Bukkake and the Famous Philosopher Friend

To Beverly Hills, early yesterday morning, in my informal capacity of IT-guy to my Famous Philosopher Friend. He’d called me a couple of days before to say that he was having problems with a new printer he’d just got, and now neither printer nor computer (an Apple G4 Cube) was working properly. It’s not long since I’d had to get the Cube a new logic board, after it had shorted out due to a couple of seriously knackered USB ports. And slightly longer since I’d souped up his whole system with Mac OS X, and then sat quietly beside him as he downloaded mountains of e-mail. He was fascinated by the Babylonian nature of the spam, sounding out the hard consonants in ‘Bukkake’, and wondering aloud what it might be. (‘Shall I explain, or would it be easier to just show you?’ thinks me.)

It turned out that neither printer nor computer was a problem. He has a way of shutting the computer down when he merely wants it to go to sleep, and the printer just needed the ink cartridges fitted. All was fine. No sooner had I got things working, however, than he was putting on jacket and grabbing walking stick, and we were heading out shopping.

My relationship with Famous Philosopher Friend is an odd one. We met originally when he was the Faculty Fellow at the student dorm (it’s called a ‘College’, in slightly unconvincing echo of those leafy Oxbridge quads) where A. was Resident Coordinator. I remarked at the time that I’d have been much more impressed upon meeting him had I heard of him, which is flippant as all hell, but true, and indicative of my ignorance, not his lack of renown.

Famous Philosopher Friend has lived a long and full life, which my small contact with him can only hint at. He began as a mathematician and physicist, but quickly moved into philosophy. He worked at a junior level on Radar in England during the war — which work brought him into occasional contact with Churchill. Though I’m told — and am reminded of his demolition of the Cube’s USB ports — that he was mostly given jobs which would keep him away from anything mechanical. He’s that sort of philosopher.

The man sitting beside me in the car as I drive to Williams-Sonoma studied under Wittgenstein. He tells anecdotes about E.M. Forster. At the shop, he knows exactly what he wants. Picardy glasses. He asks two assistants, both of whom do the same thing. ‘Oh,’ they say. ‘PiCARdy glasses.’ Never mind that his pronunciation is the more accurate. He’s a long way from France. He’s a somewhat difficult customer: insistant and impatient, a tiny bit demanding. I stand somewhat at a distance and watch. The second assistant sighs a little dramatically when he asks her to take him to where they are. I’m not sure she’s seen that I’m with him, so she might not be trying to hide her slight exasperation from me — only from him. Perhaps she sees that I’m watching, or perhaps she catches her grouchy moment, but she then switches into a gentler, more helpful mode.

The glasses, it turns out, are for A. and me, as a late housewarming present. It’s very sweet of him. He’d basically assumed that I’d be okay with taking him shopping, without needing to ask, but the occasion of shopping was to buy us some really nice glasses. That’s very him.

Then to Gelson’s supermarket, where he zips around gathering supplies, me barely able to keep up. He’s in his early 80s. Sometimes every year shows — his memory is an instrument that still hits wonderful notes, but takes longer to warm up and isn’t quite as reliable as it was. And sometimes he’s as spry and purposeful as a naughty little boy. Soon we’re heading back to the hills. As we cross Santa Monica Boulevard he says, ‘Ah, West Hollywood’, with a happy sigh. Outwardly every inch the emeritus British academic and intellectual, he’s found a place here in the California sun where he really feels at home. He’s endlessly amused by the fact that on one corner there’s a bar called ‘Rage’, and on the opposite corner a shop called ‘Don’t Panic!’. There are still moments of sweet naivety. He tells me that when he first came to LA and saw signs for ‘Star Maps’, he assumed they were for amateur astronomers.

I look at Famous Philosopher Friend’s online biographies and daunting publications, and I know that all I’m really seeing is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. It’s humbling that he considers me to be — well, whatever he considers me to be: informal IT-guy and occasional guide on shopping expeditions. I’d love to get to dig a little deeper into his work, but it feels like travelling in a foreign country with only a few phrases of the language. One is instinctively reluctant to give the impression of knowing more, for fear of the barrage of genuine language which would return. I have a reasonable brain, but Famous Philosopher Friend has a great brain.

Or perhaps had a great brain, and that’s a fear. I hope I didn’t get to know him too late to even try to scale some of those heights, but feel sad that it might be so. And yet this might still be exactly the same man who was shooed away from the Radar engineering for fear of what he might do to it. What I perceive as the beginnings of decline might just be eccentricity and absent-mindedness. I hope so.

I carry his groceries up the kitchen and empty the bags. His two dogs lie quietly nearby. He’d switched the television to a channel playing light classical before we left, so we’ve arrived back to a gentle symphony. He seems very pleased to have completed the little shopping adventure. I think he takes particular pleasure in self-sufficiency — even with my small help — now that he doesn’t drive any more, and will greet his wife’s return home with some treat that he’s put together from the food he efficiently gathered.

He shakes my hand heartily. I leave him to the light classical, the dogs, and some peace.