Randall Mann

in memory, 1929-2004 We choose a cheap hotel because they’re serving drinks. We drink. I hear him tell a tale or two: he thinks that so-and-so’s a sleaze; and then there was the time that Milosz phoned, oh please. Another gin with lime? I want to say that once, I saw him dressed in leather, leaning on a fence inside a bar. Rather, walking to the N, I gush about his books; he gives his change to men who’ve lost their homes and looks: how like him, I’ve been told. Our day together done, I hug him in the cold. And then the train is gone.

I was someone's honor's student once, a sticker, a star. I aced Home Ec and Geometry; I learned to stab a fork, steer my mother's car. Old enough to work, I refreshed the salad bar at Steak & Ale, scarcity a line I couldn't fail. The summers between university, interned at AT&T, in the minority outreach they called Inroads. My boss, Vicki, had two roommates, whom she called, simply, The Gays, crashing on her floor. That was before I was gay, I won't try to say with a straight face. Like anyone really cares, I care. What I'm trying to say: all this prepared me for these squat blinking office accessories. The dry drinking after the accidental reply-all. By now there's a lot to lose. Little by little, I have become so careful, no talk of politics, or orientation: I let them say, he's “a homosexual,” without an arch correction. At a fondue buffet in Zurich, our dumb- founded senior group director—when I let slip, damn it, my trip with a twenty-year-old—inquired, They're always over seventeen, right? I told her of course, god yes, and, seething, smiled, which I'm famous for. I didn't want to scare her. But I tell you, I'm keeping score. E-mail is no more than a suicide I'd like to please recall. Note my suicide. I'm paid to multitask, scramble the life out of fun: Monday I will ask— every dash a loaded gun, every comma, a knife— you to bury the black-box file.

Something has to give. We stand above it all. Below, the buildings' tall but tiny narrative. The water's always near, you say. And so are you, for now. It has to do. There's little left to fear. A wind so cold, one might forget that winter's gone. The city lights are on for us, to us, tonight.

One last meal, family-style — no family, and with suspect style. November first, my almost-groom fresh off his flasher costume discharge at the office. Harris tweed. I read it on his antisocial feed. The motel life is all a dream — we were, as they say, living the dream. I appreciate our quandary, hot-plate dates and frowsy laundry. Face tattoos are never a good sign. I hope his tumor is benign. I won’t forget the time he lent me Inches, which I gave up for Lent. Our love was threat, like phantom pain. An almost-plan for a bullet train. I’m weaning myself off graphic tees, not taking on any new disease. I walk along Pier 5 to kill the myth, of course another stab at myth. I pull my output from the shelf and wildly anthologize myself. I’ve adopted another yellow lab. I hope to die inside this cab. My lack of faith is punctuation — no wait, the lack of punctuation. Every intonation, one more pact with injury; my latest one-act: “Flossing in Public.” In the spattered glass of the republic.