My Daddy Man's Valentine

The following is taken from a site called Said the Gramaphone that I've just discovered:
"The little Latvian man played My Funny Valentine. The song by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, made famous by Chet Baker. Chet Baker died as he was climbing from one balcony to another at an Amsterdam hotel, looking for money to buy heroin. Six months ago I stood outside that hotel, and I thought about this. The view is of boats.

A basement in Latvia, a little man in a sweater playing the piano, playing so well that I think I stopped breathing. The man played with practice. He bent towards the keys as he played them and then withdrew, listening, sometimes wincing (but not looking at us). I couldn't tell if he was wounded by the sound or soothed by it. He was very careful, like someone could get hurt. He played the melody but he also played more, playing around the tune, playing it with gaps, filling the gaps with long silences and wrong (right) notes. I wrote in my journal, - I do not usually keep a journal (I have a blog, see,) but I kept one then, - I wrote that he was "trying to find the vocabulary for heartache". It was very sad. Very, very sad. The man didn't look at us as he played. He looked at the keys, as if he was trying to read them."

My Daddy Man's Valentine
Adrian Eve Revenaugh (with nods towards me Hunny Man: "I'm stirring the pot here")

I'm starving here in my little bottle, spidy webbed over, watching the planet melting down, beyond the window panes. Makes me hungry for 'de world in de' flesh!

I never really expected to find myself here! That age old surprise, right? Busy doing what you do, getting along pretty well, then, Bam!

Well no, in all honesty, it didn't really go that way. Worked hard for a lot of years. Played just as hard, with lots'a play mates. You were a pretty damned good sport about all of that.

The time came, after enough fights around the bedroom, that we kinda reached an agreement; a parting of the ways. The creativity just sort of shriveled up and died. Like one of the meals I've so carefully wrapped up here; little dead parts hanging out. None too appealing now, when you're not hungry. But later on, when the appetite flares up again? Man! Heaven!

I guess, that's kinda what I kept hoping would happen for us, doll. You were not only the brightest, bar none, but the best in the sack; a real mink , a vixen.

You made love like all the wrongs in the world could be set straight by our screwing. Every noble cause. Every sin committed. Every personal wound, done to you, including the sins I'd committed. Your piss-ed-ness at your Father and your anger with the Holy Ghost, and humanity, or the lack there of. All could be made right again in that single act of passion. And, I was only too obliged to help you act out all those transgressions.

Funny, the last time we were in each other's company. Remember? It was one of the kid's weddings, Melody's I do believe, to that asshole, the pretentious Jew kid, from that wealthy, Bay Area family. I remember, Me and the Lady Winnefred had driven down from Washington in her Delta 88. Man what a rig! And she drove it like she was still flying for the Civil Air Patrol. Quite a Dame!

Anyway, we'd been drinking; arrived in good order and settled in for the night in that cheap motel. You must have been there with little Matthew, who wasn't so little any more, what? maybe 14 or so? Great kid by the way. Our final edition. You've done well. You didn't know it, but, I knew you would.

Any way, I don't quite remember how we got to that point in the conversation, but it was heated. I told you that making love to you was like being in bed with Abraham Lincoln.

Hey! I was drunk and pissed, and you were righteous and angry. Rightfully so.

But now, having been dead all these years, and being able to see old Abe in ways that a guy only gets to from down here, in the doon, I just wanted to tell you. What was intended as a jab back then, was actually true. Didn't have nothing to do with your perceived, lack of femininity. Lincoln was probably a pretty sexy guy, with out the beard. Ha! I mean, Illinois farm boy that he was. I'm kidding here. Thursa! Wait. Hear me out. Don't get pissed all over again.

What I'd been trying to say was that having you in bed was like trying to sort out everything that's good, and evil. Wild, and angry enough to cause the Earth to split open. And the sky to fall. Angry enough to cause civil wars.

Your furious, hungry, passion, driven from God only knows where, was like being embodied by all that is good. And it was Me that you chose to do it with! Many times over! In spite of all my failings and infidelities. You swallowed me whole.

And that's why we created such amazing children, six of them. You did that!

I just had fun planting the seeds.

(kinda makes me the father of our country doesn't it? now, what do you think of that?)