Wifey Dearest (Foto--Lad)

Foto: Christ Transgressing YMCA Wet Area Commandments--il Battesimo di Cristo

Dear Lad,
° Time was, if the Village People can be believed, that YMCAs were little more than male brothels.
° And you yourself remember the lean years, when Pope’s handsome Y degenerated into a flophouse cum steamandmasseur.
° But the dechristening and castration of the Young Men‘s Christian Association into the Your Family Y (YFY, pronounced “Wifey“), and a more aggressive dipping into the public tax monies via taxexempt bond issues, has brought a resurgence, just one gigantic new facility after another. Tennis, pools indoor and outdoor, weightrooms, babysitting stations, personal trainers, racketball, basketball, walking and cardio--how the nontaxpayersubsidised Gold’s gyms survive is more’n I can say.
° But even if the Ys are no longer male brothels, they can’t help, by their tasteful spickandspanness, but attract a sizable percentage of samesexers. And excluding any general class of members, even secondtier citizens like Jack and Ennis, might jeopardise taxexempt status. Then too, samesexer money spends the same as differentsexers’.
° But clearly, Something’s Got to Give.

° Astonished as I was a couple of years ago to see a sign in the over18 male dressing room at the Colliverdi Y--well I was shocked that agesegregation was thought necessary or legal--a sign stating that

The management cannot tolerate inappropriate sexual behaviour in the dressingroom,

which begged the question,

Exactly what sexual behaviour is appropriate in the dressing room?

Astonished as I was, it was nothing to the amazement I felt upon seeing a sign in the over18 male dressingroom at the Baltimore Villa Wifey stating that

Out of respect for those uncomfortable with nudity, members are asked to remain covered at all times in the dressingroom and wet area.

I like to’ve never got dressed out, showered, redressed. Just try it yourself. And I couldn’t help but notice that the towelwrapped Wifey Dearest male is about ten times more blatantly gay (I blush to say plainly how one erects that statistic into a tower of hard fact) than Fatass Cartman himself.
° ((I was thrilled to see, in fine print, that this branch of the Y possesses a document that defines, in plain English, “inappropriate sexual behaviour,” and I long to find somebody fool enough to ask to see it and tell me what it says.))

§§§§§

° Has it come to this?
° Must American men wear burkha?
° (For that is the justification of burkha, lest arab men, unable to control their animal impulses, should be victimised by being induced by an oppressor female not under wraps to rape her.)
° “Why should I have to watch tv shows like --------- ----------?” Even Ellen Goodman, ablebodied as far as I know and probably possessing a tv channel selector, asked this inane question, and failed to recognise the whiny neoNazi subtext of her own query.
° “Why should I be forced to gaze upon hairy flabby wrinkled manass and floppy flaccid weeny mandick?”
° Why indeed?

° Forced by some unspecified Forcer to close now, Giac.

A Sailboat in the Moonlight and Who (Foto--Piers)

Foto: Moonlight--The Pillars of Herakles

Dear Piers,
° The other day my brother innocently erred in saying, “If I get to Heaven, I hope I’ll meet up with D------, and we’ll fish and hunt rabbits all day everyday.”
° “Erred,” for he said it in front of me.
° “Won’t be much of a Heaven for the fishes and the rabbits,” wiseacred I.
° He thought, he amended, “Maybe up there we wouldn’t kill them.”
° Good save.

§

° My mind flashed back to my grandfather’s famous lecture on the Immortality of the Soul. He used to deliver it to captive audiences of public school children, this was back in the days when such audiences were homogeneously WASP, the only sectarian division being between English Relaxed Episcopalians and Scottish Haemorrhoidal Calvinists.

The Indian has his Heaven. When he dies, . . . he expects to go to a land of swift flowing, beautiful and mighty rivers, teeming with fish, where throughout all eternity he can indulge in one of his favorite sports.

° But I am a vegetarian, so that’s no good.

The Mohammedan when he dies looks for a Heaven where he can enjoy every sensual delight. In this world he has many wives, but in the next world he is to have many more.

° Not to mention the nonstupefying wine, the baklava, and the prettyboys. But there’s no promise of cats, so that’s no good.

The truly Christian man or woman has an altogether different idea of Heaven. He believes in a higher and better life--a life of service free from sin and the triumph of his soul and spirit over his lower and animal nature that he has here.

° So Heaven is to be an eternity of emptying bedpans with a cheerful disposition. I pray it be not so.

§§§§§

° I’m in the living room, I’m lolled on the sofa. The day is sunny and warm, and the breeze through the open dormers is caressing. From the South I can smell the Gulf. To the North I can see the converted storehouse in which Nathan is kilning bowls glazed jewelly in jade and turquoise. Coz is down in the cabin, he’s dandling his firstborn, He Born with the Caul, He Born with the Gift Entire. From the Terrace comes the hectic thwuck! of Leggero’s backhand, as he prepares for the Games. Downstairs, at the keyboard, you’re entwining themes from Palestrina’s Canticum Canticorum with Dupré’s, nero e bello davvero.
° A pot of steeping strong tea releases the scent of orangeblossom and passionflower and jasmine while Yucatan buttons melt in my mouth (though there’s a platter of costillas in the hall, and the lingering scent of the morning coffee grinding). On the page before me Fanny Assingham has just said ‘”This”--?‘ and Maggie is just fixing to reply ‘That!’
° She’s done it. I pause. Silence. Footsteps.
° One of you is coming up the steps.

§

° And that, my beloved Piers, ever forgotten so as to be ever newly experienced throughout the splitsecond that Eternity lasts, is Heaven.
° Contentment Surprised by Joy.

° All aboard as the Moon rises, Giac.