9 January 1999: LOVE! LOVE! Love, love, love...

I am madly in love folks. Yes, you heard it here first. I am in love! Isn't it wonderful!? Who cares if that guy from M's party, who has my number, never calls? Who cares if that guy from P's party never emails. I have the love I need now.

I am in love wih Salina, the Indian register clerk at the Duane Reade around the corner from my house. [I call it a house even though it's a four-storey, 16-flat, old-law tenement, nonfireproof-type building.]

Salina is always there when I traipse in at Midnight. When I need a snack or toilet paper, or anything in between. (There's a lovely image for ya.)

Salina is a delight. She always smiles. She opens the register when she sees me coming, or if the other women are busy. She apologizes if she is not paying attention when you approach with your purchases. She says things like, "Good to see your!" and "Have a nice day!" even at midnight.

Love her, love her, love her. L-O-V-E H-E-R, love her, love her, love her.

Salina has not restored my faith in New York as a services-oriented city, but she has proved that not every person working at Duane Reade is a moron. That's usually the only qualification to work there. It transcends age, gender, and race. I must admit I have never seen any white folks working there, except for a pharmacist. This is not to say that there aren't plenty of stupid white folks out there disserving us. They just don't work at Duane Reade, convincing me that those cheap prices come from being real skinflints and cheating minorities out of better wages. I think a lot of the people working at Duane Reade are immigrants who simply don't know English, so they don't qualify as morons. Their bosses do. Who hired service people who don't know English? Well, everyone in New York. So I find myself asking for aspririn and Kaopectate, having to explain what those products do and why I need them, and then having to go into pantomime, and then hearing, "We don't have that."

But then there's Salina. She's like that one good spirit left in Pandora's Box after all the evil ones get out into the world and take clerk positions at Barnes & Noble, McDonald's, Blockbuster, A Different Light, and Hudson News.


I had to go downtown but I went to the thrift store first to pick up a book I saw there last week. It was Charles Silverstein's Man to Man: Gay Couples in America, which came out in 1980. I read the inscription and I just had to buy the book. It was written on March 4, 1981, and said:

Happy Birthday Babe,

Hope the next quarter century will bring you everything you want.

Love always,

Marc

I had been haunted by that since I read it a few days earlier. I have to wonder what brings "love always" to the shelf of a thrift shop devoted to AIDS charities. What? Well, it's not too hard to imagine. AIDS or a break-up. I'm not sure what's sadder, love lost or lost love's token's living on waiting to be found one day. I'm a big mushpot.


I met L and her new beau, P, tonight. P is very nice. He cooks. He cleans. He has a cat. He has only been here a week and he has a library card and has taken books out.

He ain't the typical straight man.

He is a Californian, though. Anyway, I, the most critical man in New York City, have no complaints. There is something very special about witnessing true love that warms the people around it rather than making them envious. So, welcome, P, welcome. We are all glad you're here.

Next entry... Veni Vedi Brini

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