Poison Oak vs. Syphilis

I am in love with the notion of wildness. To me there is the wildness of nature and the wildness of the city. Often I wonder what the relationship between them is. Reginald Hardcourt once told me, "There is only music and noise," and I think of these words often, and for all of Reginad's esoteric bullshit babbling in Latin and birdsong, I think these words will always be his best because they are so simple. And I wonder how wildness is related to music, and I wonder how wildness is related to noise. The untuned mind would likely conclude that wildness is noise, but I do not think it is so simple. I remember the time I rolled with Beauty beside a stream, our soft, naked bodies merging in intercourse yet bearing the brunt of the prickly landscape. We emerged happy and satisfied yet blotchy from poison oak. Now I say that I remember fucking Beauty by the stream but I am not sure it was real for I had poppy resin lingering in my veins--those great channels of the human body--but to call this wildness vulgar--to call it noise rather than music--is to call yourself out as a tone-deaf, beer-swilling cockmuncher. It was wild, and it was music, both to my ears, and to my other senses, too.

I have had similar experiences with whores though I'd take poison oak and an imaginary woman over lice and the syph anyday. Wildness is intoxicating regardless and I would not trade it for all the gift certificates and creature comforts in the world.

But my liaison with Beauty happened only once and it is now firmly in the vanishing past. It is one of my fondest memories, but I wish I could forget it and move westward into adulthood. The fact that I may have been delusional at the time makes me question the value of all that I believe. Perhaps I am just an opium addict who is forever blotchy with poison oak: I will not heal. Yet the music remains and I wish the taxmen and politicians could hear it.