11-20-2010, 09:58 AM
It is a paradox of life that gay men often have the most incestuous relationships with their mothers.
*
My mind is a Third World village. Rain pours on it ceaselessly. The shanties weren't built to take such punishment. The shutters bang their frames like carpet beaters. Shriveled women of indeterminate age sit on the sagging porches saying, doing, thinking nothing, as their children hassle passing cars.
*
One room in one house on one street, however, contains an English decadence, with a flower print rug before a roaring fire, two deer hide armchairs standing guard, and on a small table between them a silver tea set. The walls are covered in portraits of my mother.
*
The one above the mantelpiece shows her leering just a bit, the shoulder of her dress pulled down slightly, revealing a pink bra strap. Her hair is coal black. She looks like a sexy mortician. Another shows her much younger, when my father still loved her; framed in cheap brown imitation leather, it once adorned the bedside table in my grandmother's guest room. I stole it when I was fifteen. Now it's here.
*
The door of this room is locked. The woman whose house it belongs to isn't allowed in. None of the villagers are.
*
My mind is a Third World village. Rain pours on it ceaselessly. The shanties weren't built to take such punishment. The shutters bang their frames like carpet beaters. Shriveled women of indeterminate age sit on the sagging porches saying, doing, thinking nothing, as their children hassle passing cars.
*
One room in one house on one street, however, contains an English decadence, with a flower print rug before a roaring fire, two deer hide armchairs standing guard, and on a small table between them a silver tea set. The walls are covered in portraits of my mother.
*
The one above the mantelpiece shows her leering just a bit, the shoulder of her dress pulled down slightly, revealing a pink bra strap. Her hair is coal black. She looks like a sexy mortician. Another shows her much younger, when my father still loved her; framed in cheap brown imitation leather, it once adorned the bedside table in my grandmother's guest room. I stole it when I was fifteen. Now it's here.
*
The door of this room is locked. The woman whose house it belongs to isn't allowed in. None of the villagers are.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe