Forks (2) --- Seattle (6)

"Forks (2) --- Seattle (6)"---we stay true to form with this incomprehensible title. Almost as incomprehensible as this sign...

...yes, YES, that's why we had to visit Forks, because the place is the purported hub of the Twilight franchise:

(This picture is mildly misleading...)

Last words of the year --- This is heaven

Just writing (last words of the year in the This-Is-Heaven manuscript, we're in Chapter 29, the boys prepping Godehart for the debate of the third day of the festival):


“Where did you get these undies?” Maurice asks.

Ben wears different briefs today, not the muchacho graffiti, but a pattern-repeat design of naked men in celibate poses printed Delft-blue on a white background. “Oohh,” Ben says, walks stiffly up to the counter. Godehart follows his every movement, the tight procession of the bubble butt, the spiel of Ben’s triceps as he works the percolator can, a stray ray of sun meandering on his skin (not to mention the effortless stretch of his abs under the band of the wallpaper briefs).

“Where did you get these undies?” Maurice repeats.
“Bonus payment,” Ben answers.

Design by Alessio Slonimsky

He disappears in my chamber, returns with a slip of paper, check-size, hands it to me. "Three thousand dollars," I read. "Name field blank. We can cash it immediately."
"Oohh," Ben says.

These were a few words from the second part of the GREEN EYES. And you know what? Part I is available as ebook now, here, under this link:

Gallery (15) Steve Walker

"David and me," Steve Walker (1961-2012)

This is a follow up to our last "This Is Heaven" teaser, A virginal handkerchief, where we failed to place this picture in the vicinity of a few lines about David Leavitt and this very young boyfriend entering the hall of the Accademia Galleria in Florence.


(Okay, here they are again (the few lines, John speaking)): "There’s a passage in David Leavitt’s “The lost language of Cranes” that comes back to me once a year or so, one of the characters relating a story of him and a very young boyfriend visiting Florence, and as they enter the hall of Michelangelo’s David, the eyes of the crowd are drawn away from the statue and to the magnetic beauty of this very young boyfriend. It doesn't read as if Leavitt made this up, this somehow really happened to him. Anyhow, the boyfriend must have looked like Romeo---by analogy, I mean.")

(More art on the gallery page)