Thursday, October 31, 2002 7:03:04 PM

Perhaps I have, once again, reflexively embarrassed myself.

When there is nothing to do, which is to say, when I truly wish that there was nothing to pursue, when I wish my life consisted of going to work, cooking and eating a decreasingly caloric meal and stretching myself the length of my entire body on the length of my bed under the length of my covers, washed and cleaned at least weekly I add with my finger on my nose, and relaxing with a deep sigh as the muscles lose tension in my legs and my stomach and the back of my neck melt into a more than normal amorphous lump and click, I perform the ritual power to the TV, and , click, the receiver set to stun me with sub woofer and sensualaround sound and, clickity clickity, a last quick run up and down the two hundred or so assortment of cable and broadcast channels which manage in all their variety of form to achieve remarkable homogeneity and settle invariably on some light full of froth and fluff , an occasional disturbing dash, even mellifluous music in the strum drang and strife of life, the romantic comedy.

I wonder lazily supine!

Wouldn't a happy chase through my video library be better than this endless digital search across movie channels? Still how many times can I unsheathe the videotape cover of Cary Grant suddenly going all gay and watch Bringing Up Baby? I find myself oddly sexually attracted to Susan. Imagine my horror the other night while watching Duck Soup for more times than the placing the rings in the Tower of Hanoi to realize that I wanted nothing more than to settle down in a cleanly vacuumed picket fenced cottage with Margaret Dumont. Something most definitely is adolescent gumming up the works in the waning years of my middle age.

So I watch on HBO and Showtime and The Movie Channel and Starz and Encore (how I ended with the whole platinum package I leave for another time) what passes for romantic comedy in this day and age, the teen angst boy meets girl or increasingly more common the boy meets boy or girl meets girl film. I watch until they turn mean spirited, then I spirit myself away to another channel and give another set of young folks a chance to charm me. Occasionally there is a gem that sets right with my mood and its own integrity.

I laugh at all the right spots. A tear is always on the brink of my eyelid at the denouement when they meet at the airport because he or she is on their way to Paris or Madrid or London and decide that fate and perhaps the discomfort of traveling coach must drive them together in a passionate embrace. Finis. Music soars; usually a soft acoustic rock flat picked steel stringed guitar kind of melody. They're happy. I'm ecstatic! Sated I usually can fall asleep until the sound of screams from the Kansas Windmill Massacre or Die, Scream and Laugh in Terror inserts itself into my dream and wide awake I'm at the remote in search of video love which turns in the deep hours of the morning into soft core sleek and toned naked bodies rubbing with no idea of where genitalia should reside in the coital act.

Face it. I reflect (Once again Reflexive) you are mushy, hopelessly and helplessly mired in the idea of preliminary infatuation. And face it I do. Not much of a one for mature relationships. I freely admit it. I am it turns out as my parents prognosticated sadly shaking their collective heads and wagging their fingers a dreamer. I buy these tales of innocent love wholesale and whole cloth.

Morning noon and nighttime too all I do is dream of you the whole day through.