Postcard from New York: “I Do”

In the final act of Oscar Wilde’s play ”The Importance of Being Earnest,” Lady Bracknell describes her nephew Algernon as being  ”an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man.”

Young, I am not.  Eligible is questionable.  But ostentatiously unattached — I lay claim to that distinction; I am perpetually, some might say obstinately, single.  So much so, that the last time I was remotely “attached” at all, it was indeed remote.  For a little over a year, I maintained a long distance relationship with a young man who lived in…  Shanghai.

“Of course,” my friends said at the time, “when you finally get a boyfriend, he would have to live in Shanghai.”  After having seen every tourist site there was to see in Shanghai over several week-long visits, the affair was over, somewhat to my relief, though I don’t regret the impetuousness of it for a minute.

So it may seem incongruous that I would be thrilled at the passage of legislation this past Friday in New York State allowing same-sex marriage.  I am the least likely person I know to ever, ever want to be married.  And yet, for more than one reason, I embrace the issue enthusiastically and celebrate its favorable resolution in my home state.

For starters, I love the issue for how it demonstrates discrimination, pure and simple.  There was a position publicly expressed by many that said, “I’m willing to grant gays all the legal and financial accommodations and judicial recognition of marriage through the institution of a civil union… but ”marriage” is a status reserved for a man and a woman.”

However you justify that position — on moral or religious grounds or just the way life is– you’re giving one group an entitlement that you deny to another.  That’s the definition of discrimination.

But more importantly to me, it’s the particular nature of the discrimination around the marriage equality issue that appeals to me, because it strikes at the very heart of what it is to be gay.

When I first went to gay pride marches in New York in the late ’70s, the tone of those events was strident and defiant -  we were demanding equal rights and an end to discrimination in housing and employment.  The Stonewall Riots of 1969 that were the iconic launch of the gay rights movement were not that far behind us.  Coming out was the great act of personal activism.

Then in the ’80s, with the advent of the AIDS epidemic, the marches had a desperate edge to them.  “SILENCE = DEATH” was the slogan; a pink triangle — the badge for homosexuals in the Nazi death camps — on a background of black, the symbol.  We were fighting for survival.

But sorrow and pathos were the prevailing emotions.  I recall one year, standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, as hundreds of thousands of people the length of the parade route together observed a moment of silence to remember those who had died.  All that could be heard was wind whistling through the canyons of Manhattan.

AIDS prevention and treatment, at least in the developed world, gradually lessened the urgency and the political activism surrounding the disease.  The attention shifted to the issue of gays in the military and the absurd “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that had been adopted in 1993.

Somewhere in there, I stopped going to pride parades.  I suppose I had a bit of a ”been there, done that” attitude about them.  And the issue of gays in the military — while always a bristling example of homophobia — was not one of personal salience; I wasn’t itching to get to Afghanistan in an armored personnel carrier.

But then came marriage equality.

Several years ago, I went to a double-bill screening of two documentaries at the annual gay film festival.  The first was about the mayor of the tiny village of New Paltz, New York — a 26-year old straight man named Jason West — who solemnized the marriages of 25 same-sex couples at the New Paltz Village Hall on February 27, 2004.  The second was about another young mayor — this one of a tiny village in Spain where same-sex marriage was already legal — performing same-sex marriages in his village.  What was not apparent at the beginning of the film, was that he himself was gay.  And at the end of the film, he was married to his boyfriend who lived in another village, in a ceremony attended by family and friends.

There is nothing unusual about people crying at weddings; declarations of love are deeply touching.  I’ve wiped tears from my eyes at many weddings.  But what struck me in both these films were the number of couples not just crying, but actually sobbing as they said their vows or heard their marriages proclaimed.

The young Spanish mayor in particular — who was shown throughout the film performing ceremony after ceremony for other same-sex couples – was convulsed with sobs as he walked down the aisle hand-in-hand with his soon-to-be husband.  I wept in my seat.  And I realized then why I loved the issue of marriage equality, despite my having no interest in ever getting married myself — because it is about love.

No one cries at a wedding because they now can share their partner’s medical benefits or make decisions about their healthcare, should their partner fall ill.  No one cries because they can now inherit or continue to live in their house when their partner dies.  No one cries because they can now file their taxes jointly.

We cry at weddings because our love — that deeply personal butterfly that has unfolded its wings inside us and which flutters happily toward someone else to be held in their hands; that private, vulnerable thing – has been made public; has been validated, honored and celebrated.

And if the very nature of our love is invalidated every day of our lives,  when publicly we finally can declare it and have it validated… we sob.

Even if I’ve never been married and, what’s more, am perpetually single — it doesn’t mean I’ve never been in love.  I have.  More than once.  And I cherish the memories of each of those loves.

Until I recently redecorated my bedroom,  I had a slim volume of poetry on the bottom shelf of a night table next to my bed.  One poem in the volume, entitled “I Love You,” is highlighted in yellow.  The book was sent to me by my first love, a college friend, almost 30 years after our brief, mutual adoration, which ended rather badly.   He subsequently married and fathered two children.  This is an excerpt from an email he sent me in 2001:

“You were my first love. You are forever entangled in the mystery of my fantasies and dreams. I want you to know that. So powerfully that I cannot begin to describe. In dreams I kissed your eyes, I felt your lips. I wish…that I had not been so confused, so scared. I am truly sorry I ever hurt you.

I just did not know how to love you.”

Homosexuality has been and still is — even in many places in the United States — illegal.  I guess that’s because you can legislate against sexual acts, against the behaviors of sex.  But you cannot legislate against love; only against the public and legal validation of it.

Using the word ”homosexual” to define myself as the way that I’m different from the majority of people actually seems to miss the real point.  Even common phrases like “I don’t care who you sleep with” or “it doesn’t matter who you share your bed with” are using euphemisms for the sexual act.

Perhaps I do myself a disservice by allowing myself to be labeled a “homosexual.”  The word reduces me to an animal constantly in rut, humping my own gender.

I think we should return to an older name for homosexuality — “the Love that dare not speak its name.”  The phrase is actually a line from the poem Two Loves by Lord Alfred Douglas, who was Oscar Wilde’s lover.   And perhaps I’ll start referring to myself as “homo-amorous.”

Because when all the rights to this and that are lined up end-to-end, isn’t there one that stands in front of them all — the right to love in the way that’s natural to me and to have that love recognized and validated?

This weekend, in New York State, the Love that dare not speak its name has spoken up.  And it said, “I do.”

PS: For those who like a love song to accompany something about love, here’s one of my favorites.  Terrific, despite the cheesey ’80s video.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

I have little to say about the Senate vote today which effectively repeals “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” other than this:  it was one of the stupidest pieces of policy ever put into effect; it was an insult to every gay man and woman in America, and it dies a well-deserved death.  My it rest in hell.

Postcard from Puerto Vallarta: 2(x)ist or Not To, That is the Question

I’m walking through the lobby of a resort hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico wearing a black hooded cape, a black feathered mask, and my underwear.

No, I was not kidnapped by Mexican Drug Lords, dumped on a highway without my clothes when no one would cough up a ransom, and forced to steal a costume leftover from a Dia de los Muertos pageant to cover myself.

I’m just headed to the Mardi Gras party on the second night of Atlantis Resort’s takeover of the Vallarta Palace Resort  for what I think can best be  described as a week of Gay Summer Camp in November.

Or Gay Club Med for the middle-aged (and those approaching it.)  There are 600 gay men here; the hotel is completely sold out.  I would guess the median age is somewhere in the 40′s.  I think the majority are actually couples.  More than 400 are repeat offenders, having done this week before, including my friend Anthony with whom I’ve come.

Like Club Med, the resort is “all-inclusive” — you pay for the week, a nonremovable bracelet is clamped to your wrist (sorry, but I also got one of these in each of the three surgeries I had in the past several years), and all your food and drinks are free from the moment you walk through the front door until the moment you leave.  (This was decidedly not the case at St. Roosevelt’s or the Hospital for Special Surgeries, although it certainly would have improved my experience of both.  Though I can imagine developing a dependence on general anesthesia, if it were constantly available and free.  I don’t know where I am when I’m under it, but it must be good, because I always feel a bit disappointed when I come out of it.)

It’s a bit dangerous, this unfettered access to food and especially to drink.  To borrow an expression from a former boss of mine, you can’t swing a dead cat in this hotel without hitting a Mexican carrying a tray of drinks.  On the afternoon of the first day I realize that pacing is the key to survival.

Atlantis is probably the premier gay travel company by participating headcount  per annum.  Most of its trips are cruises, which I’m told attract a somewhat younger crowd.  But they do a couple of resort weeks each year.  On land or water, the formula is the same:  days spent poolside or taking “excursions,”  late afternoon “tea dances” with varying themes, dinner, some entertainment, and late-night theme parties in the disco.

My friend Anthony, a veteran of thirteen Atlantis vacations, mercifully sent me guidance on what to wear for each of the themed events: for example,  cargo shorts and a camouflage T-shirt for the Dog Tag Tea Dance; Afro wigs, platform shoes, and polyester for the Classic Disco dance; something dark and sexy (read black designer underwear) for the Mardi Gras Party (hence the outfit I described earlier); and then there is that staple of the gay party circuit — the White Party, which is basically an excuse to dance in your Calvin Klein tighty whities or boxer briefs to the throbbing beat of house music.  (I suppose 2(x)ist is actually the more popular brand of underwear these days, but I’m not really the proper person to consult on these matters.)

For many years, until my little band of merry men gradually disbanded, I spent a similar week each year with a group of friends in Provincetown during August.  And like Carnival Week in Provincetown, Atlantis resort attracts a broad cross-section of the U.S. gay sub-culture — disparate types of gay men who, other than their homosexuality, have next to nothing in common.

There are the Bears — hirsute, generally portly men with facial hair — a group of which ( somewhat incongruously, since they’re not generally known for their high-fashion style) win the poolside Project Runway competition at Atlantis Puerto Vallarta for the third year in a row.

There are Twinks —  slender, slightly effeminate young gay men, who often are known for their high-fashion style and tend to work in retail.  A small gaggle of them from Rhode Island show up at every party in coordinated costumes that are basically varations on a Speedo with accessories.  They are appropriately nicknamed The Muppets.

There are Muscle Boys with worked-out bodies, who probably have manhunt.net profiles that say “worked out, hwp” (that’s height and weight proportionate.)

There are boys from LA with bleached blonde hair, Giorgio Armani square-cut swimsuits accentuating an over-sized package, D&G sunglasses with a bit too much gold, and an out-of-shape, 60-something, highly successful boyfriend.  Or there is a beautiful boy with a Bachelor of Science degree, laid-off from his job, working as a go-go boy in a gay bar in Texas, and here with a “friend” who is three times his age.

And then there are hundreds of basically normal, everyday, standard-issue guys who are gays, spending a week jokingly referring to each other as “she,” happy to escape the primarily straight world in which every day they compete and excel.  People you know are in this latter category.

Despite these differences, everyone is remarkably friendly.  Coming and going around the hotel, everyone says good morning, good evening and hello whenever they pass another guest in a hallway or in the elevator.  Brilliant costumes at themed parties are always applauded, regardless of who is wearing them.

Anthony and I meet some really nice people whom we hang with poolside, at dinner, and at the parties throughout the week.  All in all, I have a great time. I soak up the sun by the pool, watching cute guys in Speedos walk by.  I do a course of thirteen zip lines through the jungle canopy back and forth over a river, led by some crazy, flirtatious Mexican straight boys, who know exactly who their customer is and play appropriately to the audience; they were totally fun.  And I dance for two hours straight (no pun intended) to classic 70′s disco  in an Afro wig, huge red sunglasses, and a T-shirt with a Coca-Cola bottle on it that says, “I’ve got the Coke, let’s get this party started.”

At the last big party, the White Party, I have an epiphany of sorts.  I’m in a white V-neck T-shirt and white drawstring pants I bought at the hotel gift shop.  I’ve decided that, since I’m 57 and not exactly “hwp,”  showing up in just my underwear is probably not my best look .  I’m standing on the edge of the dance floor with our new-found friends, a May-December couple from Florida.

In front of us, a small group of young guys is dancing their hearts out to a throbbing beat, wearing  nothing but their white briefs and tennis shoes.  They are decidedly “hwp” and very cute.  I watch one of them and think, who’s got that kind of energy to move like that song after song after song?

Then I remember when I was first in New York in my twenties, going to acting school, working several jobs just to make ends meet, one of which was at a night club called Les Mouches on 11th Avenue and 29th Street.

Toward the end of the night, when the customers had mostly gone, the DJ would switch from the disco music she was required to play to the more current rock that those of us who worked there loved — The Pretenders debut album with a song like Brass in Pocket, My Sharona from The Knack, or Marianne Faithfull’s comeback album,  Broken English.

As soon as we heard those songs, we would run to the dance floor.  I wore cowboy boots, peg-legged jeans, ripped T-shirts, and a bandana around my neck.  And I would dance like my life depended on it — loving the feel of my body in motion, letting an attitude fly through my limbs, caring not a whit what anyone thought of me.

Then I think of a time shortly after my sister and brother-in-law were married.  We’re all in Florida —  Jan and Bruce, his sister and me.  We’re all in our 20′s.  And my mother and father, both in their 50′s, are with us.  We’re in a Florida State Park.  And the four of us youngsters are going canoe-ing.  For whatever reason, we’ve only got two two-person canoes.  My father says that he wants to go.  And we tell him we didn’t think he’d want to; it’s not for him really.  I don’t know why we felt that way, other than that we were enjoying our youth and he wasn’t part of that.  I recall the disappointment on my father’s face, as we young folk take off for our adventure.

Standing on the edge of the dance floor, watching the young guys luxuriate in the energy of their youth, I say to myself:  it’s time to go to bed; this scene is not for me anymore.  I’ve done this; it was fantastic, it was fun.  But it belongs to younger people now; I cede you this ground. Happily, really.

I remain just a few minutes longer.  Tomorrow is our last full day, and I have the zip-line excursion in the morning to get up for.  I’ve never done one before, and I’m a little anxious about it.  But excited at the prospect nonetheless.  Buenas noches,  guapos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Souvenir Photo from Puerto Vallarta Zipline, November 2010

 

Postcard from the Blogoshpere: Beauty and the Post-Digital World

I spent three days last week in a digital training class, the Hyper Island Master Class.  The class itself wasn’t digital; I was physically there, as were my classmates and the instructors.  It was about the digital world and how it’s changing our lives and, specifically,  the business I’m in — advertising and marketing.

Professionally, we’re all struggling to understand, incorporate and profit from  digital venues like Facebook and Twitter to which consumers (you might know them as ”people“) have flocked in such numbers.  It’s a challenge; there’s a lot to learn.  Or perhaps more appropriately, there’s  a lot to explore and discover.  It’s all so new and immediate that the lessons to be learned from experience are few.

That said, personally, I’m not exactly a digital babe in the woods.  I blog, I post to Facebook, I check-in to Foursquare.   (In fact, I just earned the Sixteen Candles badge for having five birthday shout-outs on Foursquare.  So there, you geeky digiscenti!)

But every once in a while, I’m made delightfully aware of how my  ”digital life” enhances my ”real life;” in fact, how the two are now really both of one piece.  I guess I’m becoming “post-digital.”  It’s only the fact that I can remember a time when I had no “digital life” that I’m able to be aware of a distinction. 

And here’s a great example of the richness of being post-digital.

Several weeks ago, I went to see Joshua Bell perform the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center.  I’ve seen him many times.  I guess you could say I’m a bit of a fan.  I once stood in line for thirty minutes after a concert with what seemed to be a bevy of 15-year-old girls to get an autograph on one of his CDs.  (He is young and cute, after all;  something which 15-year-old girls and 50+-year-old gay men both probably appreciate to a greater extent than does the general population.)

Most people would not like the seat I have for this concert season: it’s in the very first row, dead center.  I understand why.  You can’t actually see the players toward the back of the stage, and you’re probably hearing a bit too much of the violins relative to the other instruments in the orchestra.  But if you like to watch the soloists as much as hear them, this seat is heaven.

At this performance, Joshua (I think I can call him that, can’t I?) was no more than six feet away, directly in front of me.  If I concentrated, I could block out the audience around me, and it was as if he were performing only for me.

It’s always a mesmerizing experience to watch and listen to him play.  It almost seems silly to attempt to describe it, so I won’t, other than to say it’s more like he dances with the violin with his eyes shut, and  amazing music comes out.

Unfortunately, there’s no video of him playing the Sibelius concerto on YouTube (it’s a wonderful piece of music), but if you’ve not seen him perform and want a taste, here he is doing the first movement of a Bruch concerto.

At the intermission, I turned my iPhone back on and checked into Avery Fisher Hall on Foursquare, letting the check-in post automatically to my Facebook page.  This was my post.

Don Hogle Just heard Joshua Bell play the Sibelius Violin Concerto after L’Apres-midi d’un Faun. Preparing for Lindberg’s “Kraft”.

New York Philharmonic – Avery Fisher Hall

Don just checked-in @ New York Philharmonic – Avery Fisher Hall (w/ 9 others) (New York, NY)  October 12 at 8:48pm

 

I settled back in for the second half of the program, a wild performance of Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft, which included percussion made with found junk, musicians blowing air bubbles into tubs of water, small ensembles scattered around the perimeter of the concert hall, a huge gong suspended in the middle of the hall, and Alan Gilbert directing in Converse sneakers and a polo shirt.

After the concert, I got on the M5 bus at Broadway and 65th Street, and checked emails on my iPhone.  There was a notice from Facebook; I had a message from Jud Cairns, my sister’s former next-door neighbor in Chantilly, VA with whom I’m friends on Facebook, now that we’re no longer in proximity in “real life.”  Here’s Jud’s post:

Jud Cairns He once played the L’Enfant Plaza Metro stop in DC: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

October 12 at 9:42pm ·

 

The link is to an article in The Washington Post about an experiment they conducted with Joshua Bell to answer a philosophical question.  As the article states, “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

Someone has conveniently posted a video on YouTube about the event, which describes it as well.  (One of the comments to the posting says, “Woah [sic] there, I don’t think this clip needs a loud douchebag to introduce the video like that.”)  Personally, I sort of enjoyed the douchebag’s narration (he’s also kind of cute in a douchebaggy sort of way), but if you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the video or to read the article itself (it’s lengthy but great, and contains several clips of the performance), I’ll give you the bottom line on the experiment below.

Joshua played six masterpieces for violin over a period of 43 minutes.  Of the 1097 people who passed by, only 7 stopped to listen for at least a minute.  27 people gave him money; he made $32.17, which is a bit more than $1.19 per paying customer.  Actually it’s considerably less, when you note that the one person who recognized him, having just seen him give a free concert at the Library of Congress, gave him a Jackson.

The article is quite worth the read, if you’re willing to spend 10 or 15 minutes to do so.  I was able to read it in its entirety before I got off the bus that evening at 17th and 5th around the corner from my apartment.  More than just a human interest story about what happens when one of the world’s most famous musicians plays a few tunes anonymously in the DC metro, it’s a marvelous essay on the role of beauty in our modern lives.

I go to watch and listen to someone like Joshua Bell play a gorgeous piece of music like the Sibelius concerto, because I crave those moments of exquisite beauty.  Even though my father told me when I was in high school that I should never use the word “exquisite” (which I’d just used) because boys didn’t use that word.

I love the beauty of an exquisitely crafted, thought-provoking essay like the one Jud shared with me  on my Facebook wall.  That I consumed this one courtesy the internet, social media and a mobile phone while I was still reflecting on an immediate experience of beauty in the “real world” made it all the more potent.

I’ll close with a poem about beauty.  I wrote this many years ago, after watching a college friend toss a frisbee in the dying light of a late spring evening on the expansive front lawn of the campus.  Fireflies were pirouetting in swarms over the lawn.  My friend was not only physically a quite beautiful young man, he also moved with the incredible grace of a natural athlete.  We were crazy about each other; in love with each other’s mind, really.  But I was deeply in love with him as well in a way I was frightened to reveal  for fear of losing him. But you can always write poetry instead.

The poem is to him, but the title is my answer to a broader question that underlies The Post’s  experiment:  should we care about Beauty wherever we happen to find it? If you are a student of poetry, you might appreciate the precise and tortured rhyme scheme.  You might find it beautiful in its own tortured way.

Art for Art, Man for Man
                        To Brock 

Though I be censured, forced to face
A foe insensitive to grace,
Incensed that I see no disgrace
In worshipping your graceful beauty;

Though they may chastise, purge this page
For unchaste words, with saintly rage
My choice deny – such saints enrage
And worship your courageous beauty;

My love will not succumb to fear.
My love, I fiercely will revere
Our love, and I will persevere
In worshipping your virile beauty.

Lexington, VA
1975

Perhaps, if I ever own a car, I should have a bumper sticker made that says,  I brake for beauty.

My Thumb Instead of a Clump of Romaine

On Sunday I cut my thumb, slicing up a clump of romaine for a salad.  I was happily chopping away, advancing the lettuce with my left hand as I chopped with the right, and suddenly…..  ouch! 

I wasn’t sure how deep the cut really was.  But I applied direct pressure until the bleeding stopped.  Then I googled first aid and found the Mayo Clinic’s site (they should know, right?), which said if you can close the wound cleanly, you probably don’t need stitches.  I could.  So I washed it, applied antibiotic creme as they suggested and made a bandage of gauze and first-aid tape.

Then I finished making dinner; ate contendedly with a nice glass of Malbec; and remembered a Sylvia Plath poem that was one of my favorites when I was in college.  It’s called Cut, and begins, “What a thrill —- /My thumb instead of an onion.”

I recall discovering Sylvia Plath.  I won a prize from the Phi Beta Kappa Society in my freshman year for having a high GPA.  And the prize was a credit at the university bookstore for at least $100 and maybe more.  I’d perused the poetry shelf and grabbed an armful — some whose names I recognized, others who were unfamiliar, but whose bookcovers intrigued me.

I’d taken my armful up to the check-out and someone who was behind me in line — I think it might have been a professor — deadpanned, “Catching up on the Moderns?”

It was through some of those Moderns that I fed my love of words and how you could play with them, particularly the sound of them strung together economically in a line of verse.  Sylvia Plath, Wilfred Owen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden, Adrienne Rich.  They were my mentors and influences.

Cut is filled with marvellous, unexpected imagery:  who would describe a bandage as a “Gauze Klu Klux Klan Babushka?”  So utterly different; so imaginative; so accurate, if you think about it.

To my surprise, someone has posted a recording of Sylvia Plath reading Cut on YouTube.  (I guess it’s not all pet tricks and bra failures.)  Here’s the link, if you’d like to hear her, and the poem itself follows.

 

 

 

Cut

            for Susan O’Neill Roe

What a thrill —-
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian’s axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.

A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
O Saboteur,
Kamikaze man —-

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump —-
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

A few years later, I had my own experience with a wounded thumb.  Not a knife cut, but a pin prick — enough to draw drops of blood.  And I wrote a poem, unquestionably influenced by Cut.  I was mourning the loss of a first love.  Admittedly, about two years after the fact.  And honestly, I think I was more engaged in the craft of the poem, than the depth of the feeling at that point.

But the memory of my own wounded-thumb poem was stimulated by my little kitchen accident this weekend.  A weekend where I also attended several screenings at the New York Gay and Lesbian film festival.  And Saturday’s presentation (before I cut my thumb) was a series of short films, all about boys of various ages, dealing with the strange experiences of identifying their feelings — sexual and emotional — for other boys.  And the sometimes sad confusion and disappointment when those feelings are not reciprocated.

Here’s my own poem.  A bit influenced also by Peter Schaffer’s play Equus, which our university theater performed shortly after it premiered in New York and which was recently revived on Broadway with Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame.  A quote from the script: “… to go through life and call it yours – your life – you first have to get your own pain.  Pain that’s unique to you.”

 

Pain

Pain in a pin-pricked thumb.
Throbbing drops of blood
from this stupid digit.

I could count them, these pains,
until I’m numb,
until the numbness set in.

Inset like a dumb, red gem.
Silent jewel of a ring of pains.
Token of broken engagements.

Refined from the mine of pain.
Mine alone.  The sole possession
of a solitary, stone-cold soul,

Whom the Chinese anesthesiologist
pin-pricks to relieve the pains.
I relive the pains and count them.

That account for me, that amount to me,
But that can’t surmount me now –
for the numbness has set in.

                    Lexington, VA, 1974

 

Ironically, when I went to a client meeting at the New York Stock Exchange today, one of my clients had several bandaids taped over a finger.  She looked at my bandaged thumb and asked, “What did you do?”  “Cut it slicing romaine,” I said, “and you?”  “Cilantro,” she replied.