It was my secret. You know man don’t need people all knowing every damn thing about him. I am content to have men think of me as good ol’ Jim, you know, the fix it guy. Fine by me. I don’t figure folks need to know everything about you.  I mean weren’t no ones business that my Uncle liked to dress in women’s clothes and ran club down in Green Oaks in Dallas. He was a fine fellow all things considered and could put on a good show. Little strange when he come like that to Christmas/Hanukah dinner but well my family had it’s quirks, and I liked him. He and Dad were a lot of damn fun to watch. Dad would start to yelling and fuming and he and his brother would get drunk and fight in the front yard. Nothing stranger than your red-neck dad wrestling his transvestite brother on Christmas Eve while your mother yells at them in Yiddish. Yeah and folks wondered why I sat on the top of the trailer house reading books. “Why you got to always be a reading Jim Bo?” My dad would ask. Now Dad and my uncle loved each other and by Christmas morning they would be drunk as skunk hugging it out in at the Christmas tree.  Well, anyway things like that made me read. Now I did not tell the other guys I read. Good way to get yourself knocked down in the park. Nope in the trailer park, best to just keep that to your ownself. Well, I read everything but never told a soul, not even my first wife Karen (lying, cheating, sexy bitch) until Serena.  My now and forever second wife, curled up around me and made me read some damn book about Viking men and pretty women and was a lot of sex in it, good rough sex. What the hell, who knew women liked that shit?  Tonight I took a risk and read to her one of my favorite books. Took it out and considered the dog-eared copy I found. It was just laying in this pile of rubbish clutched in the hand of a child walker that had been sometime back dispatched. I pried it lose.  It was still good.  I took it home, took my woman to bed an laid back and read to her the following…

“CHORUS: Why do you cry out thus, unless at some vision of horror?

CASSANDRA: The house reeks of death and dripping blood.

CHORUS: How so? ‘Tis but the odour of the altar sacrifice.

CASSANDRA: The stench is like a breath from the tomb.

Aeschyus, Agamemnon

The primroses were over. Towards the edge of the woods where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and the bramble ditch beyond, only a few faded patches of pale yellow still sowed among the dog’s mercury and the oak tree roots on the other side of the fence the field was full of rabbit holes…..

Watership Down, just a tale about rabbits. No so much more, a great tale of darkness, death, cruelty, madness, and, and the journey to freedom, truth and release.  It had meaning, more now than ever.  I read it to her and she listened. I knew right then how much I loved her. Fuck she is a hell of a girl.