Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Flirting His Way Through Life
In the dream, my old student apartment is decorated for a party. M. is finally graduating!
Oh, M. Through all the years that we shared this very apartment—ever since we worked together in that fancy restaurant downtown—I've been hopelessly in love with him. How many scurrilous poems have I dedicated to him over the years, how many epigrams? He's never seen any of them.
How I used to love watching him flirt his way through life. M. flirted with everyone: men, women, young, old, me included. We all knew that he didn't really mean it, and yet—such was his beauty, such was his art—our lives were made somehow the happier for having had him pass through them.
I, meanwhile, am on fire. My long-awaited book on the Tribe of Witches is finally writing itself. The words are pouring out of me. I can't find enough paper to write on. What I've got so far is written on anything I can find: envelopes, pages from the calendar, ads, anything with a blank back.
A writer friend hands me a stack of old handbills. I scroll the first into the typewriter and begin to type.
Suddenly M. is here, even more handsome than he used to be. How had I never realized before that he was actually Crown Prince of the Tribe of Witches? Or had I secretly known all along?
The two of us fly together. He lifts me by the waist and swings me in a joyous airborne circle around him.
Finally I can say it.
“I love you, brother!” I tell him, our eyes joined. “I love you!”
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