will to the woods’
– Timon of Athens, 4.1.35
Invitation
Please join me on the occasion of my
thirty-ninth birthday. Drinks will be served,
esp. the mixed ones that announce
lounge-weary sophistication: old-fashioned, lime rickey, chocolate dancer – though I only drink Schlitz Light. Gifts are not necessary, but should you be strolling downtown and see some nicely framed limited-edition print of a sad battlefield where a general’s caprice cost thousands of lives, or a pair of antique binoculars, or a vintage board game where the Happy Days characters have to rush Fonzie to the hospital, knock yourself out. Even a mail-order certificate that allows me to perform wedding services in the Philippines would be a nice touch; but no funny cards about aging, please, no To My Friend on His One Hundredth Birthday, No You’re Not Just Getting Older … You’re Losing Hair Too! And even if you have bought me a ticket overseas and secured a seat for me at the finest hash bar in Amsterdam, don’t even think of saying, ‘Welcome to the Netherlands.’ There will be hors d’oeuvres, the tiniest of tiny foods, tasty miniatures of already miniature snacks, baby corn so small it’ll look like Niblets, taquitos so small, so diminudo, they will be called taquitoitos and they will look like the bits at the bottom of a bag of corn chips. I also have hot salsa I once bought in South Texas, on a dare, which claims to use pepper-spray extracts squeezed from the used big-nozzle canisters of riot squads that have subdued the world’s most determined hippies – drink up, my friends! There’ll be a piñata made up to look like an old college professor who once predicted I’d go far, his hands in his pockets, the pink-tissued face making him look like a cartoon pig who sells insurance. I can hardly wait to give that thing a whack. Conversation’s the most important thing to me, you know, and I want to hear all about your trips to Barcelona, your remodelled homes ‘not far from the city,’ the radio quizzes that you gamely won, and all about the tipsy, week-long adventures that involve the bronzed thighs of lovers old and new. You need not censor yourself from questionable phrases such as ‘bony pony’ or ‘nipple burn.’ I live for those stories but, FYI, I have instructed many friends to steer away from the following potentially harassing topics: old hairstyles, jokes picked from Dave or Jay, that time I thought flammable and inflammable meant different things, the summer I said I would ‘concentrate on my portfolio’ and ended up taking extra shifts at a frozen-yogurt stand, enduring a long season of conversations that were all fro-yo this and fro-yo that.
Let’s not talk about those heartfelt novels
that try to adduce the spirit of a dead
father, novels period, pyramid schemes
and most things that stink of the eighties.
So, the music will be lighter on eighties
nostalgia than many of these gatherings
tend to be, but my mixed tapes will astonish
you with their blend of intemperate jug
bands, wounded young princes on their brand new
Stratocasters, logo-savvy DJs
flowing trip-hop bright beat jungle, Hawaiian
slack-key guitarists who are so laid-back
they make Rastafarians sound like aerobics
instructors. There’ll be celebrations of
Gabrielle Destroismaisons, who’s known as
‘the French Britney Spears,’ and Lorie,
who’s also known as ‘the French Britney Spears.’
Don’t worry, if you get a strong desire
to hear ‘a little ditty ’bout Jack and Diane’
we’ll see what we can do. It’s all going
to go smoothly, there should be enough space
for your coats and shoes in my little room,
and I hired a Portuguese interpreter
just so I could tell the person who lives
below me there’ll be no need this time to call
the cops; muito pesaroso, dancing will have to be done in your stocking feet as the linoleum in my place scuffs quite easily. If it gets late and I start singing along to Mariah Carey’s ‘Never Too Far,’ do not get embarrassed, just let me go for the high notes and, as a rule, assume all sexual confusions are your own. Do not be surprised if, by sheer miracle, my beloved should accept my invitation and show up at my door; you will no doubt be awed by her fine glow, by a bone structure that is right now waking Rodin from the dead, by a voice you will stop to listen to, as if it were about to reveal a secret you’ve been searching for since you turned thirteen. My beloved will then lead us all in a heartfelt round of ‘Happy Birthday,’ and we’ll share cake! – coconut pillow divine – and stories of past anniversaries where we’d turn out the lights, dabble with the leftovers in the medicine cabinet, lie on the sofa and play a whole year’s tape of phone messages. If, unexpectedly, I excuse myself from the party and walk into the cold air, even forgetting a jacket, you can rest assured I will not be gone for long, no matter how tempting it would be to go see a movie uptown, alone. I would never think of abandoning the beauty of your friendship. Répondez, and, please, BYOB, just to be safe.
Reunion
What is my news? Well, since graduating,
I’ve raked it in and I’ve tossed it off,
I’ve plucked the green peach and sodded the pitch.
That is, aside from noticing the moon
shimmering on saw-bladed ferns in redwood
groves, I have learned two valuable lessons:
always floss, and nobody wants to see
your collection of shot glasses. Mercy.
I did not cry when Henry Blake died, though
I died every time Kinch deferred to LeBeau.
‘That is so you!’ I’m sure we’ll hear that: ‘You were locked up nine months for passing bad cheques? That is so you!’ Of course, my high school band never made the big time, never backed up Thin Lizzy on their ‘Boys are Back!’ bus tour. Maybe our band name, Wee Willie Nelson, doomed us and I regret insisting on it, regret writing it in Magic Marker on the ass of my best acid-wash jeans. I enrolled at Buford Business College and just let the cocktails do the talking, left the academy under green clouds of vodka slosh and ended up working on the busy side of the phone: ‘But, sir, your agreement says you should pay us now.’ Today, I supervise a fleet of young phone hawks in both technique and bamegab. Admiral, that is just so you. Romance came around for me more frequently than Ernest movies and, alas, was almost as annoying. There was Becky Plover (do you know if she’ll be reunioning?) who wrote poetry about fast horses and father figures in undershirts. It was a miracle she was with me, always pressing for what she called ‘the truth,’ as long as the truth never again involved
