JOLLY DAYS

Hitchens Goes to the Spa

In this Vanity Fair set piece On the Limits of Self-Improvement, Christopher Hitchens manages to tease out some very funny stuff from the warhorse genre, “Boozing, Chain-Smoking Journalist Goes to the Spa”.

Of particular note for its laugh out loud achievement is Hitchens' almost courageously self-deprecatory description of his body as imagined through the filter of a spa intake report:

…Nor do his hands, at the same time very small and very puffy, give any support to the view that the human species does not have a common ancestor with the less advanced species of ape. The nails on the hands are gnawed, and the nails on the feet are claw-like and beginning to curl in a Howard Hughes fashion (perhaps because the subject displays such a marked reluctance to involve himself in any activity that may involve bending).

Viewed from the front when clothed, the subject resembles a burst horsehair sofa cushion or (in the opinion of one of us) a condom hastily stuffed with an old sock. The side perspective is that of an avocado pear and, on certain mornings, an avocado pear that retains nothing of nutritious value but its tinge of alligator green…