In a way, in a deeply weird way, my moth...

In a way, in a deeply weird way, my mother fixed us up. I’d made up my mind last month, it was going to be the last time I went out there, to that sad creepy place they called Ward A: Ward A for Alzheimer’s. It sounds terrible, that I wasn’t going to come back, but it isn’t, because she does not know me. She thinks I’m the aide, or the man she once screwed on a cruise ship, or the undertaker at her last husband’s funeral. Apparently she had him right then and there, on his desk, while he was trying to sell her a top of the line casket for husband number five. Talk about TMI! No wonder I was freaking out in the hallway, thinking I am not ever coming back to this f#@king freak show when this cute male nurse came by and took me to the cafeteria. Jerry, he was so… calm, you know? Some people just have the gift.

He looked concerned, not that phony professional type, the kind of look they give you when looking concerned is part of their fucking job description. And then he got specific, like he knew that was the only way my mind would slow down; he made me follow him, dropping little breadcrumbs of logic, a trail leading me out of chaos into order. He knew what to say: “This happens all the time. They may not even be real memories. Nobody knows.” And then, he started to cite… research.

What can I say? Science makes me hot. And there we were. Our eyes locked onto each other for dear life, and we ended up in that old cliché of TV medical shows everywhere, in the supply closet, making love in a room full of catheters, bed pans, and the biggest supply of Depends I’d ever seen. That was date number one. Well, I count it as a date. Date number two, I took him out. Cabaret night. The music of Mister Cole Porter…. There is nothing more romantic than Mister Cole Porter. Mother practically raised me on Cole Porter. Went to sleep in the cradle with her singing “Begin the Beguine.” Mister Porter was such a part of my life, when I lost my virginity I could hear myself singing, “When you are screwed by Carlo Levine”….Maybe it was just the music, but… Jerry and me, we made love at my place for about six-times longer than I’ve been able to make love since the Clinton administration. Without a pill or anything. Just…Cole Porter and Jerry. Date number three, I thought for the first time ever, this could be The One. The One to Keep.

It’s not as if I planned it, or anything, but when he asked me about my mother, I told him that I’m adopted. I had to. So he wouldn’t be looking at me for signs, every time I forgot where I put my keys. So he wouldn’t look at me the way I look at her… if we ever…if we could have… a future.

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