Barkley Bohner, Celebrity Philosopher

Chapter Twelve

Okay, I know this sort of thing happens all the time. No doubt, it has happened to you: You are hiding out in Ungentrified Harlem, lying low, contemplating the reality field in a state of collapse, knowing that both your current wives – who happen to represent the most powerful organization in the world – are going to catch up with you sooner or later. It's just a matter of time, like finding yourself in an Agatha Christie novel. You know, you step out into the kitchen and there's the butler sharpening the knives.

That's when it all comes together. It all clicks. You are the next victim. As you have probably gathered by now, I come from a long line of victims, dating back to just after 1066. My aha! moment came roughly 950 years after, not too long ago. My friend and I were just about to grab a sandwich at his place. We head to the kitchen and there's my daughter Remi just outside chatting to HER friend.

What's so unusual about that? My friend happened to live in the White House. My daughter's friend was his wife. Can you believe it? But I'm jumping ahead.

Okay, so three philosophers walk into a bar. But I doubt if such a joke even exists.

It was time to test the math to my Bohner Paradox. This was very soon after I saved my marriage by returning home from Hollywood as a fringe philosopher rather than a man of destiny.

My interest in the math was purely intellectual. Sort of along the lines of: “Wouldn’t it be cool to see if I could make a billion dollars with this thing?”

It turned out I could, thanks to Douglas. Douglas is an algorithmic program based on the math to the Bohner Paradox. I much preferred Improbability Drive for a name, but it was already taken.

So I went with Douglas, after Douglas Fairbanks, the first actor to portray Barkley Bohner, Man of Action on screen. Mary Pickford played opposite as Betsy the Brave

So anyway, back in the 1980s, my Improbability Drive – Douglas – filled up sixteen 5 ¼-inch floppy disks. This meant every time I ran the program, I had to carefully slide in my disks, in the right order, and wait forever for each disk to load.

I won't describe the hell I endured linking to a computer connected to the financial markets over a 1,200-baud modem.

Making a billion dollars was truly back-breaking work. It must have taken days. It gets worse – I simply couldn't stop obsessing about how much I was making. So, suddenly I couldn't use my brain.

I know, I know – the brain is highly overrated.

Zen koan – how much is money worth? Especially when all you can think about is how much you are making while trying to have sex. Then see how understanding your wife is, especially if her name is Trudy.

This is your brain on money. Scary thought. The Sufi mystic, known simply as The Poet, had no answer for this.

Okay, no sooner had I got the sex and money thing sorted out than a new problem emerged. I was certain that becoming a household name would be the least of my concerns. Sure, there was talk of a Nobel Prize, but how many people can name even one living Nobel Laureate? Even as Funk Barkley, I had proved extremely adept at keeping a low profile.

"Barkley Bohner, Celebrity Philosopher," said my father-in-law, contemplating the green translucent Coney Island spoon he used for his vanilla pudding.

It actually happened. Occasionally, someone with a credible explanation for why the chicken really did cross the road writes a surprise best-seller. Next thing, there I was – this was the late eighties – the hip geek who knew how to explain things. The morning breakfast shows kept having me back, and before you knew it I was hosting a seven-part series on PBS.