The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

3 “SHE MUST HAVE BEEN quite rattled when you burst into the house complaining about your name,” I said.     “Was she!” said Ariane.     “I can imagine that scene.”     “Can you?” she asked. There was a bit of a challenge in it.     “Yes,” I said, accepting the challenge. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/su...

IN ARIANE’S MOTHER’S DEFENSE, it must be said that when the time came to name her she was reacting, perhaps overreacting, to the trouble caused by the names she and her husband had given to Ariane’s older brothers. They were both named Ernie. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

IF “LODKOCHNIKOV” was an embarrassment for her, “Ariane” sometimes felt like a curse. When—in junior high school—she found out where the name came from, she could hardly believe that her mother would give her such a name, a name so rich in implications for a life. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

WHEN I ARRIVED at Ariane’s house, she greeted me with a wet kiss, quite a kiss—lascivious, shameless, dizzying. It was the very kiss that I had dreamed of when I was a boy, except for the fact that she tasted of scotch. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

FOR ABOUT A MONTH, in my version, I saw her nearly every night. Most of the time, she talked, and I listened. I took notes; she did not. I tried to get a word in now and then, and now and then she allowed me to, but most of the time she did the talking. She had a lot to tell me. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substac...

I WENT AWAY to college, stayed away for graduate school, and then returned to teach molluscan biology, local history, folk etymology, and recreational mathematics at Babbington High. When I returned, Ariane was still in town, at the same place, down by the docks, but I didn’t see much of her. I just never seemed to have the time. Then one night her house burned down and Ariane was killed. ... Get...

MY BEST FRIEND was my imaginary friend, a boy named Rod, short for Rodney, friend of my own invention. I based him on a boy that I met by chance one day, a runaway boy who was passing through Babbington on his way to somewhere else, anywhere, nowhere, who-knows-where. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subsc...

Dedication For Mad Epigraphs Let not the reader be scandalized by this gravity amid the frivolous; let him rather recall that there is a grandeur in all follies, an energy in all excess. — Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” (translated by Jonathan Mayne) The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to seaIn a beautiful pea-green boat; . . .They sailed away, for a year and a day,To the land where t...

Happy New Year from me and the artist formerly known as Prince. I’m taking a short break. I’ll resume the serialization of The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy on Monday, January 8, 2024, with the first episode of What a Piece of Work I Am . Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.c...

BECAUSE THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING, and, as Quanto pointed out, most of everything is nothing, every day, every moment, more nothing separates the rest. With more and more Zwischenraum, the universe is becoming more and more transparent. When Raskol sprayed me with that beam of photons from the flashlight, some of them were reflected outward, arranged in a pattern imposed on them by the contours of...

ONE NIGHT, I was lying in the young bamboo at the foot of the hill, waiting, watching for an opportunity, letting my thoughts ramble to keep myself from growing impatient and giving myself away.  ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

     The first night we played Night Watchman, Marvin was the watchman. There must have been thirty crawlers in my back yard, trying to get into the tower without being caught. Most of them weren’t very good at avoiding detection. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

RASKOL AND MARVIN AND I put to use the lessons we had learned from our earlier failure. When we were finished building Watchtower II, we had a solid base from which a dozen long uprights rose, tapering inward to support a smaller platform at the top. We made a ladder by nailing crosspieces to two of the uprights, and when, after climbing the ladder to the top, we found that the structure exhibited...

I THINK IT WAS THE BIGGEST gathering we had ever had in my house. It seemed as if everyone I knew was there—except Guppa and Mrs. Jones, of course. They had driven in to the city early in the morning, so that they’d be in the studio, with their demonstration waterwillow set up, well before “Fantastic Contraptions” went on the air. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experience...

“LET’S MAKE A PARTY of it,” I said. “We can all get together to watch the show when they’re on—us, and Gumma, and the Joneses, and—”     “No, I don’t think so, Peter,” said my father.   ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

I SPENT SOME TIME feeling sorry for myself. I had no Miss Rheingold, no Ariane, no intriguing science project to give my life direction and meaning. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

     From under the counter he produced what at first I took for a pillow. It was covered with fuzzy gray material, and its shape closely resembled the fuzzy photographs of flying saucers that appeared in newspapers every week or so at that time. When I spotted the eyes, I realized that it was a stuffed-animal version of a clam.  Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & O...

 “Hold it, Porky,” I said. “Hold it!” “Huh?” “I don’t think we have to worry about a hamburger trend,” I said. “No?” he said. I could see the hope in his eyes. . .. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

     “It started one afternoon last week, the very day I decided I’d better start keeping the sales records.”     “You kept records only for last week?”     “I’m a busy man here, Peter,” he said.     ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

I RODE MY BIKE to the Lodkochnikovs’ to tell Ariane that I wouldn’t be able to watch movies with her in the afternoons anymore, but no one was home there, so I rode on down to the waterfront to see how my investment was doing. I wasn’t in a particularly good mood when I walked through the door to Captain White’s. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations o...

I WORKED HARD that night and all the following weekend. I drew diagrams, changed them, redrew them, made more changes, and redrew them again. I wrote, changed what I wrote, rewrote, made more changes, and wrote again. I didn’t seem to get anywhere. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

     “Hey, Peter. Peter.”     “Hm?” She was shaking me, and with each shake I was pressed for an instant closer to her, the skimpy pillow compressed between my head and her hip.     “It’s the commercial,” she said. “What were you going to tell me?”      Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

30 “ISN’T IT INTERESTING the way all knowledge is interrelated?” I said. “Not now, Peter,” said Ariane. “Wait for the commercial.” I knew I was breaking Ariane’s rule by speaking to her during a movie, but I was out to impress her, and I was impatient. I had brought a volume of my encyclopedia with me that afternoon, Volume C (Cat paradox; Causality; Cavendish laboratory; Combination lock; Como co...

     I was annoyed by articles without cross-references. I doubted that one little article could be all there was to say on a subject. Could this really be the last word? Was there nothing else related to this topic? At first, I tried getting out of these dead ends by backing up. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substa...

     Opening the packages turned out to be a pleasure all its own, one I’ve never forgotten. Every package I’ve opened since has had a sweet association with the packages that held those books. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe