Recently in Gerald Category

I'm trying to have a moment with you here, and you've got a snootful of juniper vapors which seems to be more important to you. This is actually a rare thing, you know. Not only is there properly bright sun spearing out through the rain, but there are two bright and happy 'bows that look like they're coming straight up from the Winfreys' yard, just behind the wall. They look fantastic against the mountains!

So pleased you could join me. I know it was a long journey from the wet bar to the railing. No, I don't want your olive, you just enjoy that, why don't you. I've been meaning to talk to you about that, actually...a martini isn't typically a breakfast drink, you do realize this. Yes, I know you're allergic to tomatoes, but you could at least try for some semblance of propriety and have a Mimosa or a Fuzzy Navel, couldn't you? I feel like I'm living with a Fitzgerald. Soon you'll be hurling yourself down the staircase during a party to attract my attention.

You know, you and I seem to be operating on a different sort of frequency, lately. It reminds me of when I was first after you: all those weeks of pursuit and flirtation and downright poetry, Gerald--I sent you poetry!--and you thought I was just being friendly. I practically had to beat you over the head to come with me to the Saint-Milay's that weekend, remember? And then you went off after William, who barely knew you were alive! Sometimes I wonder if we'd ever have gotten together if you hadn't fallen into the pool. No, thank you, I'll just finish the champagne I've got.

Anyway--it's not just me. Do you know that Roger actually rang me up last week to ask if everything was all right with us? And Roger doesn't notice anything! He didn't realize Beatrice and Phillip had split up until she showed up in Monterrey without him last year, did you know that? Not a clue in the world. So if he's concerned, you bloody well ought to be, don't you think?

Well no, I'm not so sure that's true. I mean, you've got the gallery now, but that's only three nights a week, and I'm only in the studio during the day, so we've got weekends and four nights a week together. We've got plenty of time with each other. It's just that when we're in the same place you always seem to be...elsewhere. Another one? You've already had two! It's not even eleven yet.

Fine. You go and do that, then. I'll stay here and watch my rainbows.

Love doesn't just keep happening, you know!

It's not every day that I get to report on the actual happy firing of neurons, you know. I mean, I'm talking honest-to-Isis happiness, here, and still you can't take your hands off a slutty little bronze ballerina that probably isn't even French, let alone a Degas. Why I let you drag me to these yard sales at eight o'clock in the foggy stupid morning is beyond me. I don't care how rich the people are in the Montecito mountains, no one is going to set million-dollar artwork out with the tea cozies and the George Foreman grills.

So, yes: equilibrium, Gerald. Balance! It has arrived, which is actually too passive. Better: I've achieved it! I couldn't even tell you how, although I have my suspicions. If I didn't know any better I'd suspect mania. But--having had my share of it--I know mania when I see it, and this is not that. It's a groove. It's a flow. It's timeless and irreverent and purple and bedecked with golden trim. It's the best pillow ever.

Hard to describe I suppose, and when you're reaching for stuffed brocade as a metaphor for your internal mental and spiritual state it's quite possible that something's gone terribly wrong and soon the spiders will start coming out of the walls. But I doubt that. I doubt that very much. I doubt it so much that were it to happen I wouldn't believe it, and that's healthy, isn't it? Look how well I'm doing!

None of which matters much to you, apparently, because you think you're fondling something special when what you've got is a bronze plated knock-off tart in a tutu.

I'm making breakfast. Eggs Benedict! I'll bring it to the loggia. You can join me when you've finished molesting your "artwork."

I used to work in a bookshop, long ago. A recovery bookshop, actually, which was more than a little ironic considering the relationship I had at that time with my brain and the various chemicals that could make it do interesting things. I say you haven't quite lived until you've handed someone their bronze 20-year recovery medallion while tripping balls.

That's all behind me now, but as the famous sage has said, wherever you go, there you are, so I've still got the same brain, haven't I, and even if it's no longer the quivering science experiment it once was, every so often it'll go tits up and then I've got to hang around and wait for it to get its act together. Plasticity takes time, people!

Big sigh.

Anyway, the Spanish-language translation of Sumerian Pot is due out any day now, which ought to be good for a laugh, and there are other things percolating here and there in vague and dissatisfying ways that haven't got any punch, Gerald, are you even listening? You're not going to keep them entertained with promises unless things are exploding somewhere, and if you keep frightening off the pyrotechnicians this whole circus is going under.

So much work to do, so little inclination.