A Pilgrim’s Digression

Editor’s Note: the following is a work in progress, and I have decided to let my corrections show through. Bracketed text indicates additions. Strike throughs indicate deletions.

Al Dente“You like The New Yorker?” The old woman asks.

She holds her head in her hand, her elbow resting on the table.

[She rests her head on her hand, her elbow on the table.]

Tired. Old.

“Yeah, I read it for the articles on art and literature.”

I say, not wishing to be mistaken for.

“It’s a very Liberal magazine,” she says.

As usual, I’m not sure whether to capitalize.

She wears a brown Mr. Rogers, unbuttoned.

Coffee stain on the pocket, or perhaps spaghetti sauce.

She thumbs the pages I left opened

When when I stood up to let her sit down.

“I’m just reading an article on Zola and Cezanne.

They had a great friendship, friends since early childhood.

Then when they were middle-aged,

they broke it off inexplicably.”

She sighs and looks up looks up quick, says,

“Were they homos?”

Distaste, as if she had spit.

“I’m so tired, ” she continues. “What time is it?”

“Six-thirty,” I reply.

“You’re going to be late for work,” she says, alarmed.

Then, more alarm: “You’re having soup for breakfast?”

“It’s six-thirty in the evening,” I say cautiously.

Startled, she says, “Why I just woke up. It’s still dark outside.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, “Sometimes young people get confused about what time it is, too.”

She stands up and goes to the kitchen counter.

Takes down the percolator from a shelf.

Plugs it in.

Takes down the coffee can and scoops coffee into the top of the pot.

“It’s awful late for coffee, don’t you think?” I warn.

“It feels early,” she says, looking at the coffee scoop, confused.

The men who know tell us that the Greatest Generation [greatest generation] is passing from the earth,

and with them their foggy [peculiar] notions of Time and sexuality.

Sometimes I think “Well, good-bye then.”

Certitude is all well and good.

Maybe uncertainty is better,

at least for the homos of the world.

Or maybe not.

The train bumps along through morning night,

shaking me into a doze,

[then] waking me a little at every stop.

Conversation around me filters in.

The mad staccato [litany] of some Asian language,

The lilt of a fag.

Two conversations, one an unintelligible litany.

The fag says,

“And I said, this is some Sunday, here we are the three of us

at eight-thirty in the morning with nothing to do.”

[Into] Through a tunnel, and the rest is blurred.

Then, “I bought probably ten packages of underwear.”

The other conversant says something I can’t hear.

“Yes,” the fag replies. His voice carries very well.

Later, I stand behind him on the up escalator.

He is still talking.

“I said…and then I said…and he said…”

I stand so close and slightly beneath him

I can smell his perfume.

His scent is like plums,

fresh and fruity, purpureal and queenly.

I think what if fags were normal and straights were the oddities.

All the men would smell good,

and waxing would become a routine part of grooming.

Our wardrobe would be larger and better coordinated.

The dear President would be Georgina Bush

and her name would be an even dirtier joke.

Charlotte would be the San Francisco of straight culture,

and drag shows the term drag show would refer to drag racing.

And maybe fags would go slumming

In straight neighborhoods like Brooklyn

just to tell their fag friends about the experience.

“They were holding hands, right there on the sidewalk!”

In the capitol, fag Congressmen would debate whether straights

should be allowed to marry or have babies.

[Fag Christians would protest on the steps of the Supreme Court

wearing badges that say,

"God Hates Straights."]

And all the secret glory holes would be occupied

by women on their knees for men

they are forbidden to love.

Okay. So maybe the reverse is not necessarily better.

But would there be war?

Would liberalism or Liberalism be such a bad word?

Would the poor be any worse off?

Or is what I really want merely

a world where people shrug and say “Love”

“Love knows no distinctions”

when they hear of two men who are close friends.

When we grow old, we all become a bit dotty,

mistaking late for early,

repeating our stories fifty times in an hour

to youths sick of hearing them.

We hug our beliefs tighter

as if to lose [loose?] them is to lose ourselves.

True enough. We do lose our selves

when we give up the ghost of old truth.

But then loss is what living is all about.