A lady tells me she loves my black down skirt and I say 
I love your coat! And I do! Cheyney says this kind  
of backatcha, babe! response is too easy, undoes 
the kindness. Some German told him you should just  
take it, say thanks, or you’re screwing it up. I tell him No,  
Italians say Grazie VUOI, or No, thank YOU, and  
Wait, so you’re trusting the GERMANS on joy? A praise  
economy: sort of like what Gaby calls it, maybe what  
I call making strangers happy with my face, stranger  
faces grinning back at me, their winks and chin jerks, our 
sweethearts and hons. And the men by the park who call  
me mami, say they want to go home with me. I’m going  
to the park! I offer, chipper; what am I thinking? It doesn’t  
matter, they never come along. These dumb things we  
can say to each other are the whole point of leaving the house.  
Except to buy books for Dave and Sarah, whose key we forgot  
to give back in New Orleans, and pick up scallops for early  
supper in front of a new tv. Oh, and work, I guess, seeing  
five thousand year old Sumerian tablets, giving Kim  
the hot librarian glass Mardi Gras beads, telling Sophie  
the frustrated sophomore to give the sonnet another shot, but  
she’s super either way. Even just a list of their names enriches  
me, I’m thinking, reaching for each man’s death diminishes me,  
and almost getting there. We watch Natasha Lyonne on the new  
tv telling Nick Nolte she wants to go back, undo her friend’s  
death, or understand it, and we are sobbing, laughing at how pat  
it is, how these tears undo nothing yet. They undo nothing, but 
keeping it in can’t do us any good. Telling the truth, telling  
the people we love that we love them, like telling all the ladies  
I love their cute coats, must be doing something right. Right?