65: As soon as I had listened . . .
Little Follies, “The Static of the Spheres,” Chapter 2
2
AS SOON AS I HAD LISTENED to Gumma’s Motorola, I wanted—no, I needed—a more sophisticated radio. It was a familiar sequence: seeing the lack of something, one feels the need for it.
Even now, when I have reached an age when, I tell myself, I should be beyond such feelings, I find myself in the grip, now and then, of an irresistible desire to replace a perfectly good turntable, amplifier, or tuner with a newer and more complicated one. I consider myself, on the whole, a mature and sensible fellow, and I expend no little effort in trying to talk myself out of these periodic attacks of electronic lust, but—as Porky White has said to me so often—“Look, it’s like a fight. One guy comes into the ring in a gray pin-striped robe and across the back in small black letters it says REASON. He’s wearing glasses, and his hair is thinning. Into the opposite corner leaps a guy in a robe of scarlet satin, and across the back in orange and purple letters it says THE IRRESISTIBLE URGE. He looks like a bull, and there’s foam at the corners of his mouth. Where you gonna put your money, kid?”
Still, I think that, even at ten, I might have talked myself into being content with the little Philco if I had not spent the New Year’s Eve that followed with Dudley Beaker and Eliza Foote at Gumma and Guppa’s, and my desire had not become so mixed up with other, baser emotions—lust and pride—that I could not separate them, as one sometimes cannot separate the overlapping signals of weak radio stations.
[to be continued on Thursday, August 12, 2021]
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
In Topical Guide 65, Mark Dorset considers Reason Versus Passion; Lust; Desire; and Acquisitiveness from this episode.
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