Wait, My Dear: For You Have Dropped the Glove I Just Slapped You With.

The great epochs of our life are where we win the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.


                                                                    --Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, but as discovered/read on the first page of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delany




When I was a child, my father would always walk on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street. When asked why he did, he told me, simply, that it is what gentlemen do.

My child's mind raced to imagine the root of such chivalry:  Perhaps the implication that one would catch the harshest hit of a car spun out of control across the sidewalk was considered gentlemanly.

I liked that.

It was the day I decided that I would become a gentleman.


(pause)


A woman who dresses as a man who dresses as a woman who enjoys fucking and not fucking and literature.

What is the threat of it? What is it that makes people love and hate and love again, only to hate?

I have no idea.

I am pondering the Dandy, and the antiquated lace that lines my heart. Hand written letter above email.  A present in the mail in replace of the splooge of necessity.

I take my time.

In that way, I am old fashioned.

Flamboyance in a slightly timeless manner.

Your mean words will not hurry me, nor will they keep you warm tonight.