Sailing thru the oil slicks,I reach and touch the sea. Sophie, my 97year aold friend, is back from the doctor after having eye surgery. She had her drooping eye lids sewn up. She is fine, refuses help, though Bill went with her to the doctor. He too is in our plant class though he also teachs arts and crafts.I am not into arts and crafts and I rarely sit thru all of plant class. I did, though, do macrame during my last hospital visit, finally learning how to tie a square knot. I missed out on Boy Scout camp by not being able to tie a square knot. I was afraid to ask you know who to show me. Our relationship was clear. I was the helper, he was the helpee. It did not occur to hem that it could be otherwise.We went deer hunting once and ended up stealing two chairs. They were nice chairs and fit well in our kitchen.

Nearing 70, he coralled me to steal sand for one of his grand daughter's sandbox. Such was Pop. He always got away with such shit. He was an executive, highly thought of in his field (engineering) but he thought himself brilliant across the board and he sure as hell wasn't--though he could add long columns of figures in his head.

He had a habit of using people and when they were no longer of use, discarding them. Sometimes I felt that was the way he was with me too. He took every opportunity to show what a no nonsense, tough, man's man he was. Aside from golf and his job--he was a workaholic--he loved the Elk's club, paticularly his pinochle club cronies.

Every year they drove to New York City, 140 miles away, to drink and carouse without wifely interference and to watch cross dressers dance in a chorus line.Year after year this wa the highlight of their trip. I don't think any of them were gay, certainly not my father. He semed to have no interest in sex. He claimed impotence in his mid-forties--Doc Zimmie gave him some pills--this was 40 years before Viagra. Pop called them his "Pecker Picker-Upper" pills and he sold them at a Satuday night Elks club dance for two for a quarter.

He had takers. Mom sat quietly at the table. My sisters say the only time she ever mentioned sex to them was to confide that "she didn't get any in the prime years of her life." Sex education was not a high priority in the Clayton household.

Me, I was steady whacking it. My friend Hal wrote a sly poem about streaks in his underwear. I was a streaks on the sheets kid. Mom washed them without a word. I guess she had some tobacco stains of her own.

As for Pop, he caught me watching the neighbors two daughters undress. Always the problem solver, Pop told the neighbor, who was a nice jewish man with a mistress and a Jaguar sports car. The shades came down. I as usual said nothing to my father but on the bus that took us to school I jerked up a kid so my school mate neighbor could sit. She gave me a strange look. Bipolar sounds so much more politically correct than manic depressive. Reality comes in a bowler hat. I tip it occasionally. "The angry never eat" writes Lorna Dee Cervantes. I'll buy that.