Barkley Bohner, Celebrity Philosopher

Chapter Sixteen

So, anyway …

A philosopher walks into a bar. The philosopher says, "A beer for me and one for my friend, the future President of the United States."

That's the joke. The man was black, had a name like a terrorist, had yet to run for political office, and didn't even know how to play poker. The least I could do was teach him how to play.

This was 1995, one hour following my improbably successful "I have a dream speech" that had the crowd chanting, "Bohner for President."

So here I was, in the hotel bar, at a corner table, having a beer and nibbling on peanuts with an older version of the earnest student who had walked into my office some 12 years earlier.

I pulled a deck out of my pocket and started dealing. I always carry a deck. The sixth chapter to my book, The Bohner Paradox, contains this advice: "When you challenge Jack Nicklaus to a game, make sure it's not golf."

Poker is my golf. I pointed to the cards on the table. "This is your secret to success," I said. "Poker is the glue that binds us. You give the game the respect it deserves, and maybe – just maybe – the people around the table won’t see you as black."

I indicated for him to pick up his cards. "And maybe, just maybe," I added, "you won’t see them as white."

My companion fumbled with his cards, looking very out of place. I explained the basic rules and key strategies as we ran through a few practice hands.

"I've been meaning to ask you this," he said, almost apologetically. "Are you related in any way to – you know – the real, er, historical Barkley Bohner?"

He was, of course, referring to Barkley Bohner, Lord of the Jungle, Man of Action, 14th Earl of Bohner, married to the Wild West outlaw Betsy the Brave.

Just about everyone assumed there was no possible relation. I mean, one look at me, well, I could go on and on …

But really, when your mom is from the Caribbean and your father is hardly ever around, even I tended to forget that I was the current Earl of Bohner, great grandson of the real Barkley Bohner.

I cast my mind back to only my second visit to Great Bottom, seat of the House of Bohner. Great Bottom, which is located north of London, not to be confused with Bonheur Manor, in what used to be Bonheur-on-Gyrrd on the Welsh border. The House of Bohner relocated during the reign of Henry VIII, soon following "Betsy's Revenge." I will spare you the details.

I had just turned 33. Clive the Butler was still there. The two of us promenaded down the Great Hall past portraits of the mostly expendable male Bohners, then further down the hall to the men the Betsy's chose to keep around.

These were the "bug-collectors," men who pursued knowledge for the sake of knowledge, responsible for the English Enlightenment that spanned the two centuries roughly from Newton to Darwin.

We turned the corner to the grand stairway. There he was – Barkley Bohner, Man of Action – prominently featured on the landing, in an unidentified jungle, looking very dashing in a pith helmet and semi-formal Victorian get-up, holstered pistol worn outside his jacket. 

Barkley also embodied the high ideals of his bug-collecting forebears. His own personal quest for knowledge resulted in three classics, the pioneering field study "Life Among the Leopard-Hunters," the essay "Tidal Pool Reflections," which inspired Einstein, and his monumental "Study of Man," which cemented his reputation as co-founder of anthropology.

Barkley died of malaria in the Amazon rainforest in 1905, a distraught Betsy the Brave by his side. Much much later, at Betsy's instigation, my father William, 17th Earl of Bohner, led the famous Bohner Expedition to that very same patch of rainforest, where I wound up being born. 

There was no way I could relate all this to my companion over a game of poker. "Yep," I said, in response to his query. "Barkley Bohner was my great-grandfather."

Our poker faces sized up each other knowingly. Life is full of crazy connections, unpredictable outcomes. We both sensed that in the lives of one other. That's when I decided to give my companion my private number. 

As for a black President of the United States, well no way, I told him for the second time in twelve years, not unless he was a Republican.

Two improbabilities, both related, feeding off each other. Improbable as it may seem, at this very moment – this was 1995 – Republicans were courting Colin Powell, the man in charge during the first Gulf War. I had more or less called it twelve years earlier. 

No way, though, could there be a black President who was a Democrat. That would constitute explaining an improbability with a possibility, like coming up with a creator God to account for the improbability of our existence.

Lazy thinking.

A hacker God, that's a different story – a being who hacked the universe. As you know, both my father and my father-in-law independently corroborated the existence of just such a God, one who lived in the belly of a snake and who had appalling fashion sense.

Our only purpose in life is to make this hacker God laugh. My father-in-law, who spent two years on life support, kept hammering home this point at every available opportunity – over vanilla cheesecake, over vanilla cherries jubilee, over vanilla coffee, vanilla wine, vanilla-roasted salmon, vanilla kung pao, vanilla chili, vanilla-pepperoni pizza, vanilla risotto, vanilla jambalaya. 

"Can you think of anything else that makes sense?" he asked, this time over vanilla sushi.

Nothing else made sense, which is why there could be no black President who was a Democrat, at least not until the best golfer was black and the best rapper white.

Seriously, there are some things even a Bohner Paradox can't fix.

My friend looked up from his hand. "Is it possible to lose with a royal flush?" he asked.

Looking back on our conversation, for one brief moment in time, God seemed to have stopped laughing.