Sport 4: Autumn 1990
Phyllis Janowitz — So Rare No Others
Phyllis Janowitz
So Rare No Others
Don imagines he
is like Tom. He is
not like him. Tom has
a job, tractor, two
guns, wife, also a
recreational
vehicle. He is
happy. No one is
unhappy as Don
is unhappy. No,
no one is like Don,
who imagines his
boiled, detachable
collars, plus fours, and
beetle crushers are
au courant: no one
dresses like this this
year — and his clove
cigarettes, the foul
smell of them driving
waiters to search for
fires in wastepaper
baskets while he tokes
puffs and drowses in
a balloon of smoke:
he is one of a
species so rare no
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others are even
endangered. When he was
a child, what deceptions
were practised, what lies
arrived through wires and
tubes to make him feel
so universal?
And yet, so
uncomfortable?
No one has ever
lived so near
extinction
with so little
premonition, so little
idea of it.