The Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Winik

Author:Marion Winik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2008-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Texan

HE HAD THREE siblings and all were his twins, in away: his biological twin, a brother; his spiritual twin, a little sister; and his dark twin, a brother who so lacked the others’ gifts of irony and discernment he fit them like yang to yin. The four grew up in the Permian Basin on the western edge of Texas, where the oldest rocks in the world hide deep pockets of oil and gas, a place that sharpens you like a knife with its dry winds and fierce brightness, a place of which the family owned many acres. The children ran in circles and invented games of chance and torture while downstairs their Cajun father drank and their mother made decisions.

There was only one gay bar in town and eventually three of them would know it well; the fourth would drink elsewhere. Anywhere, really. Wherever they went, the dogs waited outside, sleeping on the sidewalk with their noses tucked between their hind legs.

I met the Texan in Austin in the early ’80s after his little sister came to my poetry reading. She and I became best friends literally overnight, via one eight-hour conversation held in the apartment she shared with him and his boyfriend. The boyfriend wasanother dog lover, a kid from Kerrville; their relationship, new then, was to endure twenty years. There would be apartments on both coasts with cream-colored leather couches and good kitchen equipment, delicious dinners of rockfish and pistachio, occasional arguments and betrayals, frequent and joyous reconciliations.

During their New York period, the boys acquired a wire-haired fox terrier named George, born in the Bronx. George would inspire the foundation of People for the Aesthetic Treatment of Animals, as well as a wildly successful line of canine jewelry, bedding, bath products, sweaters, and jackets, which still sell like hotcakes on the Internet and everywhere fine pet products are sold.

They would have been a wonderful elderly gay couple, but it seems no elderly gay couples of our generation were allowed. My friend’s brother died at 43 in San Francisco a month before the turn of the century. Shortly afterward, his older brother drank himself to death and his twin nearly did. Their little sister wrapped her arms around a border collie and sipped her beer as slowly as she could.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.