Brian Larney: Last week in the rain

Last week I walked home from work at Longacre's Music in the rain, a long seventeen blocks from 19th and Chestnut Streets to 10th and Clinton Streets. I didn't notice the rain very much and I didn't care how soaked I became, if my hat got ruined, if my shoes became sodden and soggy in the water. Was there any point for me any longer? I was a 50 year old man, wrinkles about the eyes, balding head, gray hair for what was left of it, and no one wanted me. On top of that, I could feel the pull of the glands under my neck. I could feel the infection, the disease, the malady that churned within me. I knew the days were numbered. I knew there were very, very few years left. And for a 50 year old piano teacher who'd liked boys and had never found one to keep.

Who would care if I were gone? Who would want to attend my funeral? Here I was, a lonely man who'd never married, who'd never had children. All I'd done was teach piano to the children of Philadelphia and go to mass at St. Monica's Church. Occasionally I'd play the organ at the church, but they never wanted me to lead the choir. Too effiminate, they said, too much of a colorful dandy. Well, I'd accepted that. And I'd accepted that I was a queeny fairy who had to know his place. Hadn't they rooted out all the fairies from the Navy back in '21 after all the soldiers had come home from the war?

The rain soaked me. I didn't care. I didn't even care if I walked into Mrs. O'Toole's house and she scolded me for getting her oriental rugs wet before I even had the chance to march up to my third floor apartment. Where I'd lived for the last thirty years. By myself. I didn't care any more. It would all soon come to an end.

I walked around the corner at 12th and Pine Streets. And I stopped in my tracks -- there she was, my favorite student, Agnes Limerick. Only now she was Agnes Balmoral, the wife of a Protestant architect. She'd incurred a lot of gossip back in '32 when she eloped. And here she was, 8 years later, crying against a building on this intersection. She didn't care about the rain any more than I did.