Donut

O, Benjamin P. Lovell, 19 from Oneonta, New York State who appears in the police blotter in Thursday’s Daily Star for unlawful possession of marijuana. The police blotter hangs just below the cast of Hairpsray rehearsing at the suny oneonta goodrich theater where the girl playing Tracy Turnblad looks as if she’s been helping herself to donuts: maybe the donuts we were eating at Barlow’s General Store, Treadwell. Do you ever get an upstate rush? I’ve never been crazy about donuts but these are the aristocrats of the donut world and I salute them. And I hope, Benjamin, your mom isn’t going to be too mad as she casts her eye down the police blotter and sees your name there,You little shit! and I hope the authorities remember being young when the whole world sometimes seemed somehow like a gargantuan donut that either pulled you to its bosom (O Tracy!) or kicked down — somewhere — to the bloodstream. Sweet donut, do I love thee? I haven’t mentioned Brando K. Goodluck, 18, from Manhattan, charged with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. O Brando, O Brando what were you thinking? As I put a donut in my mouth I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind a joint, and, in any case, maybe all these donuts are pretty dangerous and I wonder what would happen if the rules got jumbled up and the girl playing Tracy Turnblad slid down the page and found herself in the police blotter charged with unlawful possession of a donut. Suddenly America feels different and I like it. Police blotters throughout the nation packed with donutheads and half the country on the run as college girls make secret calls and meet their dealers in dusty ghost towns, sweet vapors drifting through the trees. O America, where even the robins are bigger, where every car that slides into the forecourt of Barlow’s General Store is a Dodge, where half the population is chasing the perfect donut. Let’s imagine that Benjamin P. Lovell and Brando K. Goodluck, nice slim boys, who never touched a donut in their lives, wander into Barlow’s and roll a joint and talk about those losers who kneel down before “the big one.” They know the girl who was playing Tracy Turnblad. She was sweet, they say, who went and threw it all away for a sleazy bun with a hole in it. They pass the joint to me and I can feel the donuts I stuffed in haste somewhere down my slacks. I blush. Real shame, I say. Mrs. Barlow says You boys want more coffee? The donuts on her shelves have gone.