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The Day Allen Ginsberg Died

It was a cold morning. The laundry was hanging out for a blue Monday. Christopher Street's last aging gossip called me up collect, telling me about the latest fashion show, the new awful off-off-Broadway plays, then about his tri-semester love affairs, and the rest of the Village gossip.

Forgive me, George. I left the phone while he was talking and finished my wash, took a shower, carried the linens downstairs and out onto the weather-beaten morning.

I remembered to pick up some tickets for a friend to the latest politically correct benefit. Taking my skeptical pen and writing my journal over a cup of peppermint tea and a cinnamon roll, I saw a pal of Ginsberg who was wearing a saffron robe.

"Tobias, what's with the dressing up?"

"I felt religious this morning. Every time someone Blakean dies, I do the robe thing."

"It's so big. Two people can get into it."

"Try."

"No, I'm not an exhibitionist."

I noticed on his T-shirt were words from Songs of Experience.

"Carry on, Tobias."

I remember Tobias when he would streak across the Charles River, at every anti-war rally. Whenever there was an event I would run into him. But when he was gay-bashed at a bar in Cambridge, he never recovered his certain laughter.

I went home and, predictably, George was still on the line. He was talking about phone sex and how Jerome, now Jemima, got an implant. I suddenly put down the phone.

The wash was dry. A neighbor offered me black tulips. I said Kaddish aloud and went to sleep.

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