The Visit

A few episodes into Love is Blind, and now a second millennial has responded to the acceptance of his proposal with Lezzzgooo! I’m embarrassed, and I wonder if any of my forefathers felt the same way about Huzzah! and suddenly I’m whuuuaaauuuhwing, and I’m in a nightgown and a cap, and my feet are bare, and I think, Where’s my little candle? and I’m beside a candlelit table where a man about my age writes in a large volume with a quill, and I wonder if he’s writing fiction, and it’s so cold in this dark wood room, my bum shivers, and I wonder what it looks like through my nightgown, and I remind myself he’s family, and I look harder at his face for resemblance, and I see fear, he’s holding his chest and breathing fast, and as he calms he directs a whispered prayer somewhere above me, and he welcomes me and offers ale, and I turn it down politely, progenically, and his eyes sparkle as he says he has so many questions, and I say I’ll answer as many as I can, within reason, but first I want to know the price of milk these days, and he looks at me confused and says, The cow? and I realize I can speak his language, and I think it sounds like French, and I remind myself to ask where we are, what year, and I’m suddenly excited to tell him about internet pornography, and I do, I tell him how they sculpt these women according to our appetites, and it’s hard to tell if some of them are even real, and they’re always in my pocket … but I don’t watch, I’ve been sober sixteen months, I feel so clean, and I wait for him to embrace me, or at least acknowledge my accomplishment, but he doesn’t seem to comprehend the weight of it, my virtue, and I tell him it’s something I’ve had to earn over seven years of loneliness, and he looks at me like he’s never heard the word before, loneliness, and I realize that he might be incapable of understanding me, or at least my battle with pornography, and I feel misunderstood, and I explain how big a deal it is for guys my age nowadays, to abstain, and not only is he judging me, I think, but now he’s playing with his quill, waving it with his wrist, watching it drag on the air, nodding through my try at context, at perspective, and now I think that maybe I’m the one misunderstanding in this miracle, and I feel entitled, or ungrateful, and I ask him to tell me about himself, and I see he has no leg below one knee, and I say, Tell me about that leg, and he sits up on his stool and says with hoping eyes, When does this war end? and I feel myself frowning, and I see him mirror me, and I look around the room and see the dirty lump that must be his bed, and I realize it’s straw I’ve been smelling, and I feel so unprepared, so sympathetic, and I say, Just a few more days now, Pop Pop, and as I’m pulled into another whuuuaaauuuhw, I watch the lights parading through my technicolor hands like ants, and I realize I don’t know whether America’s at war or not.