In Search of Paul Molitor at His Most Handsome

Paul Leo Molitor is so handsome that each year on the anniversary of his birth, a single tear rolls down the faces of the sculptures of the Petit Palais. It is somewhere between lore and truth when the taxi driver tells you that when Paul Molitor sneezes, what he expels becomes airborne semen, and it impregnates not only all ladies in the airports of the world, but also the men, the children and the full complement of Sharper Image products available in Terminal C.

Fully pregnant as I write this, I have spent years — minutes, even — searching for a daguerreotype of Paul Molitor at his most luminously handsome. And this is it; and it is this …

If this same photo were of a lesser man, then it would be what it is: sepia-toned and worn to ribbons. Yet because the image is of Paul Molitor, it is shimmering in its perfect preservation. It has been used as a bookmark for Erica Jong novels. It is poised forever at the ready in Odin’s spank bank.

Gaze upon his essence if you dare. Note the chin as perfectly cleaved as a stallion’s hoof. Become engulfed by the eyes. They are lozenges made up of every loving marriage. When the Pacific Ocean is in hospice, that is the blue it will imagine as it dies surrounded by other weeping oceans. Each whisker is an oak tree, each chest hair a curly sex act or some warfare.

Paul Molitor is about vanquish the Axis Powers. Paul Molitor is also about to make love to one while painting the other. No, the other other. I’m talking about the girl leaning on the balustrade and looking back with a cherishing as thick as gruel.