Diagnosis II: Say What You're Thinking

Dr. Shastri cut off the red bleeding pimple on my small right toe. She has not yet removed the one in the angle of the two smallest toes on that foot, the older, slower-growing lesion that has yet to burst. I don't think it will prove, oncologically, very different from the other one, do you? That, I believe, was on June 24. On June 29, she called with the news that it was Kaposi's sarcoma. I saw her briefly on July 1, long enough to peek at the report on the sarcoma lesion -- it was pretty conclusive. She said I should probably go to see a specialist at once, and if money was a problem go to the Bellevue oncology clinic. Screens and so on are cheaper there. She had already spoken to my regular physician, Dr. Isaacs, and he had recommended I call a certain Dr. Yancowitz at Beth Israel. I called Dr. Isaacs' office, too, and his secretary told me, "Dr. Yancowitz is the best person for what you have." Her voice sank to a near whisper. She sounded concerned, reassuring, professional.

Look, guys, it is 2011. It is not 1986. I am not a small child. I am not a hysterical youth. You can say what you're thinking. If you are thinking "AIDS," hadn't we better say it out loud?

We really should. Because meanwhile, on June 30, the day after Dr. Shastri called me with her bombshell diagnosis, I had gone to the Chelsea STD Clinic on Ninth Avenue at 28th Street for an HIV test.

I've been there many, many times over the years for many, many ailments of an STD nature. I loathe going there for HIV tests because they were so nasty about it back in 1990, the first time I went. I'd had two very civilized HIV tests in dear, civilized Seattle and a year had gone by; it seemed a good idea for a sexually active gay man (it's 2011! Why hide this stuff?) to do this. They asked if I practcied safe sex, invariably. I said, frankly, yes for (Department of Euphemisms! Yo!) insertatory activity, no for oral sex. Other things ... um, which? They hit the roof. The guy raged at me. There was no such thing as dangerous, less dangerous, barely dangerous sex. There was safe sex and unsafe sex and that was it. Holding hands in a movie show when all the lights are low requires a condom. Got that? I didn't get that. I didn't care for it at all. And though I enjoyed, I was also a bit brought down, by the expression of utter defeat on their faces a week later when I came back for my test results (again the endless wait while the TV blared safe sex commercials designed for drug users and assorted lowlifes) and I was Negative As Usual despite having my own view of what did and did not constitute safe sex.

For the next several years I went to Jersey City for HIV tests (invariably negative), and Dr. Isaacs knew nothing about my HIV status (he offered to test me; I declined, wanting no one to know just in case -- paranoia struck deep in the AIDS years) until 1997, when I had lymphoma and it was necessary for him to know my HIV status in order to decide at what strength to blast me with chemo. Negative again! Full speed ahead, Mr. Scott. (Well, actually Dr. Gold.)

And so on as years passed and my sexuality declined and incidence of STDs declined and it became clear to me that HIV had no use for me. I was snubbed. It is my suspicion there are co-factors as yet undiscovered in persons of certain ethnicities; I'll be really bummed if I'm not around when they solve the whole story. My friend Jeannie, who has a PhD in biostatistics, says, "How come you're still alive?" Not sure. Partly: Moderation; Apollo's commandment. In the mad days, I was never a total crazy slut. Except sometimes. Got that?

I don't remember when I got my last HIV test, but I went back to 28th Street the day after I learned I had KS. What a difference two decades makes! I was one of four or five guys in the 5-8pm Thursday slot. They took the blood for the HIV test and told me to wait half an hour. They wanted to test me for other STDs, but I said, "Not necessary; I've been a very good boy." "That's what they all say." But in my case it's true. Half an hour not even feeling giddy. A change from the near trauma of my first HIV test which I was sure would be positive. This time I was quire sure it would be negative. It was. They will call in three weeks with T cell counts, etc. So now I had that card to play.

The trouble was, no one would believe me. No one even asked me. I was booked to see Dr. Yancowitz and, after a hefty wait, did. He is, like Dr. Shastri and all the orthopedists I've seen this year (three), very charming, and he wondered why the hell I was there. "I'm a contagious diseases specialist, not a cancer guy. I think you should see Dr. Malamud. I could test your T cells. That will cost in the hundreds not the thousands." Later it occurred to me this is probably repeating the test already being done for free on 28th Street. He said, "$100 is the lowest they'll let me charge you," they being Beth Israel. As specialist visits go mighty reasonable. But I was miffed. {He also told me my adored Dr. Gold is no longer at Beth Israel, which saddens me. She could cure me of anything. I am convinced of it.)

I called Dr. Isaacs' office and had trouble getting through. It's a very very busy practice. But I finally reached someone to whom I explained I'd been sent to the wrong specialist. Eventually Dr. Isaacs got on the line. "But for what you have, John, you see, since it is contagious -- "

"But it's not!" I cried. "Stop saying 'what you have' to me! I'm a grownup. It's 2011! I am HIV NEGATIVE. I have Kaposi's sarcoma! Just old-fashioned little-old-Jewish-man's disease. Not great big rashes all over my body! Just my TOE!"

"Really? HIV negative? Are you really? That's amazing, John. I can't believe it. That's wonderful news." He was clearly nonplussed. "In that case there are three specialists you could go to -- call Ron Blum. Yes. Or, you might want to contact Sloane-Kettering. They might be doing a study. It's a great surprise, you know."

My friend Anna Korn ransacked the Internet and tells me there's an uptick of KS among serionegative gay men. I think it's just old East European and East Med types, but anyway, so it be. It puzzles all the experts on KS, who are used to it being AIDS. But when I called Sloane-Kettering (a hospital my physician father always detested, by the way -- but that was in the 1970s), they said it would be a couple grand just to consult with somebody. So that expedient is on hold. Bellevue would see me at 8:45 in the morning next Friday, and their receptionist assured me it has nothing to do with AIDS and is strictly oncology, but that too I have put on hold because I want to go spend a week in Massachusetts, having been unable to get away from New York in months seems like years.

So I sent a rather surly email to Dr. Blum, explaining my case, that it was KS and NOT bloody AIDS, that I am a (no longer) sexually active gay man of a certain age, and asking if he'd see me, and he sent me (all things considered) a polite response, and I shall see him on July 28. It shouldn't have taken this long, eh? I want to know what scans he wishes to perform, what tests I should undergo, in order to find out how serious the whole thing is. And if it's spread a lot (which I do not expect) and life is going to become unpleasant, maybe I'll just pretend it never happened and go on a six-month opera and museum spree in Europe. (After finishing at least one novel.) And what it's all going to cost. Dr. Yancowitz assured me the chemo (if they do chemo) won't be remotely as overpowering as the chemo I went through for lymphoma. (I liked him. I've liked all my doctors. I even liked the staff at 28th Street. It's the waiting and dithering and confusion.)

On August 2nd Dr. Shastri will remove the other pimple, giving me two and a half day sto recover before I give Seumas a guided tour of the Met Museum (my birthday treat).

This all reminds me (just a little) of an incident back in the early days of the epidemic, c. 1982, when nobody knew what it was and everyone was terrified, hospital staffs as much as anyone. Everyone gay was terrified. I was. We all were. A guy I worked for at the time, Ted, had a terrible case of colitis, with complications, and his doctors were convinced he was gay and lying to them. So they wouldn't treat the colitis properly (contra-indicated should it be Gay Cancer), waiting for him to break down and come clean. I thought at the time (but didn't say to Ted), "If only your doctors were gay or had any gaydar at all, they'd know damn well you were straight." This skill was not taught in med schools then. Maybe still isn't. I dunno.

If the nurse on the phone's voice drops low and becomes very sweet and sympathetic, and she uses phrases like, "what you have" instead of naming names, Don't Stand For It. We're all grownups here. Say the thing. It's called AIDS. And I don't have it.

Diagnosis, or The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Head

Sh'ma Yisrael!

Do you remember 1981? I do, pretty clearly, though I was only ... never mind.

1981 is when the CDC first noticed a lot of gay men in New York and San Francisco were getting diseases (and not getting cured of diseases) that did not suit their demo. No doubt this had been happening for years and doctors had merely been puzzled. But a cluster is a cluster.

One of the two diseases was Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a perfectly dreadful way to die. The other was an obscure cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma which, doctors explained, tended to afflict elderly men (between 50 and 70 - oh, fifty was an unimaginable old age to me then!) of Eastern European or Jewish or Mediterranean backgrounds, who would treat it (there is no cure per se), live another twenty or thirty years, and die of something else entirely. But these young gay men (my age!) were getting it and it was spreading like wildfire to all sorts of organs, leading to pretty horrible deaths. Eventually - but you know this part of the story - the two syndromes proved to be one, with ramifications. I spent years with the jitters about these ailments, and I still have a list (somewhere) of eighty friends (or very casual acquaintances) who did not survive.

And I alone am escaped to tell thee. Well, not alone (thank the Gods!). I tested negative, when there were finally tests. "You must have lied to me about what you were doing," accused one old (soon to be late) friend. No, I did all that. I just didn't ... pay the price. I believe there will turn out to have been co-factors making certain people immune, but in the meantime I credit the Will of the Powers that I endure, the chance workings of imponderable Providence, low libido factor and dumb luck. (These are four verbalizations for exactly the same concept.)

And science dragged its slow (to outward view) progress and came up with, if not cures, astounding palliations and preventatives, and the human race learned a whole lot about cancers in the meantime. Such as that Kaposi's sarcoma (named for its discoverer, a Hungarian - of course - in 1872) is actually activated by a herpes virus, a discovery at my old alma mater, Columba, in 1994. Herpes is everywhere; as a disease (actually, it's many diseases), it leaves AIDS three lengths behind on the track.

So I am bumbling along minding (or not minding) my own business, and I get this infinitesimal red dot on my little toe. I noticed it in March because that's when I went to my doctor to consult about my shoulder problems and mentioned that too. He recommended an orthopedist but did not seem unduly concerned. The dot grew to large pimple size, but it never hurt and it didn't seem a strange shape (completely round) so I let it alone. Then it began to burst due to the pressure of shoes and of walking, and after a couple of days trailing blood around the house, I went to see an orthopedist, a lovely young New Jersey girl of Indian extraction. (If the doctors aren't Jewish, they are usually Indian or Chinese, eh?) She took it off with no fuss at all and very little pain, sent it out casually for biopsy, gave me antibiotic ointment and Vicodin and sent me home. That was Friday last. On the Wednesday she called me: The biopsy was in. Bad news.

Kaposi's sarcoma.

True, I've always been the soul of retro ...

But I'm HIV negative! I wanted to scream. (Went to the public clinic on 28th Street just to make sure the very next day, and yes, I'm still negative. "I don't need the rest of the tests, just HIV," I told the nurse. "I've been a very good boy." She said, "That's what they ALL say.")

And though of East European Jewish descent on, oh, 100% of my ancestry, I don't think I'm a little old man, and I practice Paganism - doesn't that count for anything?

My Birth Certificate begs to differ: I'm dead center in the demo and Jewish as they come. Sh'ma Yisrael, eh! I guess this will save me spending $200 on the ancestral DNA test cousin Karen wants me to get. (Or maybe I'll do it anyway.)

"Can I just forget about it for a few months?" I asked Dr. Shastri. She said, "No, this isn't something you want to just ignore. It might have spread all over and you just don't know about it. The digestive tract. The respiratory tract. You'll need some tests, some scans, to see if it has spread. If it hasn't, maybe it will just pop up like this occasionally ... but you never know." The problem is I have no health insurance, having no income. (AIDS would have been useful at this point. The state funds that.) I have savings, and money I've just inherited, but ... I'd earmarked that. I thought I could wait it out till Medicare set in. But I'm not quite that old.

If it's spread all over, maybe I just want to check out, but that's not easily done either. There are bridges, of course. And lots of states where it's easy to buy a gun. Or I spend the goddam money.

Death is William Tell, it occurs to me (that being the next opera I'm going to see, next Saturday night), and my head has already survived the arrow two apples' worth: The AIDS epidemic and my own personal lymphoma, fourteen years ago. It's highly unlikely I'll dodge a third as well.

Nadja says, "You didn't get AIDS so you've only dodged one apple. This is the second. I command you to live until you are ninety (two years older than my grandmother), and I'll come visit you every year in New York as soon as Wolfgang is old enough."

At the moment it is very difficult to be cheerful about it though, as you may note, it is very easy to be funny about it, as is my wont. (I was funny about lymphoma, too.) Chats with various specialists and clinics are to take place Tuesday, after the holiday. Balms bursting in air.

Over, but not out.
Omen.

Dream Journal (on-going)

I'd been appointed principal of a high school and I was agitated, nervous of ruining my job prospects, and wearing the wrong clothes (socks, jeans, plaid shirt, which made me even more self-conscious - at least I wasn't naked!) and I couldn't find my office, which was in another wing.

Everyone told me Michelle would know, and evidently she was my secretary, but I couldn't find her either. I asked many people if they were Michelle, realizing a second later that it was the same woman I'd asked the day before, and she still wasn't Michelle and was trying not to lose her temper at being asked again, although as she had many other distracting duties she wasn't mean about it. But still she wasn't Michelle. I never did find my office, or Michelle.

I was trying to organize the school play, and that wasn't an easy thing to do as it was The Ring of the Nibelung. Setting up scenery and bleachers in the gym, and auditioning singers, none of them really Wagnerian. And I kept thinking if only I could find my office and my proper agenda, things would straighten out, but I never could, it was in some other wing of the school and I couldn't find my way out of this one. I pinched a biography of Maximilian II - why him? Because I'd never read one. And was it the emperor or the king of Bavaria?

I found myself away from the crowd distracted by corridors of elegant bedrooms with elegant candles that hovered in elegant Byzantine patterns when lit. They had belonged to C.S. Lewis, who particularly liked the fact that shadows resembling their ornamental edges leaped into the air and hovered for quite some time when they were lit. I lay down on the floor to watch them being lit, and woke because someone was stabbing a rusty spike into my shoulder.

Kol Nidrei: A sort of a Jewish story

As I believe all of you know, my ignorance on the subject of Jewish traditional practice is profound. For example: The Kol Nidrei prayer, which is recited on Yom Kippur. I knew nothing at all about it except that various cantorial opera singers had left recordings of it. Its function in the liturgical year I did not know at all (since I have never participated in the yearly round).

My good friend Veronika (who left St. Petersburg for New York fifteen years ago) gives piano lessons. She has great musical feeling and one of her Russian pupils, who has a half-grown son who studies the cello, begged her to listen to that son and give him advice. "And what do I know about the cello?" she said. But she knows a lot; she has an ear; she's a musician. So she gives him cello lessons. One of the pieces she had the young man play was the Kol Nidrei, in Max Bruch's setting for cello. And he played it as if it were an exercise, a bunch of notes on the page. His father said to Nika, "How can I get him to give it some feeling?"

So Nika sat down with the boy and told him the story of Kol Nidrei as she knew it, a story I certainly didn't know: That it was the prayer spoken/chanted/sung by the Portuguese Jews when Queen Isabella of Portugal (daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain) ordered them to become Christians, entreating forgiveness if they yielded or submitting if they were martyred. "And why is it all in minor and then at the end major?" she asked the guy. "Because they know if they submit and are killed, their souls will be raised up and united to God." By the end of this, the student was in tears, and played the Kol Nidrei, and his father said to Nika, "What did you say to him? It's totally different! It means something now!" So she told him the story, too.

Then she told it to me. I had never heard it. "But how did you know it?" I asked her. Nika's family were Soviet atheists (her grandmother was French), and as far as anyone knew, they were gentiles. "But I have this face, and this attitude towards music – so I think I must be Jewish somewhere back there. And when I was growing up, they would shout, 'Zhidovka morda!' at me [Jewish mug!], so if I don't have the blood, I acquired Jewishness that way. I got to identifying with it."

Then I went home and Googled Kol Nidrei, and it has nothing to do with the Marranos and the forced conversions (though the belief that it does is widespread). The prayer is centuries older than that (and it's in Aramaic, which implies an origin in Iraq), however, si non e vero, e bene trovato: If it's not true, it makes a good story. A really good symbol (like a really good faith) has no absolute meaning, and acquires ever new meanings over the centuries. Kind of like great music.

How Honest Should One Be About HIV Status

These are thoughts that came to me on reading an HIV positive friend's blog post for POZ magazine, about his affair with a guy who was HIV negative, about how frank to be, about the necessity of total honesty. He began by reflecting on telling truth to one's parents, as seen in an episode of Valerie c. 1981, where her son wanted a condom:

How old was Valerie's kid supposed to be? and presumably he didn't want the condom for receptive anal sex? and what teenager with anything to tell is totally frank with a parent? Truth in such cases is surely on a "need to know" basis (as when I went to my physician father with an STD).

I often wonder if I'd tell the truth to guys I lusted after, if I were HIV positive. (If they happened to ask. Or if they didn't - another question entirely.) I think I would tell them the truth, if they asked, if they didn't ask. I'm not at all sure. When guys tell me they are HIV positive, I say, "That just means we won't do things (i.e. unprotected anal) that I don't do any more anyway." I remember a handsome fellow in a bar in Munich in 1991 who told me he'd just been flirting with someone else, and the someone else walked away as if offended when he'd mentioned his being positive, not even saying something polite. I found that incomprehensible. And this was a sweet guy who didn't have to tell the truth.

But sometimes, in a casual flirtation leading to bed, neither of us brings it up. Which is hot, but also ... nervous-making. Do they not care? Do I not care? Do they not care what I think? Do they assume I'm the same status as themselves? It raises all sorts of questions later on that I prefer not to have raised, so I usually mention my status. But not always. It's very hard to set up rules on this sort of thing. It's more human to go by the situation. And the oral stats are ... imprecise. (And I've been doing it for a long time since the epidemic started.)

Ages ago, twenty years or so, I had a big fight at the NYC AIDS clinic where I'd gone for an annual HIV checkup. I'd admitted I didn't use condoms for oral sex. The testing guy was furious at me. We got briefly heated. But the kicker was the expression on his face when my results came back: Negative again. (and I was doing a lot of casual sex in those days, undoubtedly with many positive guys) He looked so defeated. I never went to that testing place again.

Defeated. But whose victory?

Hell (or, FML)

What would Hell be for me?

Being obliged to watch a very long movie (no refreshments, no intermissions, no potty breaks) of my life, my every move, my every moment, my every betîse, my every humiliation, working itself inexorably out. Not suffering the pains perhaps, but all the embarrassments and humiliations.

Around me - silence, darkness? Emptiness? or - would this be worse - more Hellish - if the darkness were filled with the rustles, the yawns, the coughs, the candy wrappers and slurps (even sounds of making out) of a vast anonymous audience? or would it be worse to know that audience, to have them be everyone I've ever known and cared for? I think that would be Dante-esque (without the terza rima.

A Seasonal Greeting for All Denominations (this means you)

Send Pointless Greeting Cards Day!
© John Yohalem, Yule 2010

As you will no doubt recall, Send Pointless Greeting Cards Day, a moveable but semi-constant Feast of the Consumerist faith, commemorates the time when H.M. King Whicheversoever Ist sought the hand of Queen Comesedice in marriage. From afar – her throne in a neighboring kingdom – she had spurned earlier offers of matrimony and his various showy and expensive gifts, and he was at his wits’ end.

“What words could pierce the hard heart of this obdurate female!” he cried out (in apostrophe, hence no question mark required). And at that instant it came to him that if he sent her an elegant and distinctive seasonal card (by the public mails instead of in an all-too-traceable embassy communiqué), it might (if sufficiently eloquent and attractive) do the trick and win the lady.

Accordingly, equipped with calligraphic pens, colored pencils, a dab of glue, a few pots of espresso (with alcoholic addenda inmixed) and hardly any kibitzing by the Royal Ghostwriter, who merely held the king’s wavery hand over the card stock and whispered encouraging “Hmm’s” and “Err’s” and the odd “Meh,” by the following morning, H.M. had achieved the ideal seasonal card, expressing wishes of Joy, Health, Prosperity, Fine Weather and other January unlikeliness, plus his shy request for an intimate interview at the lady’s earliest convenience, and after searching high and low about the palace in a caffeinated and sleep-deprived dither for both (a) a passably clean envelope, and (b) the lady’s address (both having been misplaced by the housemaid repairing the all-night kaffee-klatch – or so the king alleged at the time), he then (to preserve face against any possibility of unsuccess) secretly and incognito departed the palace by a side door and hasted him to the Royal Post Office to mail the thing unbeknownst to any other parties.

At the said P.O., lines not being interminable due to the not-yet-existent nature of the Holiday Season that his actions were about (in fact) to inaugurate, H.M. soon found himself confronted at the window, by an appropriately cool public servant, a certain Madamigella Posta Restante by name (as our painstaking research has discovered).

“We, I mean, that is to say, I,” said the king, recollecting that he was supposedly incognito, “wish to send this missive, by the quickest possible method, return receipt requested.”

“Is it ‘We’ or is it ‘I’?” the postmistress enquired.

“Does it make the slightest difference?” asked the king, impatiently.

“We have a special rate for royals – note that by ‘We’ I mean the Post Office,” she remarked – without the least little jot of unbecoming deference. To the ideal public servant, the public are all equal. It is the rate card that adjusts matters.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind saving some change, so yes, I admit it, I’m royal – in fact, in this country, I’m the royal. So do I get a discount?” said the king.

“You have, I suppose, the proper identification papers about you?” Miss Restante countered. (This was when they still had counters at the Post Office, and she was at one, but it was before “Ms.” came into general use as a form of address.)

“Really, Miss – what’s the name? Restante? – my identity should be quite obvious,” said the king. “I am none other than King Whicheversoever,” and he gestured at his royal portrait, which naturally hung on the wall of every governmental office in the land. To his dismay and annoyance, he saw that this office displayed an old portrait, with a beard – in fact, it depicted his father, gone, lo, these seventeen years come April. “That’s not my portrait!” cried the king. “That’s Dad! King Whoseywhatsis IVth. He’s dead!”

“Looks a heckuva lot more regal than you do,” the postal clerk retorted. “We gave the new official portrait a gander and decided not to hang it. We’ll try again when you grow a beard. Now, if you have no personal identification about you, I’ll have to be asking you to shove off. There’s a whole raft of genuine customers behind you.”

“There is not any such thing!”

“But there might be customers at any time. I have to be ready for them – no pointless delays. This is the Post Office,” she said, a pleasant smile playing – well, nowhere near her lips, actually. It was as if it occurred to her to smile, but the expression had been discarded as unprofessional. Sensitive visitors might interpret it as a sneer, which would never do. So she never smiled. But her pencil tapped impatiently.

“Oh, look at a stamp!” cried the king. “My face is all over those! In uniform and several colors! It’s said to be an acceptable, not too flattering likeness!”

“It does resemble you, now that I study it,” she admitted at long last, having finally found a three-quarter profile (14 simoleons, carmine lake, watermarked) under a bunch of sports commemoratives and a set featuring colorful common leaf moulds.

“Then can I have the royal discount?” asked the king, already wondering if the few cents saved could possibly be worth the aggravation.

“Discount? What discount? For royalty, we charge more,” said the maddening – but disturbingly efficient – Miss Restante. “This dude,” she continued to an – entirely imaginary – confidante at her side, “wants a royal discount. Can you beat it?”

“All right, all right!” cried the king. “I’ll pay the extra freight, under protest! Just get it to Queen Comesedice in the neighboring kingdom before she marries somebody else, will you?”

“Temper! Temper!” said Miss Restante, levelly. “I can’t possibly guarantee Her Highness’s inclinations; we’re merely the Post Office. Now if you’ll fill out this Customs Form –”

“Customs Form! It’s just a Greeting Card!” cried the exasperated king, tearing his hair to the point where it nearly matched his nonexistent beard.

“Never heard of such a thing. If it crosses the border, we require a Customs Form,” said the postmistress, implacably. “Greeting cards” was a phrase with a nasty edge to it as far as the post office was concerned. And you can’t say she wasn’t prescient.

“Well, you’re going to hear of it! Because I am proclaiming the last month of the year – every year – from now to the end of Time As We Know It – Greeting Card season! And we will all send these pointless things to our loved ones on any conceivable excuse so that people will remember my hopeless passion for Queen Comesedice and sigh with resignation – as I do.”

“Hopeless? You mean you’re giving up all hopes of matrimony?” said the clerk. (“Not that I’m surprised,” she muttered under her breath.)

“With the queen, yes,” said the king. “I really need someone less – indecisive – someone efficient – someone able to handle the public, no matter what its complaints. In fact, I need a queen exactly like you, my dear. In fact, I am proposing to you. Give up your job and come to the palace and reign at my side, and we will mail ten thousand of these puppies to all and sundry on every blessed or unblessed occasion!” he cried, happy and decisive for almost the first time in his life.

“I’m terribly flattered,” said Posta Restante, though she did not sound anything of the sort. She sounded flat, not flattered. “I’m really very sorry,” she said, “but I have no intention of giving up my pension to marry a beardless fellow who can’t even look me in the eye, crown or no crown, in any color or value, and has a watermark on his reverse to boot.”

Whereupon she slammed the window in his face, as it was time for her break.

This is a True Story! By which I mean, I feel confident you’ll never look it up and find out I invented it whole cloth, just now, while thinking of you and searching for your address and a stamp.

Wishing you a Very Merry Occasion!
– and the postage wherewith to celebrate it.