A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

visit a friend of mine, a black cop I knew in Minneapolis named
Roger. He and Maddy exchanged glances, and as we were
leaving, Roger took me by the arm and asked if I would mind if
he called Maddy, because he sure liked what he saw. It was like
that moment when I heard that my old high school friend thought
Jan was beautiful. Like the dog in the manger, I suddenly valued
what I could no longer have. I saw Maddy slide into her VW Bug
and drive away forever.
I didn't want to be part of this attachment any more, or any
attachment. I was ashamed that I was sleeping with the wife of a
man in combat. Ned wouldn't go for that, I knew. It was sleazy
and zoot-suitish. It was ignoble and wrong.
I was drifting into a decade of solitariness. Jan married and
soon had three children. My old roommate Ripley moved to
Minnesota, and we resumed our friendship as grown men. We still
loved music. We spent hours listening to the same songwriters –
Tim Hardin, Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley, Nick Drake. Lonely
men listening to lonely men singing lonely songs.
We sometimes traveled together with our dogs on canoe trips
and car trips, and trips to folk festivals. For a time we were even
in business together, collecting glass jars from people's alleys and
using them as candle molds to make candles we sold to
knickknack stores. It wasn't a good business. I was just helping
him to have something to do.
Over many years I began putting a life together, meeting and
marrying Rachel, a freckled foundling from Indiana and a lovely
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