You can see why men are such monsters when you look
at a woman's body, Devonshire creamy from a bath,
or just the general curviness of the whole design. Then
there's your average man, hirsute and raging with testosterone,
Godzilla incarnato, King Kong with big feet, Frankenstein
hovering over some delectable damsel with skin like fresh pastry.
So you can see why St. Clare threw in her lot with St. Francis,
a nice guy, good with animals, although there were rumors.
But aren't there always? In Italian, the word for noise is rumore,
which is what gossip is, though why women should be thought
more inclined to tittle-tattle than men is a mystery to me,
but not something I was thinking about one evening in Florence
as my husband and I strolled along the Lungarno Soderini
and in the Piazza Cestello happened upon a theater presenting
Goldoni's The Gossip of Women, though after one act I felt
that it could have as easily been called The Foppery of Men.
My dear, the prancing and smirking that transpired,
and in a country known for its machismo. When the young lover
puckered his carmine lips, the men in the audience
were making a noise that sounded for all the world like laughter,
though one can never be certain. I learned something that night,
though exactly what, I'm not sure, and my education continued
in Assisi where we saw glass cases with the clothes of St. Francis
and St. Clare, sandals and sackcloth, though Clare's case
contained what looked like a rough slip or chemise. “St. Clare's
underwear,” I cried with such happiness to my husband,
but at that point he was sick of me and my non-Catholic
lack of respect for everything he no longer holds dear.
In Italy you are either cattolico or acattolico, which, I imagine,
makes Anglicans and Four-Square Gospel Pentecostals
rather uneasy bed partners, as, I suppose, hermaphrodites
and transsexuals are made anxious by the words “woman”
and “man.” I like to think of Kierkegaard's idea of the natural home
of despair being in the “heart of happiness,” which could mean
any number of things, such as black is not black or even white,
or that we are all as confused as Dracula, dreaming
of a local milkmaid, her C-cup, coarse lingerie, ruddy cheeks,
and the blood, of course, always the blood.