Fall flowers exploded across the East Village community gardens. Dahlias, ghrysanthemums, asters, goldenrods, sunflowers androses. Today's noon temperature is in the 90s according to the radio. The air in our apartment has no oxygen. The streets have a little more. Alice and I have lived together for the last month. I haven't worked a day. Alice is heading home to West Virginia for Labor Day, the traditional end of America's summer, although astrologically the equinox is three weeks away.
I wander downtown. The Jones Diner is packed with blue-collar workers. The staff is third world. Two secretaries shriek in New york accents. Their boyfriends remain silent and eat their lunch. I order a bagel and coffee. After the lunch rush the diner clears out. Everyone has gone back to work. Two Greek children draw in books at a corner table. Strangely they speak Spanish together. I write them into my journal.
Has anyone ever changed their sex to become a hermaphrodite?
A BEACH DREAM
I was at a seaside resort with Alice
Our cottage was a wreck.
My Uncle Jack visits with kids
All of them six years-old
He complains, "This place is a mess."
I recall his first beach house on the Cape
It was so big
Sand deep on the wood floors
My Aunt never cleaned anyplace
Later we are at the beach
I rescue a child from drowning
I drag him onto the pier
I lose my balance and fall into the water
Ropes entangle my limbs
I wake up before dying
Gasping for breath__
September 1, 2021 - Clinton Hill
A hard rain all day. I haven't left the top floor of 387 Myrtle Avenue. I wrote from the 1979 journal, napped, and ate several small meals. I only spoke with Jake and Brigette, my upstairs neighbors, and then only briefly. I have really talked with anyone on the phone or texted someone about nothing. A man apart.
Brigette painted me as a hermaphrodite. They had heard my myth of the Hermaphrodite statue at the Louvre. How touching it with someone you want to love will seal that love forever. Their friend Stove has a tattoo of l'Heramphrodite on her arm. I would love to see her ink one more time, except it's raining buckets in Brooklyn and I'm not going anywhere, until after my procedure at NYU hospital. I am stricken with Cancer. No chance of survival. Trapped like a laboratory rat seeking reincarnation as a marble statue tattoed on a friend's arm.
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Much more to come.
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