Varieties of Regret: Under the Shadow of Mont Blanc

Driving around Tucson, Arizona last January, I noticed a surprising number of billboards for clinics specializing in vasectomy reversal. Actually, it was just two billboards, but even one would have been surprising. I mean, how many clinics can rustle up enough customers for just this?

I’ve never had a vasectomy myself — much less its reversal — but this got me thinking.

The vasectomy seemed like a good idea. What with the kids finally in school and the house nearly paid off and whatnot. But after a couple of years the wife starts getting on my case and the kids are taking her side. There’s a bunch of yelling and whatever. So I get my own place and move on with my life. Now, there’s Summer. She’s a good kid, Summer. Put the wind in my sails again. Said she wants to have my baby. Summer doesn’t know about the vasectomy, of course, but I’ve been seeing these signs around town…

Normally I don’t dwell on regret, but I understand the temptation. At a restaurant I’m always the one looking at everyone else’s plate and thinking, “Damn, I should have ordered that.”

* * *

We are currently far from Arizona, in Rockport, Massachusetts. But just a few weeks ago we were even further away, in the French Alps, at a small hotel that normally offers a spectacular view of Mont Blanc. I say normally because the promised mountain was just a ghostly shape when we arrived, barely registering behind a damp and dreary sky. We looked for it, somewhere up there, above the turquoise hotel pool, and saw only an approximation of mountain, maybe right about there. It put me in mind of faith; of waiting for someone in robes to manifest among the clouds.

At breakfast a fellow guest said that wildfires in Western Canada were responsible for the haze. Over the past several years, we’ve noticed an increasing number of Americans, eyes brimming with regret, giving us long, meaningful looks and sorrowful apologies. I’ve never seen a people so contrite. And here at last was our turn to apologize, even though no one blamed us, personally, for ruining the view.

In the second week the smoke gradually cleared and one fine morning there it was. It’s not always in sight, but you turn a corner, look up, and there it is again — Mont Blanc. A black and white immensity. Ancient, primeval, severe, towering above the green hills and tidy Alpine chalets. It’s all a bit unreal, and doesn’t seem to fully belong in our freshly-painted world.

Later on we spent a day at Megève, a small Alpine town that swells with the ultra-rich during ski season. Many of the high-calibre shops, restaurants and real estate offices were shuttered, but you wander around and quickly get the idea. Megève was founded in 1920 by Baroness Noémie de Rothschild, and there’s a respectful monument to that rich lady you might gaze at for some moments.

There’s also a monument to Jacques Revaux, who lived here for a time. Revaux co-wrote Come d’habitude, which in 1967 went #1 on the French hit parade for singer Claude Francois. Paul Anka heard the song while vacationing in the South of France and immediately thought it would be perfect for Frank Sinatra. Anka bought the rights, left the melody nearly intact, and wrote entirely different lyrics. (You know the song; you’ve heard it a thousand times; you may, like some people, hate it. But it’s still a master class in lyric writing.)

Sinatra recorded My Way in one take, in 1969, and it sold millions. It’s Sinatra’s biggest hit: a man’s sentimental hymn to bloated self-regard. It is the Mont Blanc of songs. (I’m surprised they don’t play it at political rallies.) Two other songs from about the same era also come to mind: Paul Anka’s You’re Having my Baby (1974), for which he got into plenty of hot water. And It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World (1968), by James Brown. But My Way towers above the rest.

Regrets, I’ve had a few,

But then again, too few to mention…

As it turns out, there’s an earlier English version of Comme d’habitude, by David Bowie. It was never recorded. A couple of years after My Way’s release, though, Bowie reworked his translation (which actually sticks pretty close to the French) into Is There Life on Mars? from his Hunky Dory album. He always hated My Way.

* * *

Our trip to the French Alps began in Geneva, where we stayed for a couple of days to recover from jet lag. The city is graceful, orderly, eager to take your money. If Geneva has a face, it is the face of a Rolex watch. In fact, the parade of luxury watch brands begins right at the airport and follows you everywhere. Their logos dominate the Geneva skyline, where they perch atop every tall building like golden gargoyles, watching your every move.

On our second day in Geneva, as we were crossing one of the many bridges that span the Rhône River, we encountered a demon.

It was only a brief moment, mind you. We were walking in opposite directions, so I couldn’t say what the demon was wearing. But I can tell you that every square inch of skin was tattooed, and tattooed horribly — a pudding of muddy browns, greens and blues pierced only by the whites of his eyes. And something else, too. The face had been altered by props or skewers, maybe a botched surgery. Maybe a bone through the nose.

In our history books at school, I remember prints made from explorers’ descriptions of painted savages from the Americas and Africa. Today most of us think of these images as misapprehensions: ignorant, racist, fearful first impressions of the other. Nothing education and open minds can’t clear up — at least that’s what most of us think.

At dinner one night, in our snug hotel under the shadow of Mont Blanc, we described the demon to other guests at our table. The big question, of course, is why would anyone do this to himself? Tattoos on this scale are, unlike a vasectomy, irreversible. If he has regrets, too bad for the demon on the bridge.

As it happened, there was a psychiatrist at our table, and she had seen a patient who had been heavily tattooed and pierced

“It’s all about control,” said the psychiatrist. “If you don’t like how others see you, tattoos put you back in charge. You force others to see only the tattoos.”

She was right, I suppose. For all I know the demon was wearing a Speedo and ballet slippers. I saw only the tattoos.

But I saw something else, too. If I’m being honest, I saw a painted guy with a bone through his nose coming my way and I didn’t like the looks of him. He scared me, and I don’t know exactly why. I’m fully prepared to be wrong about him. About all those who remain demons among us — strangers, every one of them.

But it’s hard, especially when I look in a mirror. What do I see there? Regretfully, I see two faces from Geneva. One of them symmetrical, orderly, precise. And this.