Orlando
A neutron bomb hit this place just as I got off the aeroplane, killing all humans but leaving the buildings standing. It was a horrid, unpardonable crime, and for it I blame the scientists. But not for the reasons you think. They should have done it the other way round. Kill the buildings, save the humans, however brain-dead they are in Orlando.
I knew we were in trouble the moment I deplaned. There were five of us, two competitors and three coaches. We were in Orlando for the US national judo championships, yours truly defending champion in the 70 and over class. The neutron-bomb landscape was the first thing I noticed after we hired a van at the airport from a woman so dumb she made ugly lower-middle-class female Guardian writers sound like intelligent parrots.
The sterility of the place is the first thing that hits you. We had established a male locker-room atmosphere on the plane, and it continued as we drove into a city lined with crappy food joints, junk-selling megastores and other horrors too terrible to describe in the elegant pages of The Spectator. Consumption is the order of the day, although we saw no humans, just a lot of minivans gliding endlessly through the flat, hot, humid, unbearably sticky air.
There are roadside motels, gas stations, and diners interspersed with some faux-gothic monsters of incredible ugliness that pass as tourist attractions. There is even an upside-down Greek temple — I kid you not — one of recent construction. The oldest building in Orlando is three years old. Despite the jokes among us — blonde, 3 o’clock — the place gets to you in no time. A Roman temple with hamburgers as pediments, a Gothic pile with ice-cream cones as pillars, a McDonald’s Monet tableau of cheap gaudy houses beckoning us in a ‘come-hither and spend a few bucks’ manner. We debated whether it was better to live in Orlando or die back in New York. The latter won hands down.
‘This place is haunted by unsold hot-dogs,’ said the intellectual of our group, Mark Brennan. ‘A Cecil B. DeMille set on acid,’ said the coach Teimoc Johnston-Ono. ‘I’d rather be back in Uzbekistan,’ was Alisher’s contribution. Bryan, the US university national champion, said little, but being a student he threw in a reference about sterility and Lady Chatterley’s hubby, the cockold being fecund by comparison to Orlando.
Yes, I did win the gold, but most of my opponents died natural deaths during the contests. Next month I will be in Germany, for the world masters championships, and it will be much, much tougher. Judo Rommels and Guderians will face the poor little Greek boy for the last time, as I’ve decided to throw in the towel. Frankfurt will be my last competition, in any sport.
Orlando has left me an inert, pale existential zero, but I’ve promised Speccie readers that I’ll bring home a medal, and I’ll do my best to keep my word. It will feel funny to compete no longer. I began wrestling when I was ten, at boarding school, went into boxing and karate, tennis and polo. Butterflies, a dry mouth and sleepless nights before a contest became routine. Strangely, nothing like that happened in Orlando. I was nervous 24 hours before the fights, then everything felt fine and relaxed. It’s time to call it a day, as they say, and after Frankfurt beastly Judo bullies will not have the poor little Greek boy to kick around any more.
Ironically, just as I decided to retire from competition, so did Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The only difference is that I fought against men, whereas he apparently prefers to take on women. Strauss-Kahn is a bum, a typical leftie who married a very rich woman, a coward who has been jumping on women throughout his life. I don’t care about the presumption of innocence. I’ve been chasing women all my life and the idea of forcing myself on one is totally alien to me. It’s simply not done, except for a few dumb English country types who prefer men. If Strauss-Kahn did it, I hope they throw the book at him, but knowing the system I’m not holding my breath. He’s got expensive mouthpieces and lotsa moolah, whereas the woman is a maid from Africa, but he could get some hard time and then we’ll see how tough he is when some horny con asks him to perform the same sex act the woman says he asked her to perform.
And now for some bad news: 15 years ago my daughter brought home a tiny beagle with ears that were much too long and the kind of mournful gaze that brought tears to the eye. We named her Gipsy and she became the bane of our life. Gipsy was so greedy, she made Bernard Madoff look like Mother Teresa. In no time she grew a big stomach, although she was lightning fast when in the vicinity of anything edible. She would play possum, then strike like a cobra and grab steaks, sweets — she once even ate a box of paper hankies. She snored, made terrible smells, bit and growled at everyone, but we loved her more than any other dog we’ve ever had. Last week, two years after her stroke, she had to be put to sleep, as she was suffering. Her last act before a nice vet injected her was to grab a lamb chop and devour it, bone and all. There will never be another like her. RIP.
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