Vinum Sine Gravitas (with Apologies to Isaac for my Latin)

The night before I left New York, my dad and I were playing a lovely game of Find the Poem (i.e. Oo, oo, you've really never read "Visit to St. Elizabeth's"? No child of mine's going to misquote "Mending Wall," get over here!). Just as we were feeling as elevated as hopheads climbing the Transamerica Pyramid, my mom came home from being sold. My mom loves Barnard so much that she was willing to auction off an evening of her time to benefit the college. She rang the doorbell when she returned, as she was neither sober enough nor dressed loosely enough to carry keys. "Hi Mom," I said as I let her in. "I'm a very good whore," she informed me, "I went for $11,500." This proved to be an accurate figure in the cold light of dawn; the winner was a book club in Westchester.

I asked her if she wanted to join our little poetry circle (line?) and she was very eager. Until, that is, she heard that the next poem on the docket was Milton's poem to Oliver Cromwell. "Fine," she said, "Go ahead and memorialize the murderer of thousands of Catholics," and proceeded to make unsubtle gagging noises and motions throughout the first stanza until I yelled. After that she sat stock still with her lips pursed into a fish face to show that she was not making gagging noises.

All of which is to say that I miss my parents.