My Present Age by Guy Vanderhaeghe Read Free Book Online

they’re against birth control.”
    “Not exactly,” I qualify, “they’re not against birth control. They’re in favour of abstinence. You see, there is a distinction—”
    Victoria interrupts. “Marsha gave him fair warning. She told him if he went ahead with it she was leaving. Although what the point of the reversal was I don’t know – it hardly ever works anyway. But you tell me that isn’t nuts – reversing a vasectomy.”
    “Any man who had a spark of sanity would undergo any number of vasectomy reversals to induce Marsha to leave him. But that isn’t the point. The point is Sadler’s fundamental nature. What you fail to understand is that he’s the ultimate simplifier. The very antithesis of your bet-hedging, quibbling complicator. Sadler wants Truth with a capital T. He always did. And when he signed on with the Independent Pre-Millennial Church of God’s First Chosen, or whatever they call themselves, he didn’t go making his membership contingent on a bunch of mental reservations. No sir. He understood that being one of God’s First Chosen isn’t easy. He swallowed it whole. I kind of admire that.”
    “God, this is typical. It’s so like you to defend him out of perversity because any other reasonable and sane human being wouldn’t.”
    I’m offended. Victoria doesn’t understand scientific objectivity. “I’m not defending him. And I’m not saying he isn’t nuts. I’m explaining him to you. When Sadler reached his early thirties hebecame what he was always deep in his heart, a wild-eyed prophet. We’re all becoming what we really are. Time and circumstances are like sunlight and earth and water to all of us little acorns yearning to be oaks.”
    “Ed, you’re still the only man I’ve ever met who makes me want to literally scream. Fifteen minutes with you and I can feel the pressure building here.” Victoria touches the region of her diaphragm. “And the horrible thing is I know you won’t be stopped, can’t be stopped, until everything you want to say gets said.”
    “Don’t be melodramatic, Victoria.”
    She rests her head in her hands, a model of weary resignation. “Finish your speech,” she says.
    “It isn’t a speech.”
    “Goddamn it, just get it over with!”
    “You have to help.”
    “Don’t needle me, Ed.”
    “I need a push. I forget where I was.”
    “Where you were,” she says, “was on the topic of acorns and oaks.”
    “Aristotle,” I say, “sort of.”
    “Let’s not review the intervening two thousand years between Aristotle and Ed,” Victoria says. “I’m on my lunch hour.”
    “Ha ha.”
    “Ha ha yourself.”
    “What I was trying to say, Victoria,” I resume, “is that we’re all approaching the time of life when the oak-tree potential in the acorn becomes manifest. In Sadler’s case we end up with John the Baptist. Haven’t you noticed that everybody we know is coming out of the closet, so to speak?”
    “Example,” says Victoria, listlessly, right on cue. Her cooperation indicates she is eager to get this over with.
    “Example – well, Benny’s a good example of Sadler’s opposite. He’s a complicator.”
    “And just what’s the difference between Benny and Sadler?” Victoria is showing signs of impatience. “Aside from the fact one is nuts and the other isn’t?”
    “Easy. The simplifiers want less, the complicators want more.”
    This only increases Victoria’s annoyance. “Less what? More what?” She angrily lights a cigarette.
    “Everything.”
I ought to stop myself but can’t. I’ve been musing on life lately and have the intrepid explorer’s eagerness to pass on his discoveries. “Let me explain. A complicator finds safety in numbers, people, things. It doesn’t matter. He takes pleasure in possessions. Here’s what I mean. Suppose a guy wakes up one morning and realizes he can’t stand his wife. If by nature he’s a true simplifier he’ll just up and walk out on her. If he’s a true