Nom de Bar
Linda told me,
‘I never give men in bars my real name.
I tell ’em it’s Cindy.
Or sometimes Sandy.
Cindy if I’m in town;
It’s easier to keep track of that way.’
Her Answer
The editor of
the Weekender
told me that he
wanted a story
about the women
who go to clubs and bistros
and what
they’re looking for – what they want.
I thought it
was an okay assignment,
as it gave me a
chance, an excuse,
to approach
unattached women
in that sort of
louche environment,
something I ordinarily found hard to do.
One slender
woman with a bony, jutting jaw
in a somewhat
upmarket boozerie
looked at me
with dead seriousness and said,
‘What do I look
for in bars?
I’ll tell you
what I look at.
Crotches.
Crotches and
asses.
It depends on
whether they’re coming or going.
Of course, if
they’re coming,
that means they’ll be going to my
house.’
Best impromptu
answer I ever received
to any interview question I ever asked.
We ended up
having a bit of an affair
that lasted for
a month or so;
I forget why we
broke up.
Thirty-seven
years later
and I can’t
remember her name
off the top of
my head,
though I
remember that answer
word for word.
Guinea Pigs
When I was
about five or six,
soon after I
began watching sport
on our
first-ever black-and-white TV,
my mind started
to imagine myself
playing
American football.
I especially
liked it when the ball carrier
would slip
through the middle of the defence,
dodging and
squirming into
the opposition
backfield,
and I imagined
myself doing that
and, being
little,
slipping by
between their legs
whilst they
failed to tackle me,
grasping at the
air above my head.
The image came
to my mind
of a pack of
guinea pigs –
small, fast,
squirming rodents, lots of them –
thoroughly
befuddling the thick, burly linemen;
thinking of it
today it seems
a remarkably
imaginative image for a five-year-old.
When I burbled
this to my family
my
two-years-older-than-me brother
started to
chant, in the timeless bully’s singsong:
‘Riki thinks
he’s a pi-ig! Riki thinks he’s a pi-ig!’
I actually
tried to explain to him
how that wasn’t
what I’d said,
but he just
kept it up, louder and longer,
clearly
relishing my frustration and vexation.
For several
years afterward he would
from time to
time slip into conversation
remarks such
as, ‘Well, you said that you’re a pig.’
For years and
years.
Taught me a
lesson, he did.
Distance,
Size, and Time
We look up and see clouds moving
far above the tops of our heads,
huge floating things that make us look
little,
but they’re really laughably close and small
compared to the stars and the
galaxies and the void.
I’m relatively old for a human,
but my age is hardly a moment
compared to the age of our species,
which is piddling
compared to the antiquity of DNA,
which is next to nothing
compared to the age of
everything.
I’m full of wonder that we humans have
evolved
with a sense of wonder
about what’s beyond ourselves
in terms of distance, size, and time;
we have the urge of curiosity about such
enormities,
and the desire to find out what we don’t
know,
but the insecurity necessary for our
survival
and a bloated sense of our own importance
has led us to convince ourselves,
or at least to pretend,
that the stories that we have made up
to explain things that are beyond our ken
actually have some basis in reality:
it’s called effing the ineffable.
I prefer revelling in my uncertainty and
ignorance
in regard to what’s beyond me:
it’s called wonder.
What & Who
What are you?
Are you a
Christian?
What are you?
Are you an
atheist?
What are you?
Are you a
refugee?
What are you?
Are you a
pansexual?
What are you?
Are you a
woman of colour?
What are you?
Are you a
Gemini?
What are you?
Are you a
Muslim?
What are you?
Are you a
Texan?
What are you?
Are you a Jew?
What are you?
Are you a rape
victim?
What are you?
Are you a
vegetarian?
What are you?
Are you a
Kiwi?
What are you?
Are you a
disabled person?
What are you?
Are you a
straight white man?
What are you?
Are you a
Canadian?
or an
American?
Knowing all
this kind of what-you-are, though,
tells me
jack-shit about who you are.
Unworthy
I’m not
surprised
when people who
pretend
to be my lovers
and friends
have acted as
if I’m a thing, just an It,
and discarded
me like an empty wine bottle
without a
second thought
when they
fancied
I
was no longer of use to them.
The way my mama
brought me up
meant that I
went out into the world
convinced
deep-down
that
I’m unworthy of love.
The ability to
be loved
is a skill
that people
have to learn
when we are
little.
I didn’t.
Not
True Or False
When somebody
says or writes
the phrase,
‘the fact that …’
as the lead
into expressing an opinion
in my mind
they
immediately lose credibility
for anything at
all
they have to
say or write afterward,
or
else I just ignore it.
Some people
might call this
a snobby,
elitist overreaction,
but I value
integrity highly,
as I do
accuracy in language,
so those people
can stuff it.
Cold-Weather
Customs
Walking my dog
on an icy-cold
morning,
me wearing six
layers,
a beanie, and a
hood
and still
shivering
(old age and
all),
watching the
high-school kids
walking to
school,
some of the
boys wearing shorts,
this being New Zealand
and some of the
girls
wearing hijab
scarves
wound tightly
about
their head and
ears,
undoubtedly
glad that the things
have at least
some uses
in addition to
pleasing their parents,
this being New Zealand
