Effete Musings

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/05/25/090525po_poem_levine

I was hanging out in Walled Lake the other weekend and came upon this veritable treasure trove of Neil Meridith photos in a dumpster behind the local Kroger’s. All I’m going to say is thank God I was there to prevent these historic shots from being lost to historians forever. Because for all those who know and love Neil, as well as for those for whom he is merely a hero and legend, these photos provide an invaluable window into what made Neil into the latter-day Renaissance man that we all know him as today. So without further ado…

Neil Age Eleven:

Little is known about Neil as a young man, except for the fact that he loved to eat burritos. While scholars debate whether Neil preferred chile con carne, poblano chicken, or simply rice and beans with a slathering of shredded cheese and hot sauce, all agree that burritos were a major formative influence on Neil in these early years.

Neil Age Sixteen:

Firmly established is the fact that Neil was in fact born a hemaphrodite but that his parents chose to raise him as a male. When he began to develop female characteristics, as seen here, Neil suspected that something was wrong and began to question his own identity for the first time — a process which likely was the genesis of his later architetural masterpiece The Cage Museum, better known as the “pair of testacles” building, erected in Munich, Germany in the early 2000s.  Neil later underwent hormone treatment to revert completely into a male, undertaking doses of some two thousand milligrams of testosterone per day in order to retard his emergent femininity.

Neil Age Nineteen:

In college when Neil wasn’t busy pouring over some tome describing the genius of Le Courbusier or Mies van der Rohe, you could be sure to find him with a burrito in hand. Here we find the Master racing to finish his meal so as to get back to hitting the books. Word has it the Nectar was quaffed in a single gulp.

Neil Age Twenty-three:

Despite the many opportunities for communing with the opposite sex offered by post-collegiate life, Neil always chose the burrito.

Neil Age Twenty-six:

For a time in his mid-twenties, Neil was involved in the competitive eating circuit, focusing mainly on the consumption of burritos in a fixed amount of time. Though he never won a competition, he was a frequent contender, finishing second in the Alberquerque Eat Off and fourth at the annual Famous Nathan’s competiton on Coney Island. Here we see Neil (second from right) duelling the legendary “Eater X.”

Neil Age Thirty-one:

It’s true what they say: there is a fine line between genius and madness…