In all your decadence people die! In all your decadence people die!

He was from Ottawa, I meant to ask him about the place, but conversation turned elsewhere. He had curly hair, and brown, kind yet slightly insinuating eyes. He said:

"[Our Host] tells me you're dating an actress."

It seemed so improbable, in multiple. I at first translated it as a misunderstanding arising from Our Host's tendency to declare people's occupations as what he thinks they should be. Perhaps I was now some biographer, and the dating described the process of establishing a chronology in the life of this actress. Maybe that's what we call it in the biography trade, the dating.

He had me confused with someone else, of course. As well as about Ottawa, I wondered who this actress was, but I never found out.

Early on I felt that I wasn't getting enough to drink. Like shortness of breath it wasn't something that could easily be fixed.

Later someone put 'Shaved Women' by Crass on the stereo. I'd no idea so many people were familiar with it. It was a corridor-filler.

And Our Host drew me to him with something to say, slurred, by now he'd had enough to drink certainly. Several years ago another man had said a very similar thing to me, and I later wondered if we held that acquaintance in common.

"Y'know, you 'n me, our generation, may be the last men on earth to have seen pubic hair. On the women. Eh? Like the opposite of growing up, isn't it?"