es but her socks and watch off if there’s rain or cold fog. Want to make love before breakfast on a quilted bedspread just after we get up and start to dress. Want it to come to us like that. Slap-bang, I want to, you do, down again. Want to take the hook out of a fish’s mouth first time for me and maybe gut the fish with her instructions and fry my fish whole with its eye looking up at me adverbially first time for that too. I don’t know why I want all those but I do. Watch because it’s racy. Want to lie there after with my ear unwittingly near her wrist and listen to its tick. Want to nudge those socks off with my big toes. Want the crazy colors and cushiness of the quilt. Sleeping bag so we can be sloppy. Fishing line out of stick and string because it’s simple. Want us to drift in the boat or canoe and catch another half hour of sunset. Want us to suddenly get fogged or rained on but close to shore and dripping wet. Want us to dry off in the house, cottage or bungalow and start to make love by that fired-up fireplace again while, just as we were, or something, about to put our clothes or robes on. Want us one dusk to plan out our lives together in that drifting boat with the sun half-past setting and mackerel or some other fish jumping and things in the air buzzing and loons crooning or wooing or whatever they’re doing in the water and maybe a lobsterman’s boat from far off motoring and a buoy from not so far off bonging, but other than those and some other unimposing sea and sky things I can’t think of right now like cormorants diving, nothing. Want the water to be clear, don’t want any biting bugs out there. No water skiers, moving or moored speedboats or low-flying planes. No planes. No beer cans, oil slicks, human feces, toilet paper, cigarette butts or filters from filtertips floating past. Want perfection in a setting other than in one with just clouds and sun or as close to one as I can get. Then I want to row or be rowed back and beach the boat and tie the line to a shore rope with a lobsterman’s knot and walk up to the house, cottage or bungalow though no tent, don’t want no matter how roomy, protective and complex a tent, and the house, cottage or bungalow not to be more than a few hundred feet from the beach and the path to it if it’s uphill not too steep and this structure should be wooded outside and in and shielded by tall shading undiseased trees and in the bedroom a little breeze and I want us to make love on top of or underneath a bedspread or quilt or just to throw the covers off and do it on a clean bottom sheet. Want her to later say she wants to have my baby. “I know you do or at least want to have one too,” and I can then say, could, could, and I would “Very much so, and maybe this’ll sound silly when I say it, though in some other way how could it? only with you.” First time it’d be for me too if something like that happened, other than with — but with her I was never sure it was true. Believed she conceived for sure but not for sure from me. Some woman other than May, Lale or Sue who said she was having and then had had mine but who was living with her husband and year-old child at the time and said he knew but because he’d become involved with two other people and one she intimated a man, even encouraged her to, but of course not to have another man’s child. So both he and I wanted it aborted but she’d always wanted two and close enough in age where they’d play together almost like twins which she said would take some of the drudgery of motherhood off her hands, and after she gave birth to the first her husband couldn’t get erect whenever he did join her in bed. In fact, saw them all together, and only time I met him, at a party when she was visibly pregnant supposedly from me and I was still seeing her once a week, something I regret now and would never do again with any man’s lover or wife no matter what the circumstances between them, unless let’s say they got married just so he could get U.S. citizenship or a work permit and weren’t living together as husband and wife, simply because, well, life’s tough enough, that sort of stuff, don’t want to hurt the other guy when he for certain doesn’t deserve it and I can so easily avoid it, and having no cohabitational sex for weeks or even months doesn’t mean as much to me as it once did. But he said after he’d said “I think we should have a little chat about the burps and beats,” and taken my arm and clapping me hard on the back though by his face to anyone else it must have seemed good naturedly escorted me into an empty room, that I mustn’t think unhighly of him despite anything Penny might have said, that he’s always had a very high opinion of me from everything she’s said including some of the things she said she dislikes about me, though she was only twenty-six he urged her to have this pioneer amniotic fluid test but only to see if anything was amiss with my genes, and he’s pleased as probably I should be to report I’m a hundred percent clean, that finally they’ve decided they never want the child to know its genetic father was anyone but him and hoped I wouldn’t do anything in my life, or help anything from happening after it like putting my paternity into possibly publishable poetry or fiction or journals I might keep, to crimp their plans. “I wouldn’t, why would I?” I said and that I think he’s a fine fellow and Penny’s never said anything but the nicest things about him and I’ve never written nor do I ever intend to write poetry, fiction, journals, plays or an autobiography of any kind so along those lines he has nothing to fear too. Then we shook hands, I think he asked what had been in my glass and got me another drink, called it a night for both of them though Penny wasn’t in the room, and I never saw her again though she did call a few months later to say she’d had a healthy baby in the last five days and that Marc, that’s right, Marc, as much as he liked me didn’t want her to see me again or at least for the next ten years if they stayed married that long. When I asked what sex the baby was she said “If you have to know, it rhymes with whirl,” and when I asked what name they gave her she said something like, well, it’s all something like, “I’m sure you’ll hate it and mock us for such a floricultural name so I’m not saying, goodbye.” For a few years after that I’d write and this except when forced to in grade school was the only time in my life and only when I was lonely and drunk some nights, long lonely drunken nighttime paragraphs I then called poems and later threw away in one trash bag because they were so stilted, formless, derivative, just bad, and I don’t write poetry, about my weanling I’d never hold nor see and who’d never know nor unknowingly pee on me…my year-old, two-year-old, three-year-old child who could resemble but would never tremble at my paternity…my little no-good nudnick kid whose folks should know my folks are prone to neurofibromatosis and diabetes…my young alloy, whose gender rhymes with ploy, whose name might be Troy or Roy, whom I’ll never live to enjoy or destroy, noy woy I knoy whether it ever reseeds my soy…my mine me moans thy mind I phones thine line chimes drones…all starts or parts of some of my “Me my poems.” Penny had the girl around eleven years ago, they emigrated to New Zealand the next year, one of their friends I bumped into a couple-years back said he’d heard Marc had drowned in the Pacific but wasn’t sure where or when and didn’t know anyone who was and even forgot where he got the information from or what when I asked were the children’s names. And Penny? I said and he said for all he or anyone else she knew knows she was still living somewhere in the South Seas with her girls, but she cut everyone off when they left and no one if anyone was going to the Pacific and wanted to look her up remembers where in Canada Marc was born and her parents were long dead. Some nights, when the drink’s gone to my head and I’m feeling sentimental and a bit self-pitying, I think this girl’s going to ring my doorbell one day and say something like “I just wanted to see how your nose and earlobes stacked up against mine.” Also thought if I ever wrote another poetical paragraph or paragraphless poem it’d be about a man who falls in love with this daughter without knowing who the genetic father is and maybe even gets her pregnant, even if the theme’s been done and done and for millenniums before. But Helene or whoever it might be though for now she seems my best remote hope. Want her to get pregnant on the bedspread, quilt or sheet or if we do it in front of the fired-up fireplace then on the floor. To teach school while she’s pregnant if it is Helene with me that summer and whatever summer that’ll be though I hope some summer soon. This one, at least the next one. Want my mother to visit us for a week that summer wherever it’ll be though I hope someplace uncrowded and Northeast and near but not on a secluded but unhumid shore. Her parents or mother or sibling to come for a week if she wants or friend or student if it’s Helene and she has favorite students and if it isn’t then if this woman’s also a college teacher, and to have the time for all this she’d almost have to be or a self-supporting artist of some sort, to come for a night or two. Want to move in with whoever this woman will be when we return. To vacate my place the previous June and go to France with her for a month and then Maine for the rest of the summer or just Maine or someplace secluded and cool for two months since we probably couldn’t afford, I know I couldn’t by this summer, a trip abroad. Want my name on her mailbox if it’s her place I do move in to. Not taped onto it but stamped if her name’s also stamped into the nameplate. And maybe not for her to be pregnant this summer in Maine or wherever it’ll be but reasonably soon. I can also see where some to a lot of this could happen or something comparable to. No, ridiculous, all of it, I don’t know what it is, sure it is, maybe it’s not, because I think she gave me a look and said some expression that suggested some of this could start happening and not unreasonably soon. Something like: not tonight, give it time, I’m talking about us, don’t rush, you seemed a bit interested in me, I seemed a bit interested in you, so? no harm there, just don’t ruin. I don’t think I’m fooling myself. Ask yourself if you are. Are I? Am I? I don’t think so. So no. Because I really do think I saw and heard things from her that suggested he’s a bit odd, that guy, or maybe spontaneous is the word or extemporaneous to be truly fair, but I think I could get to like him if it got that far, so I hope he calls but if he doesn’t then he didn’t and it wouldn’t be I don’t think because of anything I did or didn’t do. But I won’t call him if he doesn’t me, since that’s not what I do. Least not with a man I just met and am not bowled over by. But if — This how I think she speaks? Not quite but go on. But if he calls I’ll see him I guess unless he acts drunk or moronic, vulgar or worse, for that sort of behavior’s another story, one I quickly put down with a vow never to pick up again, no matter how short. But if he does call and we get together and I’m right about him, it might turn out to be a good thing. For I like a man who’s straightforward and just a bit aggressive but who still stays at the beginning and maybe for all time somewhat ungainly and shy. I think that was him. I liked it that he pursued me, continued to eye me, getting up close and just as he was about to say something, backing off, then catching me at the door. He could have let me leave, got my phone number from Diana or got Diana to phone me to say she has this friend who’d like to meet me, or just forgotten it. Party fantasies usually end when the party fantasized goes out the door. Wish I had a little more of that go-after-what-you-want stuff. But men are men — that’s what they do, are good for, trained to from puppyhood — the hare is loose: release the hounds — no matter how shy and ungainly or up to a point. Eyed me a bit too desirously sometimes but I liked it in a way for it said “I’m interested and if you are you can say so by looking at me from time to time in a certain though certainly less interested way,” or I at least didn’t mind his occasional desirous look or not that much. He didn’t at least goo-goo his eyes and lick his teeth for all to see and say absolutely the wrong things and too loudly, embarrassing me. Ah, but that balcony scene — he couldn’t have spared me? But he wasn’t that physically attractive to me, which isn’t to say I didn’t like his face. It was all right, nothing great, nothing to lob my eyes back to him and think “Hmm, quite the striker that guy,” but that’s okay. Better the looks most times, worse the insecurities and ego, or that’s been my experience, not that I wouldn’t see a man just because he was extremely handsome as long as he had many of the other qualities I like. And he seemed to have an adequate physique — adequately slim and straight, for his age, no pot or blobbiness or weightlifter’s stuffed muscles and sun-stiffened skin or with no ass which, unkind, limiting and even shallow as that might make me, I’m afraid I do mind, but I guess I could live with the big biceps and that kind of skin and behind. He was also at least two inches taller than I when I don’t wear shoes. I like that difference and to be taller than the man when I want to too. His hair was okay, not entirely gray, not a mop or blown-dry, which makes even the most gifted Latinist look like the most nitwitted TV sportscaster, and sufficiently trim and seemingly clean. But the way he spoke. It at least wasn’t a dull and dumb voice and one where I had to tug out my ear to hear. Smart but not arched is the best way I’d put it now. None of that “Now that’s good for a laugh, haw haw haw.” I think I’m remembering this right, but the history of my considerations and positions, though much less in literary things, tells me I can be quite wrong. But there had to be something I liked about him to propose when he said he’d like to speak to me again that he call me and I think it might have been a couple of things but particularly his voice. I didn’t do it just to later shake him off. Diana did seem chummy with him and she’s said she never becomes friends with any man who isn’t interesting, talented, lively and bright. She sends the others packing, she’s said, to forestall boredom, and not just lovers, unless they can do something immediate for her career and books, and even if he looked the helpful type, it seemed he was having a tough enough time keeping afloat on his own. But if he was up there at that colony of theirs he must be doing something fairly interesting in whatever field his is. Did he say? Don’t think so or didn’t hear, but then our talk was so short. What did he speak about? Nothing to give much of a clue what he does when he isn’t shooting down drinks and food and scrutinizing the calves and backsides of girls. We talked about the wedding reception I was off to. The kind of work I don’t do. How long I’ve been at the party. That I don’t like going to weddings or their receptions and he does. Mostly because he likes the accompanying food and booze? That we both thought it’d be nice to speak to the other again, but me a bit less than he and he since he first saw me, which could have been when I came in. At least I noticed him then, but not looking at me. What was he doing? I forget. But we first looked at the other when? Near the food table and bar again, when I was talking with a friend and he was with some people but seemed infinitely more interested in me. Each of us had a wineglass in hand. He stared at me I don’t know how long, seconds, then looked away. Why didn’t I look away first? Well, someone has to look away first, but why didn’t I? Wanted I believe to give him the incentive or excuse to walk over and speak to me or meet me at the food table or some place if he was too bashful or reserved to say “How do you do?” or “Do I know you?” or “Rooty-Kazoo says kerchoo to you too” while I was with someone else. Caught him staring at me the next time I looked. He smiled, I smiled, or maybe we smiled at the same time, but now I remember I smiled first. Why? Well, why not? No, wanted to let him know the first time wasn’t a mistake. Then it was my turn to look away but