Early to Bed

Looky, there's a woman-owned, woman-operated,

woman-oriented sex shop called Early to Bed in Chicago,

of all places, and while I don't think I’d be happy in a sex shop,

although how would I know since I've never been in one,

I personally don’t feel the need for a lot of plastic and metal

gizmos with straps and little whirring motors. Brrrt! If you’re

crazy about somebody, it’s not as though you need

a lot of power tools, and if you aren’t crazy about somebody,

shame on you for taking up valuable time that could have

been devoted to so many other pastimes, yours or hers.

Or his. Or theirs, depending on how many people you are

or aren’t crazy about. Sex should be a little gamey,

don’t you think? Sex should be a grown-up version of something

you got in trouble for when you were a kid,

like shoplifting candy bars, and not a trip to Dad’s workshop.

Sex should be like selling your soul to the devil or starring

in a movie of your life, only it’s a noir movie.

If you sell your soul to the devil, you have to go to the cemetery

and bring back dirt in a bottle and take it to a fork

in the road and sit there until a rider comes by so fast that he tosses

you around like a scarecrow in a tornado, and if you star

in a noir movie, that means you’re not a detective

but a victim or suspect or perpetrator such as a private

investigator, aging boxer, hapless grifter, law-abiding

citizen lured into a life of crime, or victim of circumstance

dealing with a system that’s no less corrupt than

the perpetrator by whom the protagonist is victimized

on a daily basis, leading to a lose-lose situation,

although it’ll be a win-win situation if you’re having sex

with someone you’re crazy about and vice versa.

Distorted shadows! Grasping hands! Exploding revolvers!

Sadistic villains and heroines tormented by deeply

rooted diseases of the mind in a panting display

of psychoneurosis, unsublimated desire, and murder

most foul! Okay, not all that, but still. There needs

to be something a little off about sex. There’s

a book called The Joy of Sex, and it’s just hideous.

The people depicted in it are somehow both saccharine

and robotic at the same time, as though they’ve

been ordered to have sex by some bloodless third-world

despot. And the drawings of the genitalia—vile!

Why, in real life, they’re quite beautiful. Take penises,

for example. Aren’t they wonderful? The long ones

curl up into the air like the tendrils of some extraplanetary

fern in one of those fifties outer space movies. And even

the short ones are well-favored and fun to have around,

like the guys in high school who didn’t make the team

but cheer on the sidelines or sell sodas and hot dogs

and donate the proceeds to the yearbook. And the vagina:

what mystery! What allure! Rose petals! Sea shells—coral!

Who wouldn’t want to have a vagina or be best friends

with one, and not just any vagina, either, but one

that gets five stars every time from you, the vagina expert!

Yet the penises in The Joy of Sex are either too large

and scary or else scrawny and an unhealthy pink like

those weenies you get at the Family Dollar store,

and the vaginas remind you of the expired salad greens

the manager told the stock boy to toss into the dumpster

behind the Winn Dixie, only he took basketball shots

and missed half of them, and all that frisée and radicchio

has been lying in the sun all day, and now nobody

wants it. Vaginas, you’re wonderful! You deserve better,

and so do you penises as well. Instruction manuals

are overrated anyway, unless you’re talking about

The I Hate to Cook Book or Europe on $5 a Day.

It’s said that frontier houses only had two books,

the almanac and the Bible, the one to get you through

this life, the other to prepare you for the next.

No Joy of Sex out there in Wyoming! Not in the nineteenth

century, at least. Instruction manuals lead to happiness,

not joy. Derek Walcott asked Adam Zagajewski if he believes

in happiness, and Mr. Zagajewski said no, that happiness

is for the Declaration of Independence and Disney movies.

But he does believe in joy, which is “an illumination, as in

Blake and Wordsworth and Rilke, a benediction, a visitation.”

I don’t have anything against Early to Bed. It’s just that

I’m almost never in Chicago. If I were in Chicago,

would I go there? Probably not. An online review says

there’s a “great selection of harnesses,” but I don’t really

need one of those right now.  I do like that there’s

“definitely no penis lollypops or other annoying

bachlorette party gifts” as well as a sign that says

“Please touch, fondle, and turn on the toys,”

although of course I read that as “turn on the boys.”

Ha, ha! Isn’t that the whole point? And the girls, too,

and the whatevers. I’m a whatever man myself,

meaning whatever works for you is fine with me.

Just because I have no need for an “unusually large

selection of BDSM gear with studded collars and hand

restraints” doesn’t mean you shouldn’t load up

your shopping cart. By now I’m not as much of a Cotton Mather

as I was at the start of this poem, but I’m still something

of a tightwad, and therefore my heart sings when

the reviewer says that the products at Early to Bed

are “very reasonably priced” and that “toys I have seen

elsewhere for almost twice as much were surprisingly

low-priced—not sure how they do it but it’s great to see,

especially since these toys can be very expensive!”

The doors to Early to Bed open at noon daily—whoa!

Somebody’s sleeping it off, right? But they close

at eight p.m. (six on Sunday). I would have you

pass through those doors, reader, or through whatever

doors you need to pass through to get to wherever

you’re going, and may you see there a town lit with ruby

and lathed with down, stiller than the fields at full dew.

Holy the solitude of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy

the cafeterias filled with millions! Holy the mysterious

river of tears under the streets. And may a voice speak

to you like a trumpet, saying,  “Come, and I will show you

what’s next,” and may you see a figure on a throne,

and may that figure be your beloved, and may your beloved

be as of jasper and tourmaline. And may you want your

beloved to pull your shirt over your head in a single motion,

and may your beloved do just that. May your beloved

bite your ear, and may you want that as well. And may

you, too, be early to bed or to whatever. To couch, desk,

kitchen counter, just as long as you’re both on the same

page or same counter! To Dad’s workshop, as long as

Dad’s not there, unless, of course, you’re Dad—hi, Mom!

“Does it really matter what these affectionate people do,”

said English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell to a colleague

who complained that an older actor showed entirely

too much affection for the leading man, “so long as

they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses?”

Early to bed, then. But early to rise? Forget it!

Let Me Put It This Way

I’m getting madder by the minute at my fellow human beings,

because even though I pick up their trash during my morning walks,

lately it seems as though there is more and more of it every day,

as though a kid starts to toss his candy wrapper on the sidewalk,

and his mother reproves him, and the kid says, “It’s okay, Mom,

that poet guy will pick it up.” But just this morning I found

a prayer card titled “True Depiction of Christ According

to the Scriptures,” which is where I learn that Our Savior’s

“head and hairs were white like wool,” according to the Book

of Revelation, “as white as snow,” which makes me think

I look pretty much like Jesus myself, though the resemblance

ends there, I’m so sure. Also, what about all the trash

people gather and leave beside the trash bin? What’s with

that? Do they gather that trash and take it over to the bin

and throw it on the ground, and when their husband or wife

says, “Honey, you should put your trash in the receptable,

that’s what it’s for,” do they reply, “Naw, baby, I’m just

gonna leave it right here. Don’t you worry—that poet

will be along real soon, and he’ll put it in.” The other

morning, I went out to get the paper, and someone had

thrown a beer bottle in the front yard, and it was a nice day,

and the sun had just come up, so I sat on my steps

and put the beer bottle at my feet and started to read

the paper, and just then a jogger who was trotting past

shook his head and smirked as though to say, “Jeez,

look at the big-deal poet, having a beer before the rest

of us eat breakfast.” Franz Kafka was often depressed

and neurotic, but he could also be cheerful, fun-loving,

and optimistic. One of his diary entries says,

“Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us

in all its fullness but veiled from view, deep down, invisible,

far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant,

not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name,

it will come.” What is that word? Where is it written?

It might be on that piece of paper somebody dropped.

We won’t know till we see it, will we? Here, give me that.