Mailer: The Old Man in the Sea.

When I think of the man Mailer or Hemmingway the man, a song comes to mind that I heard belted out from a burly dreadlocked Jamaican on a beach in Negril.

“Please don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.”

These are strong men who are in touch with their feminine side. In touch in a way that says I lust for life, the whole of it, and the whole of it means embracing vulnerability and encompassing beauty and if you have a problem with that say it to my face!

A few weeks ago I was sauntering through Hemmingway’s house in Key West Florida. Hemingway and his house have nothing to prove; their foundation is concrete, enabling them to venture to be tender.

Cats abound, the ancestor’s of the cats who were Hemmingway’s true friends, 50 of them prance and linger throughout with a reserved pugnacity. As you make your way along the wide halls and multitude of glassless windows, there is seemingly more sunlight inside the house than out; all of it emanating a boundless warmth. Walking down the back stairs you descend into his luscious garden and eventually come across a subtle drinking trough for the cats. Turns out this trough was once the urinal at “Sloppy Joes,” the bar he drank in almost every day. Legend has it he said he deserved the damm thing after all the money he had poured down it (I’m inclined to think he felt a curious intimacy to it as well). So one day he dragged it home from the bar and planted it pristinely amidst his flowers.

Even today, in the context of his sun-drenched garden, the toilet reflects an ivory luster from its worn-in porcelain. It has a history; it’s experience (no matter how coarse) complements the fleeting radiance of near-by buds. The garden is whole.