Dearest Mouldy P,
Of course all of my poems are about you, and sometimes they are about others in addition to you. I thank you for your careful look at the poem. Another friend of mine asked what was the relationship between Boy Toy and me, so maybe it will be useful for me to send you my answer to him. I had a lot of notes on both the possum and the boy toy, never knowing if or how the two topics might merge, but feeling their relationship somehow. And then yesterday I suddenly was seized with writing the poem.
Following is the actual situation with Boy Toy:
My gardener and I had been observing several painters at work on the exterior of my neighbor's home. For several days, we saw that only one painter was careful, efficient, quick, responsible, reliable, and respectful.
Since I needed my livingroom painted and was about to have a big gathering at home, I asked my gardener, who always knows the neighborhood and surroundings better than I do, whether it would be a good idea to ask the young man if he could bid on painting my livingroom. Mr. Johnson (my gardener) said that it was a good idea, so I went next door and asked the young man if he would be interested in the job, he said his name was (I'll use a false one here) George Jensen, he came over after work, offered to do the job at a price that was incredibly low, and I told him the job was his, but that I would be closely observing his work and asking Mr. Johnson to observe it as well.
As I knew would happen in the interim, Mr. J gathered fascinating facts on the painters next door, including George. He found out that all of them were employed at very low wages for a disreputable man who contracted with a home-buyer (an investor in homes) to fix up homes for the investor to resell at a huge profit. "On the street" the word was that the painters and any other workers employed by the man were usually paroled prisoners. Mr. J had no specific details, though, about George.
I proceeded with my plan. George came to paint, Mr. J and I closely observed him and his work at all times, and we found him to be the best painter we'd ever known. This little skinny white kid earned our respect, believe me! I then conferred further with Mr. J, telling him that in my brief chats with George, I felt him to be lying about his name as well as his background---except that I believed him when he told me he had been dishonorably discharged by the army, a fact which he said his employer didn't know and he didn't want him to know.
Mr. J found out that George lived, rent-free and alone, in a large beautiful home owned by his employers' mother, an even more disreputable character than her son. Mr. Johnson and I concluded that Mom and George probably were having a liaison, a fact which had no relevance to our association with him. But Mr. J immediately began calling him "Boy Toy"---doubtless a term born of Mr. J's experience "on the street" for so many years before his conversion to Pentecostal beliefs.
I asked Boy Toy if he could paint the rest of my main floor, and he happily agreed. An incredible fact is that he always walked to work (five miles) and carried all of his work equipment in a backpack. And he did his two days' painting of my livingroom before he began his work on the house next door. That meant that he showed up at my place at 5 a.m. for two mornings.
Boy Toy showed up at the expected 5 a.m. to, I assumed, begin painting the rest of my main floor, but instead he said apologetically that his employer had told him that he'd be fired if he continued to paint for me. Of course, I had no choice but to accept his being unable to paint for me anymore.
Then I asked Mr. J, later, to explain what he thought Boy Toy was Really Saying. He said he felt that Boy Toy's Old Lady (his boss's mom) was jealous that Boy Toy was working for me because she assumed I was doing exactly what she was doing with Boy Toy. I was incredulous, but Mr. J said that most folks assume that others are just like them, either moral bankrupts or not. That was a useful bit of information for me to tuck away, and it made me see that folks often treat me in ways that shock me but are simple projections of their own behaviors onto me.
We then didn't see Boy Toy for many days. Next we knew, the police were after him for torching the home that his employer had insisted he paint in order to get him away from being near my house. Boy Toy was forced to paint the new house, inside and out, entirely by himself, 12 hours a day, for three weeks. The night he finished the job, he bought a bottle of liquor, took it into the house and drank it all. Then he set the house on fire. It survived well, he was on the run, he got picked up, he was permitted by the police to return for fingerprinting the next day, but he took off again, returning, months later, to my home. Mr. J counseled him not to come back because we would then be "accessories" and liable to arrest. Boy Toy didn't come back, and we haven't seen him.
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