Twice in the same day, at different cafes, I’ve walked up to the counter and ordered a coffee: “A grande coffee to go,” which was immediately followed by “For here or to go?”

The missing page of Sodom and Gomorrah has shown up later in the volume, actually about 15 pages, most duplicates of earlier pages already read, placed out of order, as if to emphasize their importance.

Yesterday I was in the Pride Connection, a gay video and gift shop nearby. One of the patrons was chatting to the clerk about how horny gays always are. I wonder if that’s true. Are gay men more horny than straight men? I don’t know. I almost always notice good-looking guys, even lusting after them discretely, but is that being horny? On the chat lines guys are often introducing themselves by saying something like: “Hi. Horny here” or “Looking,” which I loathe. I don’t mind that they’re horny or looking, but could they please not so instantly introduce their horniness to me. What could be more overwhelmingly unappealing than to be presented with someone else’s horniness?

Speaking of exaggerating gay sexual desires, I recently read something about that in Proust. Baron M. de Charlus is a notorious closeted gay in the Proust novels, as are all gays in Proust’s fiction—a product of the times. Although Charlus believes it’s his little secret, known only by the few men he entices to share it with, everyone around him knows. At one point Charlus grasps the hand of a doctor friend of his, Dr. Cottard. “But Cottard, who had never allowed the Baron to see that he had so much as heard the vaguest rumours as to his morals, but nevertheless regarded him in his hearts of hearts as belonging to the category of ‘abnormals’, persons of whom he had little personal experience, imagined that this stroking of his hand was the immediate prelude to an act of rape for the accomplishment of which, the duel being a mere pretext, he had been enticed into a trap and led by the Baron into this remote apartment where he was about to be forcibly outraged. Not daring to leave his chair, to which fear kept him glued, he rolled his eyes in terror, as though he had fallen into the hands of a savage who, for all he knew, fed upon human flesh.”

"Forcibly outraged". . . I'll have to remember that one. "May I outrage you?" "Ohhh, please just bend me over your bed and outrage me!"

Java’s on Saturdays is always swamped by young kids with their parents awaiting their music lessons at the Eastman School of Music. I adore all of these boys and girls clutching their instruments as they clumsily rattle their tables and spill their hot chocolate. Their parents are good parents. They must be so to make the effort to do this for their children. But they always seem a little doltish, or rather unimaginative 9-to-5er clods who haven’t artistic abilities themselves, and perhaps don’t even really believe their kids do either, but are guided by their sense of duty and good parenting to support and nurture their kids’ potential, however fruitless it will all turn out. It’s completely unfounded, I’m sure. I think I’m just always focused on the contrast between the nervous energy of the child, the darting eyes, jittering body, and distant inattention, with the bored steadfastness of the parent. Energy, evidence of talent and artistic pursuits always win over steadfast nurturing, at least in my mind.