4.02.2007

Docile Diplomat

In my youth I was a different man, strong and docile from years of gymnastics. These days I move like the turret on my lathe, stiff and creaky from years of ware. It’s inexplicable to me how the Di Penates of my home would allow me this wench, this bastion of evil with whom I cohabit, that has so clearly aged me.
I remember back in Brooklyn, waiting for the bus and playing stoop ball with her and the other fortunate offspring of Joey (the Hair) and Sandra, proud owners of the neighborhood five-and-ten. I would decree that very day that extreme vigilance would be necessary to keep me from the rasher aroma and offensive appearance she so readily protruded. But alas, she was not a girl for Heroic verse, but would simply doff her dress for a roll in the hay until we were both parched and ready to wind the four-hundred-day clock.
In time, I became a diplomat, and she practically a mannequin, and our relationship was dry-docked from the start. Albeit through the manual alphabet, I took a solemn oath with this woman despite her angry wolf pack courtship methods. I swear she would stalk me relentlessly and wail at my every indiscretion until I’d submit from the noise factor alone. Lately it has occurred to me that perhaps a nice shiny metal object might interpose, and together we could find a quaint resting place for her back home, in the eternal city, beneath an aging cypress. Of course when the witnesses are called upon for the composite sketch, what they would most certainly recall is a different man, one strong and docile from years of gymnastics.

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