Lives getting lived on the four oh five

When I was driving down to San Diego on Easter Sunday on an hour's sleep with a constant cough drop in my mouth and a constant churchly song in my throat, I observed a car in the high-occupancy vehicle lane with a lady in coke-can rollers and bathrobe in the passenger seat doing her make-up while the gent I assumed to be her husband drove them both on to Easter. She was applying an eyelash curler to her lashes and making that stretched down face that ladies make when such things are in the works. I just recently watched How to Murder Your Wife -- a DVD selection I made when working on my latest bid because I like Jack Lemmon and Terry-Thomas and the woman in that movie (Virna Lisi) is very pretty -- and there is the archetypal representation of the disillusionment that sets in when a man sees the disparity between the sexpot he fell in love with and the houseclothed frump sleeping in his post-matrimonial bed. Anyway, I thought of the guy driving that car in the H.O.V. lane when I was watching the movie. I figured he might have had a touch of that same disillusionment when his wife shuffled into the car with her big pink bathrobe on and her make-up bag in her lap. This is a role I have never ever played. I have never left the house in that state. And I can't imagine a scenario in which I would. It is my hope that I will keep the world fooled at all times. And all of it. Those who ever see me in my most natural state are generally part of a unique inner circle. It takes some doing to get in. And it's really no prize to do so. I encourage you to remain on the periphery, from whose vantagepoint my lipstick is nearly always perfect. I believe in the illusion. I serve it. And if you are none the wiser, I have earned my keep.