The Write Thing

Plath. There is Plath hovering around me these days. I have come from a long journey, and my body feels the fatigue of life in a vacuum with wings that takes people places. But there is Plath… and the world, in its slow-pacing death and inevitable pulse of being, takes on a new dimension. On reading her, words heave with full resonance and flailing dissonance. Her tempo, her prose so in tune with the wholeness of life as the protagonist disembodies herself that the text becomes palpable, a skin with thousands of layers that fall down in slow motion. She is nude before New York, a world in itself.

A stiff breeze lifted the hair from my head. At my feet, the city doused its lights in sleep, its buildings blackened, as if for a funeral.
It was my last night.
I grasped the bundle I carried and pulled at the pale tail. A strapless elasticized slip which, in the course of wear, had lost its elasticity, slumped into my hand. I waved it, like a flat of truce, once, twice…The breeze caught it, and I let it go.
A white flake floated out into the night, and began its slow descent. I wondered on what street and rooftop it would come to rest.
I tugged at the bundle again.
The wind made an effort, but failed, and a batlike shadow sank toward the roof garden of the penthouse opposite.
Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray sraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

I am my own funeral, and the author of my own rebirth. I have fed my soul to the places where I have loved and been loved.

I am my own woman. The next step is life.

Here we go, Saturday June 28, official Gay Day worldwide, except in Buenos Aires, where the Gay Pride takes place in November due to hemisphere-related weather displeasure. Whatever the case, I have noticed that every city has its preference. I’ve never been to the local Gay Pride event, only to the Paris parade and, yesterday, to the Houston parade. Well, I didn’t really make it to the actual parade given that it takes place at night — Houston weather is killing, running well above the high 30s (Celsius).
Here I am, walking down Westheimer, past the mythical Chances bar, and about to enter the Half-Price bookstore around the corner, when a woman whose origin was possibly Korean stops me with a smile on her face. Pointing at the crowd on our right and the barricades police forces were building around, she asks in basic English:

Woman: What is this?
Me: Gay parade…Gay Pride
Woman (flabbergasted): Oh…men?
Me (in let’s-teach-somebody-something mode): and women too!

I kept walking the length of the sidewalk, as I saw the crowds dancing to the tune of live singers, and a mix of butches, femmes and the rest of the in-the-middle jungle strolling down in the heat, hand in hand. Languages ranged from Chinese to Spanish, and beer flowed relentlessly from improvised street stalls zealously guarded by Houston police. The attendants carried their folding chairs on their backs, looking for a spot that would give them a perfect view of the cars filled with loud and proud boys and girls in costumes later that night. The sun fell on our faces and our backs, sticking our T-shirts to our bodies as we made our way through the crowd. It did not matter.
As I walked to my car, which I had parked quite a few blocks away at St. Thomas’ University, I saw two twenty-year-old boys kissing passionately in a corner. One of them was a resuscitated punk, and had meticulously dyed his hair in the rainbow flag colors. They parted ways, and a few seconds later, I saw his partner running past me with the lightness that only people in love have. It was then that I thought that, in fact, they were all there for that single reason…love.

She: You see? What do lesbians do when you are bleeding?
She: They wait six days.
She: You are a little full of yourself, aren’t you?
She: Why? I was just saying how long my periods last.
She: Well, I was trying to show how handy strap-ons can be.
She: (pauses) Two arguments that I do not find to be mutually exclusive at all…

Ah, les nonnes auraient bien rougi confrontées à un dialogue pareil! Ou bien, elles auraient souri en connivence….