I was obsessed. And I had time to indulge my obsession. I believe that a novelist should write for no more than four hours a day, after which returns truly diminish; this, of course, leaves many hours for idle play and contemplation. Usually, such a schedule results in alcoholism, but sometimes a hobby comes along, especially in middle age. For us so-called W.I.S.
I spoke with Clymer at Hodinkee’s offices. After I launched into a long soliloquy on a certain Zenith gold-filled chronograph, he said to me, “Wow, you’re in deep.” I took this as a huge compliment, but it was also a sign of how my life was unravelling. Hillary Clinton had just collapsed at the 9/11 ceremony, FiveThirtyEight was showing the election tightening, and my shrink—also a watch nut—had just been telling me about the toll the election was taking on his patients.
As the election approached, I started going to meetings of the Horological Society of New York. On the streets of Manhattan, I never have any idea which celebrity is which—they all seem to be Matt Damon—but at the Horological Society I could identify all my new heroes, many with full, Portlandian beards, across the vast hall of the library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, in midtown, while they waited in line for their free coffee and Royal Dansk butter cookies.
I started looking at the Air-King’s frantic second hand for hours, and listening to its serious ticking, which sounded like a surly boxer before the first round. When I was a kid, in the eighties, Rolex was shorthand for “yuppie.” To console myself that I had not become one, I thought of all the rap lyrics featuring the brand. “Girl you look fine / like a wide-face Rolex, you just shine,” Biggie Smalls rapped on “Fuck You Tonight.
GeoffBoyardee
Brilliant!
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