I am the H.Y.M.A.N. commander

OH you motherfuckers.

I'll bet you thought I was dead.

But here I am, alive again, after a home computer meltdown and three-four weeks of fleeting complacency and accidental happiness. Did you miss me?

You didn't miss me, of course, because for all practical purposes, "you" no longer exist. Why would you, after a disappearance like that? Sure, I realize that a surefire way to scare off my loving and devoted and endlessly sympathetic audience was to disappear for a while, dashing their dreams of a regular dose of Hyman, but what can I say, mistakes were made. And that's something you're learing about me; that WE'RE learning about EACH OTHER--mistakes will always be made. Moses Josh shakes his head. He knows me too well, and has expected this from day one.

I never finished the Las Vegas thing, it's true...the documents were hopelessly corrupted, my logical, sequential, and ultimately meaningful letters and punctuation marks were irrevocably converted to meaningless boxes and taunting wingdings, and I don't have the heart, I'll admit, to retype the thing from my notes, instead choosing to let it disappear in the e-Ether along with the records of so many other irreplaceable feelings. I'm a quitter. I've always been a quitter, moving assuredly, chin lofted, eyes precocious slits, through stints of guitar, saxaphone, Hap Ki Do (a Korean martial art), tennis, journalism, caligraphy, cobbling, controlled burning, clinical abnormal psychology, community service, subsistence living, and hostage negotiation, always convinced of my inborn talent for each activity (at least until it was shown, after a couple weeks of practice, to be a figment of my imagination) before giving up, all before the ripe age of 14 when my true vocation became clear to me.

But I'm back...oh, and I will not disappoint you.

And there's another thing: I've been gone, because I've been writing other stuff. Plays. Two, to be exact, so good, so relieving to me that I've accomplished something that it's all I can do to keep from rolling up the print copies of the plays and fucking them without mercy. But I'm still at work, aren't I? Yes--for now. But ladies and gentlemen, all those whose eyes are glued to this page: the clock is ticking. For, though I have my good days--even more then usual--my irresponsibilty is bound to take hold sooner or later, especially now that I have something ELSE to spend my time on, and provoke me into putting in my two-weeks notice in order to spend "the bulk of my time" on the production of two plays that will in the end provide me with hardly a month's income (if any at all), an acute developed case of bronchitis-pneumonia-plague, and little or no sexual activity resulting from the merits of my artistic talent and gigantic pulsing brain.

"I am the H.Y.M.A.N. commander," my friend Doran Danoff, the Prince of Delusion, once wrote in an e-mail, writing as me, and so referring to me, but as the writer, also to himself, but I now officially denounce this dualistic interpretation, whether or not the Present King of France Is Bald, and insist that I am the one and only H.Y.M.A.N commander. Doran was joking, of course, using my name as an acronym and subsequent title of a mythical organization, standing preposterously for How You Make Actors Neurotic beasts to bear the burder of your megalomania (took some liberties there with that last one, that's right, since he ommitted the last series of words, opting to acknowledge only the letter N and ignore the following BBBYM (ommitting of course articles and prepositions) which I'm convinced stands for, in its own right, Blease Bring Back Your Musk, in reference to my enticing scent)--but he didn't know how right he is, because in all actuality I really HAVE become the H.Y.M.A.N. commander, achieving a complete and total mastery over the elusive entity that is myself, HYMAN. I command him all the time. He does my will.

Only sometimes he forgets, or just doesn't listen.

But I shall take small steps. Two days ago, I got myself a library card, and checked out a book. And that's good enough for this week. Maybe next week, I'll give up one of a number of habits that I find embarrasing, and have never told my friends about.