Twenty Years On

David Henry Handy hasn't changed. A little older (but who could tell?) a little wiser (ditto); but still the same old Dave.

This isn't Dave, of course, this picture here; this is me. Dave's computer sat there, as Macintoshes will, taking it all in, including this surveillance photo of yours truly swilling the bottom half of the second bottle of Duck Squat Merlot I'd brought along to oil the aging machinery (which in spite of the rust and grime ran well enough) of friendship.

Dave affects the persona of the low-life but his aristocratic roots betray him: even in the lowest strata he'd be the upper crust. This is a man who, in fine linen and reeking of gin, could hold his own in any Manhattan penthouse. Not that I have ever been to Manhattan or seen a penthouse, but I have reeked of gin a few times, and that permits me to confidently assert that Dave, if anyone could, could.

On leaving I stepped out into a neighborhood I've known since my teens, and for a moment I felt the frustrated agoraphobic--in the most public of places, no one saw me, and no one looked. I've spent thirty years in this town, but I don't know it and it doesn't know me.

Dave, on the other hand...

Update: Dave might have seen it a little differently.