Peter O'Toole, Prince of the Glorious Absurd

Ah, dear Peter O'Toole--what fun he had! What a gorgeous soul: his grandeur, his deep knowledge of the classics (despite only two years of formal schooling), that great radiant shimmering skill at his chosen art--and shining through it all was his humor, the sense he seemed to have that not a thing in life was serious; it was all a happysad, tragicomic lark.

In an interview with David Letterman he laughed at a
review of Lawrence of Arabia that described his
expression of "messianic determination." It was
actually, he said, the expression of a drunk actor
clinging to a terrified camel as it raced downhill.

In college I wanted to be him. We all did, my friends Jonny and Justin and I. On TV we saw him tell hilarious stories that began at a bar and ended with him and a friend sitting in an alleyway at four in the morning on a mattress that was on fire--yet there he was in the aftermath, debonair and grand as ever, with that twinkle in his eye signaling his deep love for life's absurdity.

We read about his ludicrous adventures; he once screeched to a halt in a sports car next to his future wife, shouted "Get your passport, we're off!" and flew down the highway, intent on driving her to Rome--but took a wrong turn and ended up in Yugoslavia. He terrified passengers by ignoring traffic signs on the grounds that they were "silly" and almost driving down flights of stairs. Through stomach cancer, major surgery, wifely adultery, divorce and the deaths of his dearest friends he kept that lightness, that love of life, that divine glow.

So who else, really, could be our model for a life well lived? We didn't want to be Morrissey alone in his bedroom, Sinead hating the Pope, Kurt Cobain enraged at the world. Not that we weren't angry at or disappointed in the world, but we didn't want to spend our time being angry or disappointed.

Instead we lived like our motto was "What Would Peter O'Toole Do?" So when Jonny's girlfriend, across the Channel in Brussels, hung up on him after a fight at two in the morning, he decided to drive from Manchester to Belgium then and there just to tell her, "Never hang up on me again," and then drive back home. This plan made sense to me--the fact she was 500 miles away and we all had classes the next day was just not relevant--so I whipped up some sandwiches and off we went, speeding down the dark motorway in a rattling little car about as well made as a ten-dollar toaster. To keep ourselves awake we spent the night embroiled in a purposely surreal conversation, trying to outdo each other with increasingly off-kilter comments and bizarre metaphors.

At dawn, just outside Dover, the car finally died. We pushed it to the parking lot of a repair shop that wasn't open yet and ran down to the port to catch the ferry. We had barely enough money for tickets to the other side of the Channel, and Brussels was 80 or 100 miles inland, but we figured we'd solve that problem when we got to Belgium. So off we went...

For that and many other adventures, I must thank you, dear Mr. O'Toole.