If Only Larry David Wore A Thong

I’ve just finished watching the fourth series of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I began with five episodes on Friday and finished them off last night. It was meant to cheer me up after days of writing the novel. It left me in awe of Larry David’s genius compared with The Chipster's meagre thong skills.

Larry, as I like to call him, is a man after my own heart. He’s too honest for his own good and doesn’t play by the rules as laid down by the great unwashed. He’s the sort of person who would, for example, question the sense in attending a virtual meeting of bloggers on a muggy afternoon in July but he would go and be a fantastic success if by success we judge him by his ability to insult every person in the room. His will be a hard act to follow but I’ll give it a try this afternoon when I drop into the Blogpower awards in Second Life dressed only in my thong. I’m sure it’s something Larry would appreciate.

‘He a prig,’ said Gabby as I turned off the TV tonight and told her my plans to emulate my hero. She’d come in halfway through the final hour-long episode in which Larry gets to star in The Producers on Broadway. It didn’t take me long to realise that the whole thing was beyond the Romanian sensibility.

‘If he back home and complain like that,’ she said and then drew a finger across her throat. ‘Men like that… Complain, complain, complain… Not good. Somebody take them into barn and…’ Again, she was with the throat gesture.

‘Can you stop doing that?’ I said. ‘It’s very disconcerting.’

‘You mean this?’ she asked and stroked herself in another mortal gesture.

‘You see where we differ?’ I replied. ‘The man has an eye to foibles. He understands human nature like no other comedian before him. I could learn a few things by watching him.’

‘Pah,’ said Gabby and grabbed the remote control from my hands. She sat herself on the sofa and began to flick through the channels but only after wiping the control on the leg of her trousers.

‘What you do that for?’ I asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Why did you wipe the remote control?’

‘Did I?’

‘You did. I saw you. You wiped the remote control on your trousers before you used it.’

She shrugged and paused a moment in her flicking to watch an alligator grab a bison by its throat.

‘You paused, wiped, then used. You think I have some kind of allergy or something? You afraid a bit of my sweat might get on your fingers?’

‘I wipe control? So what? You do odd things and I never say.’

‘Such as what? You name me one thing I do like that?’

‘You scratch yourself.’

‘I what?’

‘Scratch, scratch, scratch. Chippy never stops scratching himself down there.’

‘It’s razor burn,’ I replied. ‘It’s not like I can put aftershave on.’

‘But you still scratch.’

‘Yes, well, it’s not like wiping the remote. That’s an insult to another person. My scratching is something else entirely.’

‘It more like hobby,’ she said with a cruel smile. ‘A spectator sport but not one for families.’

Is there anything worse than being out-mocked by somebody whose second language is English? It’s like having two insults in one.

‘You still didn’t answer my question,’ I said. ‘Did you wipe the remote control because I’ve been using it?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Yes, Chippy, I did. I wipe remote because you been using it.’

‘Right. Well at least you’re being honest about it,’ I told her but couldn’t let it rest there. ‘And why did you wipe it?’

‘I not say.’

That answer, I couldn’t accept. I was in the mood for the truth.

‘Come on, Gabby. Tell me the reason. I want to know what you clearly find so abhorrent about me. Spare me no shame. Give me the full explanation. Why did you wipe the remote control?’

‘Well,’ she sighed. ‘If you really must know. I think it horrible how you keep the remote control down your thong. It’s not clean. It not healthy. And remote gets covered in oil and hairs.’

‘But at least I know where it is…’ I replied but I knew the poor girl had a point. Which is precisely the kind of weakness that separates me from my hero, Larry.