MOCKOB, 30 August 2004

AND SO TO BED

What has become of me? Months ago, my days used to begin at 6:60 or 7 AM. Yesterday, and this morning, I left the hotel at 3:30 PM, after having risen earlier, read some Agatha Christie and returned to bed.

My style, when travelling, had always been to get out of bed early so as to go sightseeing and return to the hotel fairly late; to do it all over again the next day.

How long it has been since the Spring break of 1972 when Kirby, Micky and myself left Madison, Wisconsin by bus to Chicago to catch the train to New Orleans. We stayed at Micky's house.

How frustrated I had been mornings, waiting for Kirby to go through his ablutions, polish his shoes, iron his jeans to be ready about 1o:30 or so, while I had already been dressed a couple hours. Who had heard then of anybody ironing blue jeans?

Granted that was 32 years ago. Granted that if one pays $80 a night in a hotel, one should make full use of that room.

One summer, I visited Kirby and his wife in San Francisco. He was a cable car driver. He had been studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studying Japanese. Partly black and American Indian, he was tall, slender (I keep thinking "aquiline"), very cool and probably the most handsome man I ever saw. When he had gotten married he sent me a nude photo of his wife ... before I'd ever met her.

Cool.

Patrick Barry Barr