Ghislaine Marks Affection

Ghislaine had been to the cross roads. Ghislaine was the cross roads. Ghislaine crossed the road to get to the other side, and once on the other side, she marked the spot. She marked it with a cross, or was that an X, or was the gesture she made, a maiden hardly a maiden, X-rated.

Even when Ghislaine was wearing her hair short, almost — or exactly — butch– often did she let down her long hair and cry. Lament. Make distressing sounds, whimpers to the moon, ugly sounds, effluvia, something others made her mop up, tears going into a tampon…

A tampon to be discarded, as the tears would have been discarded, anyway. The tears dripping down a cheek, into a gutter, into a treatment plant, into a river, into the East River, the Dnieper, the panty sniffer, to blood, in a mop up operation, a snifter of skid marks, on Skid Row, down below, meaning the soles of the feet, Dr. Sholes, baby powder, and Ghislaine powdering and powering her nose,

Everyone in NYC was powdering their nose in those days. Everyone who was anyone. It was a cross town traffic and it gestured to so darned many intersections, called X-roads. Thank God it was Mannahattas, which Ghislaine had selected, out of so many cities, to mourn the passing of her father. She loved her father, and her father loved her, and how could this be otherwise but as AFFECTION writ large, loving, wired, smoothed, shimmering, gleaming, guiding, hopefully smooching, and cuddling. Ghislaine wished it that way.

She had her time of the month, and the wishy-washy, better wakey or wokey or pokey or smokey or “Girls Gone Wild” below the waistie. She had her hormonal imbalances, imprecisions, not being Robin Hood, thus missing the mark, and not coughing up conflagration, miscalculation, tampons under recall, refund available, Toxic Shock Syndrome, Infant Sudden Death Syndrome, “Love Canal”, all you need is love, and love is all you need, along with good lawyers, a trust fund, the use of massage, parlor, and spa as euphenisms, for an eau, a decamp, for a big F-U, which none of the denizens of Mannahattas, Roy Cohn, H-E, L-C, et al.