Thursday Eve

Wwent off to dinner and a movie with my woman friend. We saw "No Country For Old Men." It was the most powerful movie I've ever seen and I'm still processing it. Up early, ran into Ray going for his horse racing program and I remembered those days when I used to send 12 or more hours studying the Daily Racing Form. It was my Bible. Death. I would like to think of John Donne's poem "Death Be Not Proud" but I don't recall any of it. The man I loved the most is probably dead, he was a Second World War vet. He did something heroic with Germans.

I met him in 1971 shortly after I arrived in New York City from New Orleans. My father got me a construction job--the now tumbled Twin Towers was still being built --and I signed up for some night classes at NYU's School of Continuing Education. That was where I met Walter= he was a professor of mine. He was everything my father was not-urban, handsome, witty and suave. I showed him a poem, since lost, and he thought it brilliant. That was all I needed to hear. Goddamn it, I would finally become a writer.

He was also gay.