Poor Alice bears the financial brunt of our relationship. Beyond that she is my love and a good woman to my heart. We still haven’t had sex and she hasn’t had her period. Three weeks and she sleeps in the other room. I hear her crying and try to comfort her, but I haven’t the money for an abortion. Not that I want one. I want a little us, but she doesn’t want to hear that destiny. Despite the success of her shows, she beats herself up and I have no way to advise her about the future.

My mother and father came to town and we dined at our regular spot, McBells on Sixth Avenues. No one calls it Avenue of the Americas. I ordered a cheeseburger and Tommy deMastri offered us a bottle of wine from the congenial owner. Francis likes my younger brother. All my gay friends do. We enjoyed ourselves and returned to the apartment. I fronted to my parents, that the apartment was mine, instead of ours. Alice was embarrassed at our living situation. Upon her departure, my mother slipped me $20 and said, “This place is fine for now, but I don’t want to see it as part of your life in two years.”

“Neither would I.” I can’t explain to them my lifestyle of hangin out at CBGBs every night. I can’t explain it to myself other than I love it.

I walked them to the corner. They are obviously out of place on East 10th Street with the pack of sinse dealers on the corner, who respectfully wished us a good evening. Criminals to the police, but they always watch Alice’s back.

I put them in a yellow taxi and Frankie, one of the Puerto Ricans with whom I played basketball, came over and asked, “They your mother and father?”

“Yes.”

“Your old man is good looking for his age and still has some of his hair. A lot more than most white men. You’ll look like him in thirty years. And te madre, very beautiful.”

“Thanks.” After thirty years of frosting her hair blonde my mother has decided to go natural. No more hair spray. Back when we were young my older brother and I stole her aerosol cans and taped them together to exploded in a hidden bonfire in a nearby sandpit. Our attempts to convert them into multi-stage missiles failed without failure.

I love my parents, strange since I hear so many friends badmouth their parents. My father always told me the truth and my mother has always wanted what was best. Easy since my father never said anything and my mother wanted what she thought best. They must worry for me; no job, no career, but they had politely listened to my poetry during dinner. I just don’t want to end up like my Aunt Mary’s beau. Peter Willen was an old communist, heavy smoker, and had horrible teeth, but he loved my aunt to the end. So my fear is only being loyal to someone I love.

Vernon fishes Casco Bay
Small Point to Two Lights
Nets full of cod and blues
His dory was known
Islanders saying, “There goes Vernon.”
Until in November
A savage gale struck
A Nor’easter
Arctic seas
A cold heavy sea.
Not religious
Vernon curses God
A mean philistine
Sending such storms
“Bastard.”
Two days later
Coast Guard finds his dory
Smashed
On the rocks of Small Point
Not far from ashore.
Vernon never comes to land
He died at sea
A fisherman’s way.