A is also for Adaptability

Adaptability:

I am now at least 70, depending on what reports you have read. Some reports place me around the region of 250! The truth is somewhere in between. In any case, I have seen a great many young up-and-comers become old-maid-one-hit-wonders. One day they are young and beautiful; the next they are alcoholics doing guest appearances in small towns at women’s conventions for a cheap make-up supplement manufactured in Peru. An old foe of my, Yves Saint Laurent, is in this situation. He is dead. I imagine you understand the problems associated with being dead- it’s a rather hard situation to adapt to. Yves could never adapt anyway, so I wonder how he’s going to get out of this one. Of course, one only becomes dead when one fails to adapt. Yves stopped adapting in the 70’s. I think he died last year, but it may’ve been 20 years ago- one can never tell.

I knew Truman Capote for a while, actually. We met maybe four years before he died- you know, nobody was paying attention to him at this time. He was just a sort of imploding star, stuck in the jet set. The sort of people who are wealthy, inbreed but are not aristocracy- rather an executive of some sort, a chairman. He was obsessed with the jet set- writing a book about them. There was no jet set by then, and there is certainly no jet set now! Times have changed! When times change, one must change too or one will became another fatality, hm? But I met Truman, and he was such a sad state- stuck in a time that didn’t exist anymore.
“You won’t believe what dish I’ve found out on executive so-and-so,” I remember him saying to me.
It took me five seconds to think of a reply- a long, drawn out five seconds where I umm-ed and ahh-ed (mentally, of course. Never show a sign of indecision) between saying “nobody cares Truman”, or “how interesting.” I just ended up with an “Mm.” He continued babbling on, whilst I blocked out his words by having a conversation with myself in my head.

Adaptability is paramount. I am like some vampire-esque chameleon, always absorbing the zeitgeist like fatties absorb grease. Where those plump creatures which weigh down the earth with their dinosaur-like stomping eat those pizzas and such, devouring them as if to create a world pizza-short; I eat the zeitgeist- designing it and throwing it away when I am done. I am not immortal for the fun of it; I am immortal because I am always up-to-date! The zeitgeist is my lover.