In Search Of

by Adam Jeffries Schwartz

I had a husband, an actor, who only played Hapsburg Kings. Can you imagine being that typecast and sticking with it anyway?

Well, that was Fred, Freddie to me, Friedrich to his agents and it suited him; he was Canadian, which would explain some, but probably not everything. In life he resembled a large, vague ostrich, but give him a powered wig and oh baby, step back; he became a radiant version of himself. There's no explaining some things.

My outsides, unfortunately, accurately represent my insides. I'm a Jack Russell Terrier inside and out: tiny little legs hold up an enormous head, hyper-alert to all the wrong things. While preparing for the squirrel attack, the big one, I let my Hapsburg King slip away.

Next in my ill-conceived, ill-executed search for a father, or a Monarch, or whatever, I found a Grandee, in Spain, who resembled nothing so much as a walking stick. I can't tell you exactly what a Grandee is, but in this one case, it means annoying.

Shuttered against the sun, he slowly, carefully categorized the Royal Family, by sexual preference. He did this everyday even though --as you might imagine--the preferences remained pretty much the same. A brief example of such wit:

You know those Bourbons! He would lisp that fashionable lisp that makes even the most strapping man sound syphilitic :

They ride horses and they fuck, only they don't ride horses that much anymore.

Then he would chortle; oh, the good times we had!

Some people have hobbies, they play golf, they play bridge, but it's no good, I don't like games; either there is love or there is no love. Finally, I tried ice cream; that helped.

And now here I am, older, and what have I learned? The line between happy and desperate is far, far narrower than I ever would have suspected. But mostly I know that I'm still in search of; it never ends.

The Author

Adam Jeffries Schwartz is a writer and a traveler. He has stories in Descant and Grimm Magazines, Petit Journal and in the anthology Walking Higher. Online he pops up at many sites, including Ghoti (Fish) Magazine, Melane, LitBits, Magazine Shiver, Caprice & Anacoenesis Literary Journal.