, and so on. It is very like the two of us are the last remaining survivors of a long-gone planet, and it sure as heck ain’t this one.

But, among these things we have in common when we’re nude we both love freedom, and we spent a lot of our time talking sedition.

We had a geurilla picnic at one point. That means we tresspassed on private property. The fact that it was her own property may seem a bit confusing, but there was a chain pulled across the drive – some sort of legal thing having to do with estates and such. We share contempt for anything legal. It has a connotation of boring; legal = boring. Do you know what I mean?

I left my sunglasses behind at a café where the only entrée seemed to be quiche – the sort of place she would eat in and I would clean. But I did this because a few years ago she had left her obscenely expensive designer sunglasses in a coffee shop and I ended up having to go back to retrieve them. We had been sitting in there arguing, as usual. She was giving me the whole Communist Manifesto. The Che Guevera tattoo on her shoulder blade was still bleeding. (I hope one day she’ll cover him with Milton Friedman – little bald guy with glasses). When I went back a few of the others who had been in the place at the time were still there. I asked them, “Did Simone DeBeauvoir leave her Pradas here?”

She got me back by introducing me to somebody as a Liberal. We were in cars which were going in opposite directions, and I didn’t have a chance to rebuke her before the other car pulled away taking the other person out of ear shot.

So I had to leave my sunglasses behind, just to balance the cosmos. Somebody gave them to me. They belonged to her husband. He had just died. And the ones I bought today were also free. Some were marked $3.99 and others were marked $6.99. The ones I put in my hair didn’t have a price label. It had fallen off, I suppose. But they were the only pair that felt right. There was no mirror on the display rack at the dollar store. It’s an outrage. This is just another example of the decline of civilization. But then, only after I had paid for everything else did I remember the sunglasses in my hair, and so I said to the cashier, “Oh I’m sorry. I almost walked out with these on my head. They came from that rack. I don’t know if they’re the $3.99 or the $6.99, or the ones that are free because I’m handsome, but you can charge me whatever you like. And by the way, how do they look?”

The cashier told me they were the free kind, and they looked “great.”

But, after I got into the car and looked at them in the mirror I was mortified that I had actually walked all the way across the parking lot wearing them. They were horrible, horrible, horrible.

Worth every penny.

Clover’s husband got back this morning. He’s also a friend. I’ll catch up with him in a few days, borrow a ladder so I can paint my new house, and so on. We’re both big fans of high fidelity components and we have planned to make a pigrimage together to an audiophile paradise down in Binghampton. But – to make a long story short – this is the first day I have been deprived of the pleasure of Clover’s company since Saturday.

Blessed relief… I’m going to listen to some King Crimson and go to sleep.