We Traveled For Two Weeks With A

My Platitudes Don't Hold Their Interest And I Can Hardly Blame Them For That. My Real Stories Are All Out Of Date. So What If I Can Speak Firsthand About The Spanish Flu, The Advent Of The Automobile, World Wars, Cold Wars, Guerrilla Wars, And Sputnik — That's All Ancient History Now. But What Else Do I Have To Offer? Nothing Happens To Me Anymore. That's The Reality Of Getting Old, And I Guess That's Really The Crux Of The Matter. I'm Not Ready To Be Old Yet.

I Used To Think I Preferred Getting Old To The Alternative, But Now I'm Not Sure. Sometimes The Momotony Of Bingo And Sing-alongs And Ancient Dusty People Parked In The Hallway In Wheelchairs Makes Me Long For Death. Particularly When I Rememver That I'm One Of The Ancient Dusty People, Filed Away Like Some Worthless Tchotchke.

...poking A Lump Of Red Jello That Jiggles Outrageously, Like A Breast I Once Knew.

I Tend Not To Think About The Reading Public At All, Or The Business, When I'm Writing.

Afterward, I Curl Around Her. We Lie In Silence Until Darkness Falls, And Then, Haltingly, She Begins To Talk...she Speaks Without Need Or Even Room For Response, So I Simply Hold Her And Stroke Her Hair. She Talks Of The Pain, Grief, And Horror Of The Past Four Years; Of Learning To Cope With Being The Wife Of A Man So Violent And Unpredictable His Touch Made Her Skin Crawl And Of Thinking, Until Quite Recently, That She'd Finally Managed To Do That. And Then, Finally, Of How My Appearance Had Forced Her To Realize She Hadn't Learned To Cope At All.