2. The best way to impress the bartender is to quit trying to impress the bartender.

3. If she isn’t married, she’s fair game.

4. No object, utensil, or electronic device should be used while inside your pocket.

5. This is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough.

6. A martini is made with gin, that’s why James Bond must always specify a vodka martini.

7. When wearing a cummerbund the folds should face upward. The only acceptable thing to keep in these folds are tickets to the performance you’re attending.

8. Olives taste better at room temperature.

9. President Barrack Obama is not Muslim, but democracy, the Constitution, and apple pie would still exist if he was.

10. No… you may not have a Miller Lite in a glass.

Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming–Diana and Helen–and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.

John Cheever from Goodbye, My Brother

I am certainly not the pessimist in this story, the brother who only sees what’s broken and wanting. Nor am I an optimist. I find their unflagging positivism tiring at best. I might be a realist, but I’ve yet to find one whose definition of reality is little more than poorly veiled egotism.

Given the choice I think I’ll just be the man that swims naked with his lover in the sea.

http://www.gq.com/style/street-style/201007/gordon-von-steiner-wandering-eye-london#slide=33

1. A towel is for drying things off, not wiping stuff off of things. That way the towel is never (theoretically) dirty.

2. Putting a stubborn glass through the dishwasher a second time will always get it cleaner, but it will never get it clean.

3. Smell is not an indicator of cleanliness.

4. Falling asleep on the couch is like drinking. It should rarely be done alone.

5. When going out for the evening with a woman at least one of your pockets is not your own.

6. The difference between cheese and emotion is commitment.

7. When a woman tells you to talk dirty to her, she means Danielle Steele dirty… Not Vivid video dirty.

8. Get up right now. Go to the restroom. Lift the lid and seat on the toilet, drop your pants, and sit down. Now imagine that feeling at 3am in someone else’s bathroom after you’ve had three martinis. That’s why you always but the seat down.

9. Everyone looks in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Organize accordingly.

10. Anime is now acceptable in your DVD collection, but not in your bed linen choices.

They say that regret is usually a waste of time. And for all the mistakes I’ve made in life I’ve been lucky to avoid it almost entirely. To regret is to doubt the path you’ve taken, for better or for worse. I don’t lack regret because my life is perfect, but rather because I’m not. I’m just not perfect enough to see how I could have made it any better.

I think I lacked regret for so long because I had so much joy in life. My family and my boy were everything to me. How can one regret the path that leads to a little man who calls you Daddy and holds his cup like you when he thinks you aren’t looking?

When people ask me now what regrets I have, I’m sure they think they know the answer, but even those closest to me would be wrong. Some might think I never would have returned home to this small town or that I would have finished enough school to teach at a college. Some would think I would have avoided marriage altogether or maybe that I would have kept my personal life more private. The righteous must think that in the quietness of my heart I regret my sin, and the sinfully liberated must think I regret the monkish discipline of my earlier life. I’m sure at least two women think that I regret the time I spent with them… but I do not.

A foolish man might regret the things he hasn’t done. I might regret my lack of travel or that I’ve forgotten most of the French I knew. I might regret knowledge I have lost or the books I haven’t read. I almost regret the words I forgot to write down and the words I didn’t speak. But for all my complaints at being an old man, I am not so old that these things cannot be changed. These are things I can still do. These are all things I can start today.

In fact if it wasn’t for the little girl who logic says I should have never met, I might not have known regret at all. For in her I see the things that I have missed, things that I have arrived too late to change, things that I would give all but my boy to retrieve. I regret that I didn’t have her when the first boy called and I regret that I wasn’t there to scare him when he came to the door. I regret that I was never there to fold my legs under a crocheted table cloth and sip invisible tea with her and her teddy a bear. I was never there to hold her when the nightmares came. I was never there to kiss her skinned knee. I was never there to wipe the tears away or answer the questions of life. I regret all these times when she needed me.

I regret the times I never heard her scream “Daddy!”, when I came home from work and I regret every present I never saw her open. I regret all the times she never hid behind my legs when meeting someone new. I regret all the times I didn’t get to hold her hand around the park and all the times I missed pushing her on a swing. I regret lost train rides, and  missing cotton candy and coming home with all the things someone told her that she couldn’t have. I regret pigtails and hopscotch and wobbly first rides on a bicycle. I regret goodnight kisses and rhymes about bedbugs and late glimpses on the night watch to make sure she was safe and warm.

I regret that when we call each other family we must always face the confused looks of those around us. That words like daddy and daughter must be explained. I regret that my presence at the events of her life bring stress and tension, to everyone it would seem but she and I. And most of all I regret that she is not mine in their eyes at all, for I wish she was with all my soul.

But there is one regret I do not have. A regret that has never crossed my heart. A regret so absent that it overpowers all the others. I have never regretted the day that I looked into the beautiful eyes of a half grown woman and knew that I would give up anything to give her what she needed. I have never regretted the day that my heart chose to love her and make her my daughter. And I have never regretted once to hear her call me father.

And it is this lost regret, this regret that never happened, that has taught a man crusty and crotchety beyond his years about love. For I had seen the width and breadth of love like a river so wide it might be a sea and I have ridden the tempest of love lost when I was sure the ship would fail. I have been refreshed in its gentle waves and I have been inspired by its ocean views. But no one knows the sheer depth of love until they’ve seen it defy every other voice around them. Until they see love challenge history and biology, family and even the desperately real love of others to make its claim on someone known. No man knows what love is until a little girl reaches out to take his hand and chooses him to be her daddy.