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Randall Mann is a writer and editor who lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Complaint in the Garden, winner of the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry.

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BREAKFAST WITH THOM GUNN

By RANDALL MANN

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2009 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-50344-8

Contents

Acknowledgments....................................ixEarly Morning on Market Street.....................3Election Day.......................................4But................................................5Politics...........................................6Fetish.............................................8Song...............................................9Queen Christina....................................11The Mortician in San Francisco.....................12Aubade.............................................14Bernal Hill........................................15The Sunset.........................................16Abandoned Landscapes...............................17Short Short........................................18Charity............................................19Ruin...............................................20Pure...............................................21Last Call..........................................22Pastoral...........................................27Syntax.............................................28Little Colonial Song...............................29The Lake of Nostalgia..............................30The End of Landscape...............................31Ode................................................33Night: A Fragment..................................35Breakfast with Thom Gunn...........................36Ovid in San Francisco..............................37Ganymede on Polk Street............................39Orpheus at Cafe Flore..............................40Modern Art.........................................41To Francis Bacon...................................42Stranded...........................................43Reception..........................................44Career.............................................45Postcard from California...........................46The Long View......................................47N..................................................48Ocean Beach........................................51Translation........................................52Lexington..........................................53Design.............................................54The Rape of Ganymede...............................55Colloquy between A and B...........................56Intimacy...........................................57Monday.............................................58Seeking............................................59Well, Here We Are..................................60A View.............................................61South City.........................................62Poetry.............................................63Fiction............................................64Notes..............................................65

Chapter One

Early Morning on Market Street The moon, once full, is snow. The line of transplanted trees, thin and bloodless. The pink neon bakery sign, Sweet Inspiration, a mockery of loneliness- but no one cares to eat, we souls of this hour jacked up on what- ever. and though desire is a dirty word these days, what else to call the idling car, its passenger door pushed open; or the shirtless man- he must be mad, tweaked out on speed- outside his door at Beck's motor Lodge, staring for hunger or mercy. Or me, rubbing dirt from my eyes, wanting, again, a man I do not want. Election Day God isn't art, early in the century, He's pragmatism. I need him in this little city by the sea. The day does its melancholy thing. I come home, watch pornography, fast-forward the scenes in which a friend- back in his methamphetamine years- has unrepeatable things done to him. On the street, a bag of paranoia costs less than a moderately priced meal out. I'll stay in. Tired of the age of irony, everything a gesture; tired of the word gesture, the day ends as the world will end: eleven o'clock news, our charmingly corrupt mayor incredulous, and a beautiful shot of uncounted ballots floating in the bay. But That's a divine conjunction, shouts Reverend Fitch at Glide memorial. But the Lord will not pass you by. I walked to church through the botched landscape of the Tenderloin: piss-in-the-sink hotels and Triple-X; the drunk sipping devotedly from a paper sack. I am no different. sometimes, coming home in the fading light, I cruise the steps atop Sanchez street for love, the hills above cleansed and durable and indifferent: Pass me not, O gentle savior. Do not pass me by. Politics This is what he dreams of: a map of burned land, a mound of dirt in the early century's winter. A map of burned land? A country is razed in the early century's winter. And God descends. A country is raised because of industry. and God descends, messengers rush inside because of industry, in spite of diplomats. Messengers rush inside to haunt the darkened aisles. In spite of diplomats, the witnesses know well to haunt the darkened aisles, experimentally- the witnesses know well that ushers dressed in black experimentally lurk by the cushioned seats. That ushers dress in black should tell you something: lurking by the cushioned seats, the saved and the terrible. I should tell you something: this is what he dreams of, the saved and the terrible- a mound of dirt. Fetish 1. Another Saturday, and the straights and amateurs will come to my ghetto tonight. Suspension of rights for all, I say. 2. The vernacular? Those who snort speed are called bag whores; those who shoot are said to slam. They'll be over shortly. 3. Apply enough waterproof mascara, Tourmaline- Charged eye Cream; tweeze the brows-just so. Beauty, our politics, is local. 4. I know that love is more than leather, a tight white shirt, a good stink- tonight, I am a fetish. I am canonical. Song 18th and Castro streets- the center of the world! our world. We sip our tea, the two of us derailed ... Outside the Midnight Sun, men smoke. And dish. Life's hard. the tea is turning cold. the men are getting tired. "These queens," my friend Steve says. "A bag of speed will buy you almost anyone- almost any boy." I lure him to the house, online, with crystal meth. I say to bring his friends. I say I'll fuck his mouth. (One time, I swear to God, I fucked for weeks and weeks.) These queens arrive, all prim, and talk about antiques and art, boring stuff. But when they snort the best crystal money can buy? They beg to sit on my fist. Queen Christina to celebrate his final Pride, in June, my friend, lymphatic, thin, and in distress, managed to dress in drag. He shot the moon: outstretched, he'd used his dying to think-obsess- about the Prada pumps, their skin a snake; the heavy pantyhose, two pair; the moot but lacy underthings; the makeup, cake, to overlay his pain. I called him beaut- i-ful; he said he felt like Greta Garbo in Queen Christina (our campy interplay); I countered that he looked more like a hobo- sexual in heels. we howled. that day, we never left his Castro flat. his rhinestone glittered, and everywhere, the smell of cologne. The Mortician in San Francisco this may sound queer, but in 1985 I held the delicate hands of Dan white: I prepared him for burial; by then, Harvey Milk was made monument-no, myth-by the years since he was shot. I remember when Harvey was shot: twenty, and I knew I was queer. Those were the years, Levi's and leather jackets holding hands on Castro Street, cheering for Harvey Milk- elected on the same day as Dan White. I often wonder about Supervisor White, who fatally shot Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk, who was one of us, a Castro queer. May 21, 1979: a jury hands down the sentence, seven years- in truth, five years- for ex-cop, ex-fireman Dan white, for the blood on his hands; when he confessed that he had shot the mayor and the queer, a few men in blue cheered. And Harvey milk? why cry over spilled milk, some wondered, semi-privately, for years- it meant "one less queer." The jurors turned to white. if just the mayor had been shot, Dan might have had trouble on his hands- but the twelve who held his life in their hands maybe didn't mind the death of Harvey Milk; maybe, the second murder offered him a shot at serving only a few years. in the end, he committed suicide, this Dan White. And he was made presentable by a queer. Aubade Those who lack a talent for love have come to walk the long Pier 7. Here at the end of the imagined world are three low-flying gulls like lies on the surface; the slow red of a pilot's boat; the groan of a fisherman hacking a small shark- and our speech like the icy water, a poor translation that will not carry us across. what brought us west, anyway? A hunger. But ours is no Donner Party, we who feed only on scenery, the safest form of obfuscation: see how the bay is a gray deepening into gray, the color of heartbreak. Bernal Hill Something has to give. We stand above it all. Below, the buildings' tall but tiny narrative. The water's always near, you say. And so are you, for now. It has to do. There's little left to fear. A wind so cold, one might forget that winter's gone. The city lights are on for us, to us, tonight. The Sunset Fog, like reason, settles on the peeling district. This is the new money. The new economy. Where my lover lives. When I left him, I left books, coats, silverware. Things. it wasn't charity; it was an impure, commonplace case of forgetting. (May he find some use for my low-rent betrayals.) Land ends with miles of aloe along the Great highway. Surfers strip off their suits, half-naked to the naked sea. The sand's ignored BEWARE OF THE UNDERTOW signs: these are the notes of the drowned. Abandoned Landscapes 1. so Kansas City tucked its cock, spritzed its wig, drove to the drag show at Missie B's. 2. Night. A heater groused, a fan belted out. Oh- and there was fever and there was rash. 3. In the john, I focused heroically on the urinal cake; I tried to flush without flourish. But my gestures betrayed me. 4. I fell for the Seville-style tile of the Plaza, the oldest strip-mall on the continent. Commerce was history. 5. Fuck it. Let's smoke a pack of cloves and play the Decemberists-Picaresque, perhaps-one last time. Short Short Hard maples, then. A murder of crows. This is the Missouri of my life- almost. Everything's almost: sky, fountain, parkway. I am a literal _______. Imagine this: late solipsism, the positive blood test, the end of words. The end. Charity Starlings' racket; the staining redbud. The, a, day. I fall apart from myself-there is no one else. Charity sounds like the water-pump in the wall; my vanity, a tiny city of salves, acids and all, steep bottles with hopeful names. I am, inside. Time for the words mask, ritual, and exam. Ruin Already Judah Street awaits the rain of streetcar-whine down avenues of rain- the snap of black umbrellas, the falling coin. We strangers on the train ignore the rain, observe two boys in neon slickers run to catch their bus. Too late! Stuck in the rain, the boy who's taller smacks the smaller one, his passion given license by the rain. I had a birthday yesterday. It's mine: perversion, self-deceit, nostalgia, rain. (My stop. I'll brush against a dozen men before I disembark into the rain an older, rumpled man. If life is ruin, then let it burn like Rome, like Dante's rain.) Pure Purgatory must be like this, myopic, wet, all noise white, the ocean inexhaustible. The old woman to our right could have been a saint, clothed in layers and layers of white. And the terns, they strutted then scattered when a sopping dog ran in, then out, of the thick fog. I was grateful you had pulled me away from my dull schedule for that walk, though I, selfish to the end, could not bring myself to say so. I'll say it now, too late: purgatory will be like this: the nothingness behind us, the nothingness ahead; you and I, arm in arm- two men holding each other. Last Call A giant bird- of-paradise has climbed the bar: in this paradise there are no flowers, no flowers at all. when happy hour becomes Last Call- Adam in drag our royalty- we buy her gin for eternity (an unseen deejay scores the years with pulsing music of the spheres). Now the queen has gone, gone again in search of love, in search of sin. It's closing time. You were not at fault. I drain my glass and lick the salt.

Chapter Two

Here we go again, said Alcibiades; it's always the same. When Socrates is around, no one else can get a look-in with the attractive men. -The Symposium, TR. CHRISTOPHER GILL Pastoral My heart, my prison, lies in a landlocked town, in its queer patio-bar, ambrosia, the martinis stiff and dirty- pollen sexing the air, the smell of your hair, my fear. Syntax Those were the flannel days, after the Gainesville slayings, before the state turned permanent red, AIDS still a reason to cash in your 401(k)-in other words, the early nineties. Yikes. and I was a raver in Florida-whistle, bad skin, snazzy backpack. I learned that the rope isn't velvet; there never was a rope, just some feral queen at the door: Miss Thing, there is no guest list tonight! once in, one ate, in designated order, a few choice letters of the alphabet ... I took a choking drag of a clove. the letters tasted bitter, like love. Little Colonial Song My escort here, a Seminole, proclaims his love of Spain: a little silver crucifix dangles from his chain. "The moss is Spanish moss!" he shouts. His name is matador. Just so, he's Christian, hard to nail but easy to adore. We enter the savanna plain; mosquitoes persecute. The shrill and tuneless sound of thrush reminds me of Beirut. When night is falling on the state, we'll eat our fish and loaves of wonder Bread before we head toward dark, sequestered groves. A vulture crouches on a pine like a desktop lamp. It waits for us to sleep or leave our offal from the camp. The Lake of Nostalgia Lots of ibis; a little blue heron, that lavender neck; the lake named for Another Brit in Florida. Look at the water, beautiful and shallow, like a moral failure. Look at the time! its watch-spring like the curled tongue of a butterfly. The End of Landscape There's a certain sadness to this body of water adjacent to the runway, its reeds and weeds, handful of ducks, the water color manmade. A still life. And still life's a cold exercise in looking back, back to Florida, craning my neck like a sandhill crane in Alachua Basin. As for the scrub oaks, the hot wind in the leaves was language, Spanish moss-dusky, parasitic- an obsession: I wanted to live in it. (One professor in exile did, covered himself in the stuff as a joke- then spent a week removing mites.) That's enough. The fields of rushes lay filled with water, and I said farewell, my high ship an old, red Volvo DL, gone to another coast, another peninsula, one without sleep or amphibious music. Tonight, in flight from San Francisco- because everything is truer at a remove- I watch the man I love watch the turn of the Sacramento River, then Sacramento, lit city of legislation and flat land. I think of Florida, how flat. I think of forgetting Florida. And then the landscape grows black. Ode Because this is California- where moisture burns, and birds pick at the Pacific's thin waves with their beaks- the neighborhood never noticed the small blue-and-white house; because of the summer crowds at Ocean Beach, the dunes' graceful erosion, the wheeze of wind and train, we never gave a thought to that house, paint chipped, resembling a fish camp or a rural juke joint; because cats the size of raccoons slinked into gardens filled with green tomatoes and cilantro, the men who smoked outside of the house never seemed threatening, just tired, maybe a little drunk; because the days were never silent, and the state grew darker, and the news stained our hands- because the evenings began so leisurely that tenants sat by their windows to watch the orange trash-barges chuff past an orange sun, who would have guessed, sipping the last of his beer, that this is a halfway house, and someone will be murdered here tonight, the prisoners' advocate, shot four times in the face. the sun crashes into the sea. Night: A Fragment He knows his body's in a rage, and yet how nonchalant disease, the end here and not here, his schedule cleared. Outside, the palms are stirred; mosquitoes drone. He doesn't want the rash to spread: he swallows pills; the pills postpone. But night will not relent, The garish moon; the chills. I would just as soon we let the living go on living, James Wright said. There's nothing left to be said. Breakfast with Thom Gunn in memory, 1929-2004 We choose a cheap hotel because they're serving drinks. We drink. I hear him tell a tale or two: he thinks that so-and-so's a sleaze; and then there was the time that Milosz phoned, oh please. Another gin with lime? I want to say that once, I saw him dressed in leather, leaning on a fence inside a bar. Rather, walking to the N, I gush about his books; he gives his change to men who've lost their homes and looks: how like him, I've been told. Our day together done, I hug him in the cold. And then the train is gone. Ovid in San Francisco The ancient moon began to rise. On market street, in fierce disguise, the goddess Fama told me lies about an older man who turns to find his lover boy-then learns the boy's been lost to one who earns a seven-figure salary, who owns an urban gallery and counts his every calorie. another accidentally exposed himself to HIV: his dust became a cypress tree. The muscle queen who's wearing red to coax his husband into bed? He'll end up getting burned, she said. I promptly walked away before she told a tale of guile or gore; I stepped into Medea's store in search of anti-aging cream. Medea hummed "A Love supreme"- and in her eyes, a spiteful gleam. Ganymede on Polk Street I'm on a "date." I bring his can of beer: "I can accommodate," I reassure my ancient trick, then grab my dick, making sure I seem obscene enough. (I'm foul but beautiful.) Such is the scene: beneath the god, the polished leather of his tether, I whisper, "God"; he tries to spit into my hair. A boy for hire must take this shit. Orpheus at Caf Flore in this caf, my boy, there's an art to not looking as if you are looking for a man. First off, you're wrong to avert your eyes. Avoid the furtive. Long slowly, your book a smart prop, your mug again filled with warm milk. The night comes; it gets cold. In the corner? Yes, here I am, an old, flawlessly dressed god-my flesh grown thin- taking my little pills, drinking Earl Grey and thinking of someone just like you, to fuck. (And you of me, in turn? With luck.)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from BREAKFAST WITH THOM GUNNby RANDALL MANN Copyright © 2009 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
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