I consider myself refined.

I’m comfortable in a finely cut suit. I can converse with sommeliers in their own tongue and with considerable knowledge. I have eaten in some of the world’s finest restaurants and I am at home and at ease in all of them. I have traveled the world and seen the finest architecture and paintings civilization has produced.

Put on a piece of music and I’ll tell you the composer. Show me a painting and I’ll tell you who painted and where it’s currently hanging. I have a photographic memory and a gift for languages. I’m well versed in philosophy, literature and geography. I have an unnatural interest in world history. All true.

And while that may sound pompous, all things are not what they seem. Though I now make a very good living, I’m not rich. I was not born into money. I have had no advantages in life. I was born into a middle class family with almost no interest in the arts, save music.

I read a lot. When I was a kid I used to wish I were a peer of the realm. And though that’s not something I could rectify, I did set out to get myself an old world education. There were many bumps in the road. I never learned Latin or Greek and in fact I found that I had placed so much faith in old world literature that I was horribly misguided on world ideas and what a modern education consisted of in the 20th century. I began to loathe the fact that I was not schooled at Eton or Sandhurst. I felt that somehow I was born into the wrong family, and that my birthright was being denied. Most of this fantasy probably came from reading books like Ivanhoe and such at too young an age. The romance of the knight was ingrained in a boy who lived in a different world. The values, if not already extinct, were surely endangered. I’m still pissed off I never learned to fence. I was a jackass. A misguided fool. And during the pursuit of all this nonsense I was entrenched in a fairly shitty neighborhood where people were plumbers and electricians, not heads of state or experts on paleography. The contrast was extreme. I was a rebellious son-of-a-bitch, constantly pulling pranks, blowing things up with illegal fireworks and fighting. I was certain I should be on fox hunts with old world royalty, not raking the goddamned leaves. (sigh) To an extent I still feel that way.

I’m older now. I’m still refined but I can shift with ease between lapin a la cocotte and hot dogs. I’m just as happy eating in a diner as I am in a fine restaurant. Actually, that’s a fucking lie, but I’m not as angry about it as I used to be. Since I’m not wealthy I have to limit the number of expensive meals we enjoy to one a month or so. And now over time I’ve come to appreciate them more. I’d rather eat one tremendous, over-the-top meal a month than go out every Saturday to inferior establishments.

I’m a funny guy. Not ha-ha funny, but funny strange. While I (probably) wasted a lot of time learning about art and history I spent almost an equal amount of time pursuing non-glamorous topics. I know more about the events leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral than a lot of people. Hell, I can quote testimony from the Earp trial like people quote Monty Python. It’s all worthless. There is no practical application. The bottom line is that I have in my head a lot of completely useless information good for absolutely nothing. The fact of the matter is that I’m an incorrigible bastard with a wise mouth and little else to offer. I’m not feeling very good about myself today. Please excuse the self-indulgence.

And, as of today, I proclaim “Cultural Friday” dead.