Drowning Naked in Paradise & Other Essays. David Bakish

      

      Drowning Naked in Paradise and Other Essays

      David Bakish

      Copyright © 2020 David Bakish

      All rights reserved

      First Edition

      NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

      320 Broad Street

      Red Bank, NJ 07701

      First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

      ISBN 978-1-64801-321-8 (Paperback)

      ISBN 978-1-64801-322-5 (Digital)

      Printed in the United States of America

      Table of Contents

       Self-Publishing

       Early Interest in Writing

       Superman

       Something I Never Told Anyone Before

       Naked or Nude

       Drowning Naked in Paradise

       Amnesia through Age Five and Sitting Still

       Two Wooden Candlestick Holders

       A Most Flamboyant Teacher (Or Two)

       What If?

       Pet Peeves

       Life’s Metamorphoses

       From Louis Armstrong to Benny Goodman

       June

       Rhymes with June

       My Lost Weekend

       Onions and Orchids

       Solitaire

       My Biggest High

       Mental Chatter and My Tennis Game

       A Brush with Fame

       Brief Encounters

       The Care and Management of My Hair

       Hair

       Shoes

       Junk Food

       Letters from My Dog, Gracie

       Letter to a Landlord (Not Sent)

       Falling

       Commitments of a Would-Be Free Spirit

       Bike Riding

       Collections

       Friends—What and Who Are They?

       My Mother’s Paintings

       Men’s Coffee

       13, My Lucky Number

       Columbus Day

       Random Acts of Kindness

       Seeking the Whole Person

       Linda’s Prayer

       Linda (February 15, 1950–January 1, 2018)

       Matchmaking Again

      For Linda

      Preface

      This is my second self-published book after three others placed with regular firms—Richard Wright (Ungar), Afro-American Fiction, 1853-1976, with coauthor Edward Margolies (Gale Research), Jimmy Durante: His Show Business Career (McFarland).

      I knew that my fourth book, a memoir, would not draw a publisher in what would have been a fruitless search and waste of time. Zero to Seventy-Five in 30 Snapshots was edited and formatted by my wife, Linda, who—among other jobs—had done some freelance editing for Scholastic Books. The resulting book, 265 pages, showed a professional touch in formatting the text and skillful placing of thirty photos. With a cherubic black-and-white photo of the author at age four as a cover and a color back cover of a mustached professor in his thirties, the book was registered with the Library of Congress and printed on demand by CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon, and listed on Amazon.com but had no other publicity. Complimentary copies drew mostly silence or an unexplained “wow!” from startled friends and silence from family.

      Linda passed away from breast cancer complicated by progressive multiple sclerosis. Her long illness and death had me spending all my time trying to meet her needs as she struggled with unrelenting pain. My mind went into a deep depression in the precious time before and after she died.

      As Thanksgiving 2019 approached, my mind awoke from the depths to resume work on this, my fifth book. The book is entitled Drowning Naked in