July 26, 2016

Wearing a t-shirt that a man I admired at Classic Hill in Hiram in 1984 gave to me, I think as all the return he could muster on my admiration. It is good enough. I think of him when I wear it.

DJ and I were on the road early to the NC Zoo at Ashboro, partially my gift to myself because circumstance prevented me from traveling this summer. The animals were unusually personable: a rhino chased a herd of antelope hither and thither across their little plain; two young gorillas roughhoused; three giraffes fed from our hands, we standing in a platform built up in the trees. The giraffes were calm and quite beautiful. The elephants were red and the giraffes almost silvery, which are not the colors you colored in the coloring books. My fasciitis kicked in and made the trip briefer than it might have been, as well as its being, as DJ said, “hotter than Satan’s butt crack.” Great turtles in the long lake. The inclemency of heat kept the crowds away, and all was peaceful. DJ crossed another frontier and allowed himself the luxury of a motorized chair. Bought a t-shirt that I cannot cram into the drawer.

Gardened through the early hours today, completing some of what I left undone after the yellow jacket attack. There are still yellow jacks coming from somewhere, but they don’t seem to have a territorial imperative. Planted swamp hibiscus (the lake at the zoo bristled with them, and made me long for more), turtlehead (to make up for those slaughtered) and pink anemone.

Showered in the afternoon and went to meet B at his quaint house in West Asheville, with the prayer flags on the porch. He greeted me in the living room naked, so the tenor of the meeting was set right off. In our conversations beforehand, I might have emphasized certain things, which he surprised me by actually initiating. Much of it was tender; some of it was rough in a theatrical way, that I think he was putting on for me. He had told me very little about his in-bed preferences, so I had to figure it out as I went, but I am usually pretty good at that. It was well. It was the best thing I could have done with this particular afternoon. It was the most pleasure you could have out of sex with one you don’t love, or even like very much. I thought as I left that if this were the last such encounter in my life, it would be well: sweet enough not to leave me disappointed, not so sweet that I should carry a burden of longing and regret.