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.

Puzzling (Foto--Leggero)

Foto: Bareback Hillock, First Cousin Twice Removed of Brokeback Mountain

Mio caro Leggero,
° Here is a puzzle for little Pirelli. Recite thou him (clue) these two passages:

For man can be bought with woman’s beauty, if it be but beautiful enough; and woman’s beauty can be ever bought with gold, if only there be gold enough.

Of course you wouldn’t marry a man because of his money, any more than you’d marry a woman because she’s goodlooking; but my Goodness, doesn’t it help?

° See can he tell (he has a 50-50 chance of guessing right) which of these speeches was put into the mouth of the female lead character by a male writer.
° If that he can, nay even be it but guesswork (clue redoubled), then we’ll discuss Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain.

° Riddled, Giac.

La Morte Santissima Se Ne Va (Foto--Piers)

My dear little Piers,
° Slow motion. Thank goodness there was time for slow motion. Plenty of time.
° Tuesday afternoon I satinstitched over the mousebites in a silverblue damask tablecloth of Mother’s. It was the right kind of occupation.
° A phone call to her cousin, warned Sunday. More reminiscences. It was just the right thing.
° By nightfall, though I was still weepy, I had the sense that the invalid, dying Mother was now out of the way of the vital, beautiful Mother. For Time really is just a notion we have.
° Slept soundly.

° Wednesday I printed the fotorich bio, for the service. Her parents when young, the early deaths, the college days, the young mother, the musician. I cut the fotos off at age 30, folks’ memories can fill in after that.
° Headachy, from the eyestrain. I even took an aspirin next morning.
° Mother’s temperature, toward the end, had soared to an astonishing 107°. Hospice packed her in ice, the charge nurse administered tylenol by enema. Nobody remembered a worse fever. So that’s why the alertness last November, it was the beginning of this final infection, that’s why all those tests we just found out about two weeks ago, when the Medicare statement came.

° Dreamed of two chimneys floating over the house, my task was to carry masonry up the ladder to fill in to the ground. And yes, one of the chimneyshaped fotos in the bio was “floating” by a line; fixed it. Also dreamt erotically, there was a map of Lazio handinked inside my underwear. Normal dreams about normal, ordinary things. Good sign. No rattlesnakes, no dinosaurs.
° The difference between shock and surprise. My father died the third day inclusive after a fall; we were surprised, shocked, stunned. I remember that my sense of smell became so acute I could analyse the breath and sweat of all the visitors and tell what they’d eaten earlier in the day. It was incapacitating, it was appropriate to the level of the shock. Lettye had dizzy spells for years, fell into many a bush. Others just buy golden Cadillacs and get it over with.
° We were surprised by Mother’s death, but not shocked, or so it seems today. Nor had Daddy lost control of his investments and the conditions of his daily life--though it was imminent.

° The casket opened briefly--they’d remade the body to look the way she did before she began those last hard few days of fever and drought, I wonder if any of us is mentally strong enough to behold Death unmadeup?--and the family service done, the casket reclosed--my mother used to cringe at the comments she heard the old folks make after a viewing: “My, didn’t she look bad!” or “My, didn’t they fix her up like a picture, but that dress!”--the Visitation began.
° My father’s Visitation nearly sank me. I hadn’t slept for two days, my nerves and temper were not at their sweetest, and the stench of folks’ breath and bodies, not to mention their ideas, was unbearable, if they just knew what cats know.
° My mother’s Visitation was so pleasant, it was only five hours later, as my stomach began to gripe for lack of food, that I realised it was all over. And, having stood the entire time, all my blood was in my feet.
° Reunions with cousins not seen in twenty years. Reunions with good friends. A steady stream of folks I didn’t know from Adam. Confidences piled upon confidences: confessions of misdeeds in elementary school, unburdenings of caregivers at the nearend of their ropes, recollections of the physical details of parents’ deaths, garden talk, software talk. No backhanded slaps at Mother (this is unusual, funerals mark open season on the Dead). A forehanded slap at me for having alienated Mother’s patronage from a local store. Sorry, better avocados at the chain.
° Tired, calm.

° Friday, another warm and sunny day, unnaturally warm and sunny. The jasmine, autumn cherry, parrotia, hazelnuts, hellebores, all the little late winter weeds are blooming. I sit still all morning and satinstitch the last napkin of the blue damask set. Fold the bios. Time to make crescents, but time better spent in not making them.
° Car wash down--but there is the couple that backhanded me last night, I’ve forgotten, they’ve forgotten, the social fabric satinstitched over.
° Noon dinner at the church. Everyone sunny and chatty. The funeral. I tremble a little at the first notes of “Ich ruf’ zu dir”, then I settle into a voluptuous appreciation of the chiffing rohrfloete, the remarkably lovely oboe (this addition was thanks to your timely advice). Lettye sings “Michael.” Charlene accompanies anglican style (this too recalls your influence, though you never knew it). Very decent homily. "Beulah Land," that spaced out text from the brief period of Relaxed Episcopal mysticism at the turn of the last century. Lettye sings “Repton.” I had forgotten the bit about “our right minds,” but very apt. Surpassingly sweet. I remember the first time I heard you play it. I remember a ferocious female afterwards affirming that “that’s what I want sung at my funeral.” Another victory of yours that meant everything to me.
° The sabreslash that is the first statement of the Louis Couperin Chaconne, then off to the cemetery. Clouds and a whippy wind for fifteen minutes during the interment, then sun and calm again.
° The Aftervisit with Lettye’s aunt and sister, more happy past.
° Then my friends were gone, and I was out of my element, “Leggeroless,” as someone once remarked, and eventually I went home.

° Mother was almost entirely absent from her funeral day, we were all too busy and chatty to think of her. And that was a good thing. For Time, as I do say, is only a notion we folks do have.

° With love, affection, and gratitude, Giac.

Mors Sanctissima Non Stupuit, Day Five (Foto--Piers)

Dear Piers,
° I slept so well last night. At two I wakened from a dream of a mother and son, tenants on the farm, who were washing clothes and hanging them on the outside of a barn, under the roof overhang, to dry. And yes, the rain had picked up, was actually a downpour. Well we need it. Of course the washing dream was preposterous, such a thing never happened. I was just dozing off when I recollected that the mother and son were dead.
° My waking dream was me at the threemanual console of a pipe organ. All the keys were level, I thought it would really strain the hands to play it. The keys were painted over with a thick middarkblue paint. The stops were in no sort of order at all. I tried the cornet, it turned out to be a very acute, very thinnish sort of cymbel instead. I tried the trompette, it was very fine indeed. But I gave it all up when I noticed that the bench was tottering backwards, and that there was enough fall behind to give one a concussion. I thought about gmailing you, thought you’d be interested that some church had so feckless an instrument.
° It’s so disrespectful to feel any normal feelings, any normal interests at a time like this. But I did forget everything yesterday while I was gardening. I do feel the lure of the Bouvier gossip. I feel normal.
° The lower Terrace is flooded, such a rain. Crook has thrown up on the porch. Asia’s toilet needs cleaning, in the worse of two ways.
° No light is flashing, no phone call. No panic, no rush. I’m writing to you.

° The phone rings, I rush to save the document, but pick up while my brother is still talking. There’re two messages on the answering machine, it was while I was emptying the litter box.
° At 8 o’clock this morning Mother died. My brother and sisterinlaw had spent the night in the room, had been home for about an hour when the first call came to them.
° The paperwork begins in earnest at 11 o’clock, then the “closure” service and family viewing, then casket closed forever, then visitation off and on till Friday. Phone calls, gmails, food.
° How do I feel? I don’t know. At 8 o’clock I felt fine, I didn’t even feel so very guilty about feeling fine. At 8:15 I feel fine, or maybe numb, which is also fine.
° I didn’t know the morphine would still leave Death looking like that, I didn’t want Mother to continue to look like that.
° It’s 8:30, and I’m not feeling fine at all, my eyes are welling up. I love you and all my family and all my beasts.

° Giac.