prostate gait, drowned in vinegar, the stamp of authenticity

1. Every five minutes another old guy leaves the urologist’s office, sometimes joining a gray-haired wife, sometimes exiting alone, a cotton ball bandage in the crook of his elbow, walking stiffly and a little bent forward.

2. Three gnats have drowned in the vinegar cruet -- sweet seductive vinegar. I empty it into the sink and fold a small square of aluminum foil over the conical metal cap to block the hole. No one will know.

3. Philip K. Dick says, “Any seeming reality that is obliging…is something to suspect. The hallmark of the fraudulent is that it becomes what you would like it to be.” Disappointment, he says, is “the stamp of authenticity.” As I type the quotations, my shoulders convulse with a chill: though I am alone tonight, I imagined there was a child in the room and I was reading him those words.