WEBVTT

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And this next group,
from the same sequence,

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goes back and forth as the
sequence goes from one place

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to another.

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In fact, from France
to the United States.

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One time to another, as well.

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"Wednesday night at
the Comedie Francaise,

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a hundred white and slender
well-behaved adolescents

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from one of the
good liesses, file

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into balcony rows saved for
them to see Jeunesse les Bonnes.

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Where over in the actresses,
one of whose roles I took on

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in San Francisco, our salon
production, two men and one

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woman in black shirts
and tight black jeans.

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I was madame for my
friend's lyric vengeance

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five Friday nights.

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Jerry, our Solange,
delivered her last monologue,

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hands crossed, bald under
the rigged spotlight,

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like a condemned man
awaiting the executioner.

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James's gentle
philological daftness

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led him to invent a
language and its people,

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both called Prashad,
cognate with Slavic truth,

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simple and supple enough
for nomic folktales.

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He had written
their history, which

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filled 400 typed pages and
three short plays, which

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we three, fresh from
Jene's ceremonies,

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undertook to memorize
and then to perform.

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I was a fag hag in my early
20s, shared with my friends

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their thrift shop, retro
charm and the facility

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of a linguist for recitations
in dramatic form in a language

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that didn't quite exist.

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But James died,
youngish, 20 years ago.

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And Bill, who played
Claire, my friend then,

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doesn't speak or
write to me, still

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from San Francisco, because I
wrote a book he didn't like.

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We shared a vast, bay
windowed flat with Paul, Chip,

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sometimes.

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Ben lives now, alone,
in a room at the Y,

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from which he goes
to work every day

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and returns a wall
away from homelessness.

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In our rundown wooden
Victorian South

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of Market, East of Van
Ness, a trestle table

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in the kitchen
seated 10 for feasts

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provisioned at a cut rate
market called the Dented Can.

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No, it was Bill and
I who named it that.

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And Bill and I imagined
lives in France,

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where he had sojourned
as an army brat

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while I had nearly a
romance language degree.

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Often, we sat among Paul's
convalescent kitchen plants,

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gossiping avidly with flawed
accents over coffee mugs

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and pan dulce from the
Mexican grocery next door.

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Tunisian Jews have a new
snack bar downstairs,

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featuring bagels and American
soft drinks, favored,

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it appears, by Sunday shoppers
in the neighborhood where

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I've lived these past 12 years.

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Decades eclipsed, accent,
somewhat improved."

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