As Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants. So, why are you here?

The Galahad Impulse, or how I hope to become famous

I tried to find someone today by Googling their name, but no luck. As a test, I ran my name again, to see what would come up (I did a similar test a year and a half ago). I had pretty much the same results as last time, though at least this time a lot more of the entries discovered were actually about me, which was fun. My favorite find by far, though, was the discovery that I was a character in a moderately erotic detective story called "The Galahad Impulse." It's one of those stories with sections like this:
Room service brought us a bottle of merlot, platters of red meat, potatoes swimming in sour cream and a salad tossed with blue cheese. We ate as greedily as we had made love. Finally, all organs sated, we sprawled on the king-size bed. "Pam," I said, "there's something wrong with this. If someone had raced out to me on the sixteenth hole and told me my wife had been kidnapped, I’d come running — even though the crime had been foiled. I wouldn’t stop to change shoes, certainly not socks.”

I play the street-smart, tough-as-nails police captain with an eye for espionage. A sampling:
The captain came towards me, his hand outstretched. His grip was strong. “Helluva job, Mahaffey. I’m Ben Wyman.”
“I was just in the right place at the right time, Captain.”
“Well, Mahaffey, there’s plenty of so-called upright citizens in the right place at the right time, and they don’t do a damn thing.”

Another prime section:
I called Wyman, who was still at work. As soon as I launched into my theory, he interrupted.
“You’re right, Mahaffey — we went to arrest him. He split.”
“Split?”
“We’ll find him. He shaved his head in the executive john. Had to launch his escape plan a little earlier than scheduled.”
“And I thought I was Sherlock Holmes."
“I had some help. One of the heavies confessed.”
“Oh.” I felt better. “That’s cheating.”
“Not the way we do it.”
I laughed. This Wyman was something.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty thrilled about all this.

posted by Ben Wyman @ 2:08 AM