I went to the play alone. My sister, Grace, said no, too depressing
and Myra, my best woman friend, always game, was in pain with the shingles.
"Got it because I fell of the roof, " she joked. Anyway,
at intermission we were all packed in like sardines,
trying to get out on forty second street for a smoke or gulp of air
when a tall blond in front of me put her right hand
behind her back and started unbuttoning my shirt,
then put her hand into the opening and tickled my stomach.
I was speechless. It felt like the kisses of a kitten,
No, more like an angel working her way to an epiphany.
When she turned around I saw her eyes widen in a shocked surprise.
"Oh God, so sorry, I thought you were my husband, John."
"I wish I were," I said, smiling, not goofily, sort of Humphrey Bogart.
People were pushing from behind but I wanted to stand there forever.
"Who are you?" I asked, in retrospect an existential plea.
"Oh, young bride, married three weeks ago, leaving for Paris tomorrow
on the Flandre. A new life." "In case you divorce him, here's my card,"
and I thrust one from my pocket into her open left hand.
Out on the street I glimpsed her with John, laughing,
his arm around her, holding her tickling right hand,
my hand.
That was fifty years ago. Before I married Myra. I still
like her and her awful jokes. We live on the ground floor
at East 93rd. We call it the flat. It's sort of dark.
"I'll buy lampoons," she promises. Yesterday she asked
"What does a General do with his armies?"
I ponder. She laughs, "Puts them in his sleevies."
We both put our thumbs down, groaned, then rolled our eyes.
She is actually smart; she calls her red dress
my frock incarnadine.When I talk too much, she accuses me of
orotund vacuity.I never told her of that memorable blond so in love with handsome John
that she undid the buttons on my shirt inserting her right hand
for that caress that I recall, still vivid, so classy and so blessed -
the source of my undoing. That's hyperbole; I'm not undone.
I'm old, retired, less anxious now, a good uncle, reading Emerson.
A happiness pill. He admits that a woman can be idolized only
until you know her. Urine, feces, blood, drool, sex? Still, he insists
In the mud and scum of things, something, something always sings.I like that; the sacred and profane cohabiting in one line.
Joan Hutton Landis
Intermission, read by Ethan Bowen for Joan Landis, debuted at a tribute reading for Toni King on August 30, 2012, at BigTown Gallery, with Tracy Winn and Rebecca Godwin.
