It is here, to be observed, that after the funerals became so many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or weep, or wear black for one another, as they did before, no, nor so much as make coffins for those that died, so, after a while, the fury of the infection appeared to be so increased, that, in short, they shut up no houses at all…. All the remedies had been used till then were found fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an irresistible fury; so that, as the fire the succeeding year spread itself and burnt with such violence that the citizens in despair gave over their endeavors to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last to such violence, that the people sat still looking at one another, and seemed quite abandoned to despair. Whole streets seemed to be desolated, and not to be shut up only, but to be emptied of their inhabitants: doors were left open, windows stood shattering with the wind in empty houses, for want of people to shut them. People began to give up themselves to their fears, and to think that all regulations and methods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be hoped for but a universal desolation. And it was even in the height of this general despair that it pleased God to stay his hand, and to slack the fury of the contagion in such a manner as was even surprising, like its beginning, and demonstrated it to be his own particular hand.

still use the one book for recording my friends’ whereabouts. I’m averse to a Rolodex or computer screens for my own pal-tracking function. Books somehow appeal to me. Blame my love of the antique. I must now purchase new address ledgers at those serious office supply shops that rest between the solemnity of medicinal suppliers and the useful good cheer of hardcore hardware stores.

“I am merely Society’s secretary,” Balzac’s fake modesty proclaims. But all address bookkeepers become novelists of sorts, charting entrances, chronicling exits. Divorces register; incoming newborns warrant the listing of full names. Wars and epidemics only heighten the hindsight drama of the role-call. This is the DNA “material” of life and, incidentally, of narrative art.

Those years I spent attending, nursing, celebrating, thirty-some waning boys, my straight friends spent having, nursing, teaching one baby. It’s a lovely baby, mind you, and my godchild. It has golden curls and is, of course, a genius. The parents’ engendering and then “changing” said baby seems laudable to all. My own loved ones were not brought into the world by me, but only, in my company, let out of it.

I know that my obit will read, “Leaves no immediate survivors.” And I know my friends who’re parents will be squired into their afterlife with the ennobling proclamation, “Leaves a son, Gaines, a student at New Haven …”