Simultaneously I have discovered for the first time that there are people who actually dislike me. It has only recently come to my attention that there are a number of people who, given as full a knowledge of me as it’s possible to get on a casual basis, find me insufferable, disgusting, irritating—even actively boring. It’s a shocking realization, nearly incomprehensible. Even people I myself have liked or admired, and have made overtures toward. If it were envy or jealousy, I could understand completely. Those are my own prejudices, often enough. But the clues are obvious: I’m often a fool but I’m not stupid. I can interpret a lifted eyebrow and a twisted mouth, or someone drifting away from my vicinity. Unappreciative dolts I am used to. The indifference of the masses doesn’t bother me.

But that the shrewd, perceptive, and humorous might know me and turn away is something to think about. It is something to mull over in the bath and knead into the bread. So far my thinking on the subject allows two possibilities: Some of these people, by sheer form and inclination, are incapable of liking me. But some of these people must judge me by my own standards and find me wanting. Perhaps they think that laughing at the motivation for your own actions does not exculpate you from either motive or deed. I wonder sometimes myself. I tend my own vagaries with affection and cultivate a liking for those who like me.

The great poet Jacob Figarty gave a reading on the college lawn. The sun shone for us. The grass was green. We’d have sat outdoors and listened to the poet as long as he’d go on. Figarty was known to us, his face and his friends, the outcasts of our fathers’ youths. The crowd laughed and talked. We only pretended to be there to be impressed by the poet. Really, we were there to impress the poet. We tried to appear brilliantly analytical, or poetically sensitive, or hysterically enlightened, as it suited us. We waited for him to stop in front of us as he passed through the crowd. We hoped he would glimpse the soulful pain, beatific peace, or scintillated brilliance in our face and be struck with awe at the depth of our perception, sensitivity, or beauty of soul. Maybe he would reach out, take our hand, and lead us under the trees to talk with him. He might even turn his back on all the rest to be with one of us alone. He might ask us to fuck him, marry him, or be his traveling companion, all expenses paid, just so he could bask in our proximity. So went the fantasies.