poor prospect for a pickup, and spared themselves this. Oliver puts the bottles into the bag. “See you,” he says sheepishly.
“Yeah,” the man says. “Enjoy yourself.”
Now that you’ve cruelly spurned my advances, thinks Oliver, leaving.
The thing is, it doesn’t actually bother Oliver that the guy assumes he’s gay. It would have once, Oliver considers, walking now with the wine and groceries each in one hand. There was a time, certainly, in his teens, when he was preoccupied with the subject, a tangent—he thought at the time—to the subject of his medical status. He would have minded it then. Only a few years ago he might have been rattled, even by such an innocuous, friendly proposition. But now, for some reason, he is untroubled. The questioning, Oliver has come to think, has little to do with him, in the end. In his case, it is not a comment on his voice or his mannerisms or his clothing; it is a form of prejudice—occupational prejudice. Because he is a man and he loves flowers. Apparently, only homosexual men are allowed to love flowers.
His response to this is offense on behalf of flowers.
Music is supposed to be the food of love, he knows, but Oliver has never had any special feeling for music. Classical, folk, jazz, or blues—it’s all a buzz to him, and more than one girlfriend has shaken her head at his imperviousness. He’s not even tone-deaf; he just doesn’t care, and would rather have silence. Oliver possesses, as a result, perhaps the smallest collection of music on the island of Manhattan (one CD of Carole King’s Tapestry, two Devo albums left over from high school, and a cassette tape of Madame Butterfly given to him by his stepfather, who adores opera, in a long-ago attempt to make a point of contact between them). For Oliver it has always been flowers, the food not only of love but of life. Flowers to look at, to smell, to be alive with in their brief life spans—they are their own seat of pleasure, endlessly giving. He does not understand people who do not love flowers, or who consider them merely ornamental for the home, like an accent pillow or a Hummel figurine. He does not understand people who assault flowers for their essence, which they rub over their skin like a spoil of war, leaving carcasses of slaughtered blossoms in their wake. He knows that these are extreme, dramatic views, which is why he does not often share them, but it does baffle him that in a world so bereft of pleasure people fail to see that flowers are a part of the solution, that the unlearned lesson of their loveliness bears on the great disconnect between people and other people, between people and the earth, between people and the eternal.
Every now and then, Oliver will catch a glimpse of this passion in someone else, and the recognition will fill him with gratification. He will be in Greenwich, or at the Botanical Garden, or in the flower district, and a woman or a man will catch his eye and they will nod and speak silently in their own language of flowers. Once he smiled at a woman tending the most common of geraniums in her window box on Jane Street. The geraniums were ravishing, and the woman, who was old and spent, was ravishing too, and smiled back. Once it was a man in Central Park who was taking eggshells out of a plastic bag he’d brought from home and placing them tenderly around a bank of daffodils beside Sheep Meadow. And—satisfyingly—sometimes it happened in his own shop, when a person entered and was lit with delight at the same thing that made Oliver so happy when he opened his own door.
He opens his own door now, setting down the shopping bag, hearing the wine bottles clink gently against each other, and then shuts the door behind him with his foot. It is 8:30 and the day has ended with the return of its early fog. The street—which is thinly populated and nearly always empty unless a performance at the Cherry Lane Theatre is beginning, breaking for intermission, or letting
“Yeah,” the man says. “Enjoy yourself.”
Now that you’ve cruelly spurned my advances, thinks Oliver, leaving.
The thing is, it doesn’t actually bother Oliver that the guy assumes he’s gay. It would have once, Oliver considers, walking now with the wine and groceries each in one hand. There was a time, certainly, in his teens, when he was preoccupied with the subject, a tangent—he thought at the time—to the subject of his medical status. He would have minded it then. Only a few years ago he might have been rattled, even by such an innocuous, friendly proposition. But now, for some reason, he is untroubled. The questioning, Oliver has come to think, has little to do with him, in the end. In his case, it is not a comment on his voice or his mannerisms or his clothing; it is a form of prejudice—occupational prejudice. Because he is a man and he loves flowers. Apparently, only homosexual men are allowed to love flowers.
His response to this is offense on behalf of flowers.
Music is supposed to be the food of love, he knows, but Oliver has never had any special feeling for music. Classical, folk, jazz, or blues—it’s all a buzz to him, and more than one girlfriend has shaken her head at his imperviousness. He’s not even tone-deaf; he just doesn’t care, and would rather have silence. Oliver possesses, as a result, perhaps the smallest collection of music on the island of Manhattan (one CD of Carole King’s Tapestry, two Devo albums left over from high school, and a cassette tape of Madame Butterfly given to him by his stepfather, who adores opera, in a long-ago attempt to make a point of contact between them). For Oliver it has always been flowers, the food not only of love but of life. Flowers to look at, to smell, to be alive with in their brief life spans—they are their own seat of pleasure, endlessly giving. He does not understand people who do not love flowers, or who consider them merely ornamental for the home, like an accent pillow or a Hummel figurine. He does not understand people who assault flowers for their essence, which they rub over their skin like a spoil of war, leaving carcasses of slaughtered blossoms in their wake. He knows that these are extreme, dramatic views, which is why he does not often share them, but it does baffle him that in a world so bereft of pleasure people fail to see that flowers are a part of the solution, that the unlearned lesson of their loveliness bears on the great disconnect between people and other people, between people and the earth, between people and the eternal.
Every now and then, Oliver will catch a glimpse of this passion in someone else, and the recognition will fill him with gratification. He will be in Greenwich, or at the Botanical Garden, or in the flower district, and a woman or a man will catch his eye and they will nod and speak silently in their own language of flowers. Once he smiled at a woman tending the most common of geraniums in her window box on Jane Street. The geraniums were ravishing, and the woman, who was old and spent, was ravishing too, and smiled back. Once it was a man in Central Park who was taking eggshells out of a plastic bag he’d brought from home and placing them tenderly around a bank of daffodils beside Sheep Meadow. And—satisfyingly—sometimes it happened in his own shop, when a person entered and was lit with delight at the same thing that made Oliver so happy when he opened his own door.
He opens his own door now, setting down the shopping bag, hearing the wine bottles clink gently against each other, and then shuts the door behind him with his foot. It is 8:30 and the day has ended with the return of its early fog. The street—which is thinly populated and nearly always empty unless a performance at the Cherry Lane Theatre is beginning, breaking for intermission, or letting
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