Jack Duff Junior

Life is a mess.

None more so than my very public life that ended some ten years ago. My very private life since has been a mess as well. But much less intriguing than the life I led as one of the world's best professional golfers and a leading light in the realm of the spiritual arts.

Now, that life, the life of Jack Duff Jr, the sweet swinging Americam Tibetan Buddhist monk and ersatz world Number One golf pro, was a real mess. Or looking back now from the comfort of my new digs here on the Isles of Fair Eiron and the relative stability of this my new life, that life was a very unreal mess.

My life was half-dream half-nightmare. Full of success, love, women, money, women, golf, women, adoring fans, adoring women, golf trophies, trophy women. You'll notice I mention women more than once. Well it did seem to be the ruling theme of my life, then. Not now.

Now, in my quasi-post-Enlightenment years, - let’s call them that for lack of a better phrase - women are few and far between. I haven’t the time. Or the inclination. Or the energy. Or the desire.

Desire I have in abundance, but not for women. Or men, let me be clear about that.

My main desire in life is to clean up the mess that is my past, that cyclonic life of mine which swirled across the globe.

And, as well, I have to admit, there is a strong desire on my part to clean up my reputation, that which remains of me, outside of me, over which I have no control. My legacy if you will.

I left the world of golf on top. As the disputed world number one. Yes, disputed. Normally these things are undisputed, Or inarguable. In my case my rank as the world's best golfer in the year 1996 was in dispute and that fact I do not dispute. In fact I could care less. Or is it 'couldn’t care less'. I'm never sure which. Either way. Whatever. You get the drift.

No, what I would like to clear up are some of the facts and details concerning my life in that year, the year 1996, wherein I reclaimed the title of world number one - or didn't. Again I don't care. Really I don't.

It was quite a year. The culmination of quite a life. My apparent death. Which is, as you may guess, in dispute. The untimely death of my wife. The insinuation on a near global scale that I, Jack Duff Jr., dog that I am, somehow had a hand in her death. Or more to the point, had put my mind to it, to her death, that I had somehow used my ExtraMental powers - my gift - to destroy her and to end her life ignomoniously as they say. I mean, give me a break. Just because I can control a golf ball - bending it midflight, first left then right, drawing and then fading it with just one swing of the club - unlike any golfer in the history of the game, I might add - does not mean that I can manipulate the mind of another human being. Even be it a woman. My overwhelming Extra Mental powers of seduction notwithstanding.

Okay, yes, there is something very special about my brain. Yes I have Extra Mental powers. But would I ever use these Extra Mental powers for evil, to commit an act of murder, essentially to drive a woman, my wife, the mother of my only child, to drive her to her death?

I am not evil.

Unless of course you deem 'sleeping with' thousands of women to be an evil act. Or you see devotion to the American Tibetan Buddhist Way as some sort of evil subterfuge against the God in which we emboss on copper. Or you see the World Professional Golf Association as evil, its members' partners' and sponsors' activities as some kind of global hyper-capitalist conspiracy… then you have made up your mind already and you may as well just fuck right off now.

Murder my wife? No.

And you know what? If I could have contrived that day where her head was crushed on live television the way it was I would have. I'll even admit that against my lawyer's advice and my own better judgment. Babs Dawn Huff-Duff? I wasn't really a fan. But I couldn't despite my wishes hopes dreams and prayers will her death. Sure I muttered on more than one occasion 'I wish you were dead.' But so what? Who hasn’t said that? Man or woman. Or thought that, at least. Or fantasized about another life, a life without their dearly betrothed. A life with someone else. A life different.

But the problem with these alternative lives, these fanatsies and romantic fabrications is not the immorality of it all, it is the delusion. Somehow, this different life is always a better life. Isn’t that always the case? As if there is no chance that your fantasy life would ever turn out to be worse than the pathetic existence you find yourself barely enduring at this moment.

Yeah. The Buddhists are always going on about life being an illusion. Which is true. On the surface. But I'd trump that and make the claim that the interior life of man is to a large degree a dee-lusion.

Now, my declamation may come off sounding a tad arrogant or pompous, but hey, let's face facts. I can still lay claim to the fact that besides being once - no wait, twice - the world's best professional golfer I also attained a state of Supreme and Exhalted Enlightnenment by following the eightfold path of the American Tibetan Buddhist Movement, Santa Clara California Chapter. I've got the plaque to prove it. Not that I want to rub that in your face or in the face of any former friends and teachers and posers and demi-rinpoches.

But…I've got dharma cred. I am in the Buddha loop.

And so, am I here, as a service to humankind, to lead The Way? No. For that you can buy my book, Golf My Middle Way: An Enlightened Approach to the Green, co-authored with the Wurlitzer Prize winning sportswriter and general scuzzball Grant Humboldt. There are tons of copies - literally tons - available on Amazon.

No, I'm here in a rare moment of seflishness. For a change. Not that I am tired of my selflessness. My holiness. Not by any means. No. I'm just here, down from my egoless state of being for a little look back into the Void that is - or was - my life.