"A Fantastical Supposition"

"Perhaps you are wondering why I dragged you away from the bar," said the woman in black named Margaret.

"Yes, the question had passed through the private mental ward I call my brain," said Milford.

"I'll tell you why," she said. "If you want me to."

Would she say it was because she found him sexually attractive? As fantastical as that supposition might be? But, no…

"I will take your silence as an affirmative," she said. "And the reason I dragged you by main force away from the bar and to this table was simply that I just couldn't bear to see that ghoul Ezekiel drooling all over you. Let him find some other catamite."

"But I'm not a catamite."

"Are you quite sure of that?"

"I am quite sure of nothing."

"Let me reformulate the question. Have you ever had sexual relations with a male human being."

"No," said Milford. "But –"

"But what?"

"But I've never had sexual relations with a female human being either."

"Please don't be offended if I say I'm not surprised."

"I won't be."

"Take comfort if you will in the thought that sexual relations are invariably unpleasant."

"I will try to do that." 

Milford saw his beer glass there, and, forgetting that "he didn't drink", he picked up the glass and drank.

Sighing, for the twelve-thousandth-and-twenty-fourth time since he had unwillingly emerged from sleep long ago the previous morning, he set the glass back down, as another sad song played on the jukebox.

"Masturbation, however," said the lady, "is another matter entirely. How enjoyable to suffer as many orgasms as one can manage, and not have to share one's bed with some malodorous oaf, and to listen to his drivelings, before, during, and especially after. Not to mention his labored post-coital snoring."

"Uh," was Milford's only vocalized response.

Suddenly the waitress appeared again out of the fog of tobacco smoke, carrying her tray with two highball glasses on it.

"Oh, thank you, Ruthie," said Margaret, Margaret Blackthorne was it? "Please start a tab for me. We may be here for some time."

"Thumper said the round is on the house," said the waitress, putting down the drinks. "He said the next six rounds will also be on the house, on account of you have to put up with so much shit from all the male and lesbian and even hermaphroditic lost poets in this place, on account of you are the only truly beautiful woman in here."

"Yes, we all have our crosses to bear," said Miss whatever her name was. "Tell Thumper I thank him, and that I should like to buy you and him the shots of your choice."

"You ain't got to buy us shots, Margaret. We drink shots all the time, just to ease the horror of working here. It's like one of the perquisites of the job, even a necessity you might say." The waitress turned her gaze on Milford. She was a very short, round-faced woman with orange hair, but Milford knew that if it came to it she could beat him easily in a fight. "You better be nice to her, buddy. You don't know what an honor it is to have Miss Blackbourne invite you to sit with her at a table."

"I intend to be nice," said Milford, thinking, Blackbourne, I must remember that –

"Oh, wait a minute," said the waitress, "are you a poofter?"

"A what?"

"Are you a member of the American homosexual community?"

"Not that I know of."

"'Cause you look kind of queer."

"No, I'm only a bad poet."

"You finished with that beer by the way?"

"Oh," said Milford, and he raised his beer glass, swallowed what was left in it, and handed the glass to the waitress, who put it on her tray.

"I'll be back in five minutes or so to see if you guys need a refill," she said.

"Thank you, Ruthie," said Miss Blackbourne, not Blackthorne, and the waitress disappeared into the smoke and the babble again.

"Read the poem," said Miss Blackbourne.

"What?" said Milford.

"Theodore's poem. Read it aloud. I could use a laugh."

Milford looked at the sheet of paper on the table.

"I'm not a very good reader," said Milford. "I've been told I recite in one of those awful sing-song 'poet's voices' that poets read with."

"I would expect nothing less, and all the better. Now read."

Milford took a sip of the drink the waitress had put in front of him. It tasted like a highball, scotch and soda, not his favorite drink, but then he shouldn't be drinking at all. How many times had he already "slipped" this endless evening and night? Was it a half-dozen times? At this rate he would have enough material for a full year of AA meetings.

He cleared his throat, took a drag of his Husky Boy, lifted the sheet of paper closer to his nearsighted eyes, and began to read, aloud.

For Margaret: a Paean of Praise

They call her the Black Widow, the black widow spider

but all I desire is to sit down beside her,

to drink in her beauty, like rich red wine,

and then, having drunk it, to feel so very fine.

And were she to touch me, her flesh upon my flesh,

it would be all I could do not to get a trifle fresh,

and if she then slapped me, as I'm sure she would,

the sting would surely cause a stirring in my manhood.

Oh, Margaret, dear Margaret, goddess of gloom, 

won't you take me up into your room,

my heart beating like that of a spastic,

where we can trip the light fantastic?

Milford paused his reading, and looked at the lady, smoking her black-and-silver cigarette.

"Do you want me to continue?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, "pray continue."

Milford took a deep breath of the smoky air, and continued.

Yes, and will you allow me to enter your fleshly pocket,

to thrust and burrow deeply like a rocket

into the vast dark reaches of inner space,

or shall I be relegated to celibate disgrace?

Dear Margaret, please allow me just one chance

to stand before you with lowered pants

my trembling grasping hands outstretched,

and all my wretched soul upon you retched.

Milford put the sheet of paper down, picked up his highball and took another drink.

"Why did you stop?" said Margaret.

"I just needed a little break. There's a lot more as you can see. His handwriting is very small, and he's filled up both sides of this sheet of paper."

"Please feel free to take a rest."

"Thank you."

"And now do you see why I'm not crazy about sexual relations?"

Milford sighed again. Was this sigh the twelve-thousandth-and-twenty-fifth sigh of this long day and night's journey into endless night, pace Eugene O'Neill?

"Yes," he said, "if this poem is any indication, I can understand your, uh, disaffection."

"If you were a woman you would understand even better."

A voice spoke in Milford's brain, a familiar voice he hadn't heard in a half hour or so.

Well, I guess you better not get your hopes up, Milford, said the voice, the voice of his alter ego, named Stoney.

"Don't worry, my hopes are far from up," said Milford.

"What?" said Miss Blackbourne.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Milford. "I wasn't addressing you."

"And whom, may I ask, were you addressing?"

"A voice in my head," he said. "Myself. Part of myself. No one."

She took a good drag of her black cigarette, and then stubbed it out in the ashtray that was there.

"I'm starting to find you strangely attractive, Murphy," she said.

Yes, said the voice in Milford's head, yes! Maybe there's still a chance after all?

"I'm not so sure of that," said Milford, aloud. 

Miss Blackbourne said nothing, as yet another sad song of lost love played on the jukebox.

{Please go here to read the "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}