Just the two of us

Just the two of us - acrylic on canvas - 120 x 120 x 2 cm (47.24 x 47.24 x 0.78 in) c/o Karin Goeppert

PACKAGE TOUR

Another warm 

day in Sorrento

a couple of decades ago.

Followed by another. There were precisely

fourteen in total. Slow days

of alcoholic contemplation, out by the pool

drinking Tears of Christ, the cheapest

wine available, grapes grown on the slopes of Vesuvius.

Maybe a thousand

olive trees, I wouldn’t lie. And a Roman

bath with squirting phallic graffiti

all over its ruined walls. “Italians,”

my wife said, “apparently really love dick.”

We began to see cocks everywhere—in chalk

on brick walls, spray painted, even in

what seemed to be toothpaste—

Amalfi, Positano, later in Naples. Such over

compensation understandable

perhaps in a psychic matriarchy, the realm of Mama Mia.

“Despised and rejected,”

said the Dutch art

historian—quoting from Handel’s Messiah—

a reluctantly gay man

recently dumped by a long-time lover;

embarrassed by his life

he couldn’t stop talking about it.

We travelled over to Ravello

with him one day—he gleefully

clapping his hands, hoping we’d

bump into Gore Vidal

buying tomatoes and prosciutto crudo—

where he downed three beers

in thirty-minutes flat

then wobbled off to the bus

and waited for us there. Sadness

nearly geographic in its magnitude.

Death Valley, the Empty Quarter.

We knew him precisely fourteen days.

Breakfast and dinner included.  With a partial sea view.