When my father

you in this hotellift in London fullof people is that noneof them knows what youand I are about to doin bed or possiblyon the floor in fact noteven you realize yethow much you’re goingto enjoy this act forwhich we have no namenot clinical or hideous, justa double digit number, perfectas a skater’s figure eight

In the lock, and pretends to be asleepWhen he enters the room, trying to beQuiet but clumsy, bumping into things,And she can smell the liquor on his breathBut forgives him because she has him backAnd doesn’t have to sleep alone.The happiest moment is a man’s lifeIs when he climbs out of bedWith a woman, after…

is not dead yet inthe English department,Not maximalism, which wasa still-born alternativeto minimalism,Nor Maxism, which rests onadulation of MaxBeerbohm, parodistnonpareil,But maximism, the loveof adages,Or Maximism, the advocacy ofmaximum gastronomicpleasure on the modelof a meal at Maxim’sin Paris in, say, 1950.Is that clear?

for him to look at, not to eat.If he had a tin can he would beatit as a drummer in a band beatshis drum and steadily with a swishand sometimes a gong. It’s his wishto escape from gray walls and skyinto a Denmark of the inner eyeor a bullring south of the borderor a sky…

honeymooners traditionally went to the Fallswhich were, said the divine Oscar,an American bride’s second biggest disappointmenttell me which do you like better,the American Falls or the Horseshoe Falls,I say the Horseshoe Falls, Joe says,because its magnificence surpasses the American Fallsthank you, Joe, and did you knowwhen Casey Stengel managed the Yankeeshe sat next to Bob…

retreats to the cave of a solitary boy in a thrivingmetropolis where no one remembers the original storywhic is, of course, a sign of its great success: to be forgottenimplies you were once known, and that is something wecan prize more than the gesture greater than the achievement:but I wander from the main point: the…