It could be verse

Now that the screamingly funny Cause Celeb series is on hiatus (hopefully not forever), there's a void of shame and mortification in New York City to be filled. As the folks at Cause Celeb were quick to remind us, the only thing that separates us from celebrities is a book deal.

This week Time Out New York reported that Freddy's Bar, which I used to live next door to, in Prospect Heights, holds Cringe Nights, where ordinary people with excessive shame and mortification get up and read from their teenage journals. Not surprisingly, I have a giant Rubbermaid tub full of those journals--30 or so formerly blank books full of inky angst from the age of 13 on. But, really, does anyone want to hear what my favorite song of the day ("More, More, More for the 29th week in a row!") was or submit their cochlea to my inept verse?

You do? Well, here's a taste. But don't swallow, cause you don't know if it's bitter or sweet.

Grenadine

(1979)

The redness which I see
As it pours over the gin
Is an illusion--yes?
The wine-red brilliance--
For it is sweet--
Sparkles and effervesces.
But the gin is bitter,
Has been sweetened;
And the lucid fluid
Is impregnated with grenadine.
"Ah, the taste!" or is it--
"Ah, the taste"?
Which do I believe--
The bitter or the sweet?

What the--? Impregnated? With grenadine? Well, I was 16 and dating a girl at the time, but the thought of impregnating her, with or without grenadine (made from the pomegranate, a fertility symbol), is just too disturbing, not to mention unlikely. Now, there were some guys on the wrestling team that...well, anyway.

At that age I don't remember whether I'd ever even tasted gin, much less grenadine. I do remember, though, that I was reading a lot of T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath and struggling with my homosexuality.