CAREER
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I'd entered what Renee's mother calls the Bermuda Triangle
of Health. She says that between fifty and fifty-three years old is the Bermuda
Triangle of Health. Things start going wrong with you then. I was coming into
it - with a macula pucker in my left eye. I was called in by my eye doctor for
an examination, because he wanted to see if my condition was deteriorating. I
go back to that waiting room. They dilate my pupils; I'm sitting there in the
waiting room, waiting in the fuzz.
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I see this person come out of my doctor's office. In my
dilated condition I see this little guy backing out in a pinstripe suit, making
real jerky movements, kind of like in a Buster Keaton movie. He's waving like a
wind-up toy. Like he's this ... automatic something, I don't know what.
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He turns and starts walking toward me. I'm amazed and
shocked to see that he's got on one of those rubber Nixon masks that we used to
buy in joke shops when Nixon was president. What the hell is going on in my
doctor's office? He's walking right toward me, and as he gets closer I realize
that it is Richard Nixon.
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I
think, No, wait a minute, maybe his pupils are dilated too, and he thinks I'm
Ralph Lauren.
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Richard Nixon is walking directly toward me - with intent.
As though he were going to come up to me and say, "Hi, I saw Swimming to
Cambodia, and I loved it!"
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He
walks right up to me, and I say, "Oh hi."
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He
says nothing, and then he walks out. He just leaves. I go into my doctor's
office and I say, "Was that Richard Nixon who just left here?"
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"Oh
yes, nothin' the matter with him."
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"Well,
there is no justice in the world, is there."
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Spalding Gray "Spalding Gray
Stories Left To Tell" (2008)
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