Business as Usual

The sun rose over L.A. Monday morning at exactly 6:34, on time as usual.

When the first light of dawn penetrated our room, the dog wanted out, as usual. A few minutes later the dog wanted in. As usual. Then he wanted out again. See above.

Despite a weekend consumed by the most popular dirty book in American history, the Emmys were distributed as they have been for the past 50 years.

Sammy Sosa hit a couple of home runs. Television commercials sold Pamprins and Fords and toilet paper and cheese. A blind lady was mugged in the Valley. A man died in police custody. Candidates promised a New Morality.

As usual.

I spent the weekend doing this and that. I wrote. I researched. I chased the dog out of a small garden I sometimes tend. I watched a National Geographic show about bears. I didn’t read the Dirty Book.

In fact, I wanted to be as far removed from The Subject as possible. I didn’t want to be contaminated by it, touched by it, shadowed by it.

But somewhere between doing this and doing that, the spores of the contamination, like a wind-borne disease, reached me. The sickness seeped into my consciousness and then into the deepest parts of my existence.

Like the figure in Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream,” I let out a yell . . . and then sat down to write.

*

Anyone who has ever tried it knows that sex, if done properly, is fun. God made it fun for purposes of procreation. If it were disagreeable, no one would want to do it, then where would we be? Nowhere.

Hollywood thinks it’s a hoot and television builds whole shows around it. Trouble with the ratings? Throw Buffy in bed with a vampire. Pile all the Friends into the back of a car. Make love in the trauma ward. Get groped by an angel.

But if it’s that way, why are we so damned upset by, you know, It? Why does that Ultimate Dirty Book both intrigue and disgust us? When I read “Forever Amber” in junior high, I was shocked but never damaged. I said to myself, “I’m going to have to try that someday.” And I did. It was OK.

“This is different,” Jonathan Westover said, pausing for a moment in Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. “It’s so embarrassing . . . so tawdry . . . so pathetic.”

“Humiliating” is the term used by John Wiebusch at the Getty.

“Sad” is the word offered by Russ Manzatt at a restaurant in the Valley.

A woodcarver named Barry Lysaght was almost at a loss for words, which he hardly ever is. The emotions at work simmered and flamed and died and flamed again in a conflict of attitudes. Then he finally just said, “God. . . . “

The Dirty Book tells it all and, like a child walking in on his parents, we are stunned by the reality. Maybe we knew it was going on, but did we really have to see it?

*

Sexual scandals have been with us since Adam and Eve, the most talked about erotic misdeed in history. It wasn’t really the apple Adam was after. Think about it.

Hardly anyone remembers Hedy Lamarr swimming in the nude or Ingrid Bergman on Stromboli. The memory of Woody Allen cavorting with Soon-Yi fades behind us like Milepost One on a country road.

And who has the vaguest memory of the Tidal Basin stripper or the congressional mistress on the public payroll who couldn’t type or the congressman and his wife who made love on the steps of the Capitol?

Who remembers Wilbur Mills, Wayne Hays, John Jenrette, Robert Bauman, Barney Frank or Gerry Studds? Democrats, Republicans . . . who cares? Even poor old Jimmy Carter lusted in his heart.

But somehow none of this mattered as seeds of The Subject, the Ultimate Dirty Book, wafted in the wind over L.A. this weekend. A sadness prevailed.

“He’s always been that way,” someone said. “Every time he opens his zipper his brains fall out.”

There was laughter. There was mockery. But they were muted in comparison. The man is our president, even if he didn’t behave like one. And whatever happens, history will say of him not that he was evil but that he was pathetic, and that may be the worse damnation of all.

But the sun will rise again tomorrow, as usual. The dog will want out and then in and then out again, as usual. And we will shake our heads and sigh and then do the best we can to survive.

As usual.

*

Al Martinez is online at al.martinez@latimes.com. His column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays.