Never Pass a Bathroom, Never Waste a Hard On, and Never Trust a Fart
"Nobody told me any of this. That is why I am writing it down."
At seventy-three, after a marriage of forty-six years, one poorly-timed incident on a motorway, an investment that evaporated in 1993, a bad painting on the wall, and more missed Tuesdays than he cares to count, an old man sits down to write the letter he wishes someone had written to him.
It begins with three rules. They are blunt. They are specific. They are, as it turns out, about the whole of it.
Never pass a bathroom
Never waste a hard on
Never trust a fart.
From these three unglamorous principles, a book unfolds that is by turns funny and tender and uncomfortable and true. It covers the body and its long, patient memory. Desire in its literal and metaphorical forms. The things genuinely wanted and the things pursued instead out of fear dressed up as ambition. Work, money, the choosing and keeping of the people who matter, the slow leak of friendships, and the children who are not projects. The apology that is not an apology. The failure worth having. The quiet that was always waiting underneath the noise. The ordinary things, the smell of a kitchen, the weight of a sleeping child, a dog long gone, that become extraordinary only when they are no longer there to be taken for granted.
This is not a book by a remarkable man. It is a book by an honest one. And honesty, it turns out, is considerably rarer, and considerably more useful, than remarkable.
"The book I did not know I needed until I was halfway through it and had to put it down and sit with it for a while. Which is the highest compliment I know how to give."
- A reader who recognised himself in it
"Funny, honest, and occasionally mortifying. Mostly accurate. Somewhat self-serving. I recommend it without reservation."
- His wife, who read every chapter before it was finished
"I found myself reading passages aloud to people who had not asked to hear them. This is the definition of a book that matters."
- Gerald
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