imaginations. I have nothing against birds, but can you imagine one -- sitting on bough-- and wondering what it would be like not to be a bird? As I say, I have nothing against them, because I wouldn’t want some animal rights activist getting mad at me. So let me just say I’m sure birds have feelings. But there is thinking and there is feeling -- and then there is imagining. And it’s certainly no reason to be nasty to birds, really, I like them, and think of them often, because Lear says -- when he and Cordelia are on their way to prison -- that they are like two birds in a cage, and that’s his imagination, which is really only denial, and that’s the difference between him and a bird. But all that aside — I’m not really concerned about birds here, but about the imagination. I’m in Montreal now because I have to be. And it’s a curfew and I haven’t talked to many people about anything, as there really is no one to talk to. I managed to engage the cab driver in conversation and he told me ‘a lot of people are very distressed by all this’ or something to that effect ('distress' may be my word, not his). And when I went to order a pizza I asked if they were open until 7:30 and the guy let loose: ' NO! We’re open after 7:30! Everyone thinks we’re closed at 7:30 -- because of this curfew! But we’re open late for delivery, okay?’ I tired to sympathise. And then he said, with some exasperation: “Will you please tell your friends?’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t any friends in Montreal, except the men I have sex with, but I’m not having sex with anybody these days (though a guy on Grindr just responded to my ‘hey’ with another ‘hey’ — but that may be about as sexy as it gets). So when I was walking in Montreal yesterday I looked at the Jacques Cartier Bridge — which was all lit up— and, really, I thought, would anyone in Toronto ever think to light up a bridge? And then I was left with only my imagination, which is all I have really. So it’s snowing in Montreal and I’m sitting looking out at a parking lot where occasionally people trudge by carrying sad little bags, wearing sad expressions — or they would be, if their faces weren’t covered by masks. And all I can do is dream of the way the city was last summer, when the bars and bathhouses and streets were open, and I was running around showing my ass to people with my pants down, literally, and following people out of parks into alleys and almost having sex, and then really having sex late at night with really hot guys beside fences in abandoned car parks that were later locked up (was it because of us?). And then bathhouses which I can’t even begin to describe — but I do remember the boy who balanced a pretty large chocolate chip cookie on top of his erect penis and dared me to eat it, and I did, even though I ‘m on a diet. And the other boy, who when he found out my real age pounced on me, calling me ‘Grandaddy!’ And the beautiful queen who made me hold his dog (sounds like a metaphor, doesn’t it?) because crack addicts were always trying to steal it. And he was gorgeous in a kind of renegade, dangerous ‘don’t touch me’ sort of way. And he called me sir. I haven’t been called sir — in a sexual context — in quite a while. So I can imagine all that, and that’s what separates us from animals — not, as Aristotle imagined, reason. It’s our capacity to wonder why we are here, and to ask that big question, the very biggest question of all — which is how can I get outside myself and look at myself, or will I always be inside who I am, and will I have to wait until I die to get another perspective? And will death be a "rather gloomy merging into everything’’as Amanda says in Private Lives (and then Eyot says — “I hope not, Im a bad merger’). I think of these characters because they are as real to me as day, and Fran Liebowitz said in her TV program (by the way I think it’s so great that she’s on Netflix because some people I would imagine have never seen a creature such as her) — that the real aristocracy is not made up of rich people but of people who agree with Fran Liebowitz. For me it is an aristocracy of those with tremendous imaginations. And you don’t have to be smart or an actor or a writer to have one. David Pond, who I was in love with — and who I haven’t sufficiently eulogised here — was a doe eyed, pale skinned punk who died of AIDS, and who we all loved, and who I finally got to go to bed with (and who I probably could have gotten AIDS from because he wanted to use spit: ‘oh come on, the old spit and push why not?’). He told me the most wonderful stories about Ottawa where he grew up. He used to pick up gay men on ‘the hill’ where all the gay bureaucrats — and I suppose elected officials — cruise at night. But this was about David Pond’s imagination. He told me that just before his cat died she hid in a corner for awhile and when he finally found her she gave him a look that said "I just can’t take it any longer, it’s time for me to go.” I always remember that, because David spoke exactly the way his cat would have spoken, and he fervently believed that cat had spoken to him. I am reading all the novels of Elizabeth Von Armin now, and she is here, beside me, and she is definitely part of the aristocracy of imagination, and when I read her in the tub, I am having a charming visit with my other self, only unlike myself, she surprises me, which is why we like other people, or love them. And now I’m feeling guilty for what I said about birds. And it’s not simply because the people who have the best imaginations of all are animal rights activists. It’s just — alright — perhaps birds are like us and do have imaginations. But they need not dream of flying, and they would not. So I imagine they dream of another form of transporting themselves, one which is not present in our imaginations but only in their’s. And where do they transport themselves to? To a place where Elyot and Amanda from Private Lives, and David Pond, and Elizabeth von Armin are having tea together, and the boy who balanced that cookie will be providing ‘refreshment.’ Would you like to join us?
