Let's pretend.  Let's pretend everything's OK.  Let's pretend it's all over now, and let's put it all away, like laundry that's been washed and folded.  Let's carry on as if our hearts don't weigh us down into the earth, like tombstones.  Let's hide from it, and pretend it's not there like an angry boil aching to explode.  Let's hope the sorrow will go away, like a quaking child, hiding in the corner, fighting not to cry. 

It's time to go, and it's OK.  There's agonies perennial in these last several days, and we can let them come in their time; they will come as we are ready.  But let's not pretend.  Let's live life just the way life is, and then let go of it. 

It's time to let them go.

This is for Teresita, and for all the family of Jay Lyons, whose wake is today.

I have a confession to make.  When I first began a journal, around '92, I would make changes days or months later.  And I still do that now.  Not big changes, but adjustments, little fixes to uncomfortable phrases that I didn't recognize at first.  And, in the case of this journal, the changes have been made only a few hours later, or maybe a day.  But changes.

I caress these words, I embrace their meanings, I lay beneath and beside them and I breathe their breath.  I am annoyed by them at times; "Why do I put up with this," I mutter in my mind, but they know.  These words know everything I say, or even think of saying.  They know my heart, where both of us begin and end, the words and I.

They throw me out of bed some nights, and make me sit with them, and we struggle in this monitor's glow, until they and I agree we've gained some peace.  Sometimes they give me chills, electric tingles up and down my spine, and on rare occasion I wonder in awe, "Whose words are these, and why do I deserve to have them?"

I am amused by the on-line egotism of this journal.  It is one of the miracles of the internet; just by pressing CTRL-S, we can instantaneously be stupid all over the world.  We love it, the words and I.

There was a couple on Colby Street in Northboro when I was a boy.  I delivered their morning newspaper.  They were about my parents' age.  Their breakfast table was next to a pair of windows right beside their kitchen door, where I put the paper every day.  The driveway was close to the house, and every day I walked within three feet of that little table, so close I could see its knick-knacks and placemats, the brand of toaster and the design on the napkins.  Everything was neat and carefully arranged.  The woman was very kind to me, though mostly I only saw her once in a while through those windows, draped frilly red and white.  Our eyes would meet, and she would hold my glance, and smile.  They were so quaint and content, and so complete together that I worried how one would bear the other's loss. 

Lately, I think a lot about Northboro, the place where I was born, and where I grew up--or squandered the opportunity to grow up, perhaps.  I was fourteen and a half when I left Boy Scout Troop 1 to join Explorer Post 25, sponsored by the fire department, and I took to it desperately.  I still don't have the perspective to know what made me need it with such passion, but for years I could not--nor did I need to--imagine life apart from the Northboro Fire Department.

I was at the station constantly.  My parents were concerned and tried to stop me for a while, but it was a brief intermission.  Something about not being around kids my own age enough.  One night in my 17th or 18th year they paraded me (as parents sometimes do with their children) before friends they had visiting, and in positive tones, they told their friends I had given my heart and soul to the fire department.  That night they made it official.

Shay Bailey was (and may still be) a saint, but he wasn't saintly, just full of goodness.  One night behind the old fire station I sat in his red Chevy pickup with him and Peter Stone, listening to a new tape he bought.  Cat Stevens sang Father and Son, and I started talking.  Before I realized what I was doing, I spilled my soul to them, and they quietly listened.  Carefully, Shay asked why the song made me feel that way, but I couldn't explain, and I think he understood anyway.

Sometimes words are not essential.

This The Gay Diary Ring site owned      by joe burgwinkel.                   [ < | ? | L | > ]

updated