Donut

I do not have a donut. If I had a donut, I would give it to you, but I do not. Sad. It is sad to think, in a world filled with donuts, that I do not have a donut. We. We do not have a donut. Other people have donuts. Look at them with their donuts, these people. We hate these people not because they have a donut and we do not, but because — it’s hard to say. There is something about them. The swagger. The spring. Them ears of theirs, on the side of their head like that, out there in the open for all to see. That thing they do with the breath, the in and the out of it, like it was free or something, their own personal property, this breath of theirs. Without so much as a bye-your-leave they gully up a lungful and off they go. The troposphere. The ionosphere. The zephyr. The duster. The twister. As if. As if. And how it fidgets, the mitt with the cruller, out over the mug of the coffee. The sticky finger. The schmear of the berry at the pillow of the lip and look! Looky there! Quick or you’ll miss it: the powdered sugar that powders their hair.

If we had a powder would we powder their hair? If they asked us to powder their hair like the presidents of old (like the dead ones on the dollar bills) would we? Not so fast we would say, right? Where were you we would say to them, when we were fording the river, running the rapids, banging on the door of the bathysphere in pursuit of you, you with the donut?

Not in an angry way would we -- would I -- say this. I would say this with a smile because I am a jolly soul. Edible. Affable. A bobber of the apple, a singer of the chanty, a dancer of the jig. Even in my weakened state, in a state of hankering for a donut, I am ever and always a chipper fella, a feister, a goody with a gunpowder heart. Far be it from me to whimper after a finger of dough, no, not when the bounty of the world awaits. Not a fig do I, do we, do I care for the crunch of the bark of the cobbler or the lickable lace of the icing. Not even the nibble of a proton or a neutron no, not so much as a crescent-of-a-melon slice of a itty-bitty electron of a donut could convince us to recalibrate again the scope of our night vision goggle.

So mock us if you will, you donut person you. Who shiver the dust from off of the sleeve, who bare the teeth to bite. Against the window of the bathysphere I squeegee my face. I bubble a greeting. My keys in a bristle I rap, I plink, I clang out, in Morse code, a message. Nice… Donut.

With that trowel of a tongue you lubricate the roof of the lip. You bounder. You cad. You shovel the last of the dunker into that pie-hole of yours, and then smile, and then, like a Armstrong all poufy as a puff pastry at the foot of the Lunar Lander, you give me a thumbs-up.

I already got me a thumb, Mr. Astronaut, no thanks to you and your haughty compadres. What need do we have for you, for you and your donut? So much lighter are we without a donut! Aerodynamically sound is what we are. Lithe as a leopard. Portable as a torpedo. But ready. Ever at the ready. Should the day arrive. Should the blesséd event. What does a donut weigh? About the same as a packet of smokes, right? Or a baby echidna? I carry them both, one in each hand in honor of the arrival, in the fulness of time, of the donut.

Here in the palm of the hand it tickles, the echidna, bristles like a toasted coconut cake of a donut, greets me with a sniff. Here – have a smoke I say, and serve it up a Lucky. Echidnas do not, with that swizzle-stick of a snifter, smoke, so I (a pal is what I am) smoke it for him. In the shape of a donut the smoke. It pillows up into the hayloft. Rebounds off the rafter in the barn where we wait for the break of the day.

People tell us we should buy a donut. The sellers of donuts dress in their native garb and plead with us to buy, to bid and to buy. They gather round in their lederhosen and their cotton Dockers, their wingtips and their stilettos, the fez and the derby and the head-dress of the hornéd buffalo. And here comes the fascinator! Clippered up over the cranium like the sail of a ketch or the fin of a guppy or a butterfly just brushing the bars of the bug-zapper – a fascinator! The bait is what they are, and we? What are we? The fish. We are the fish.

A dollar a donut, they whisper. Two for a dollar, they hum. A fiver buys a dozen! As if you’d barter for a peck on the cheek or a nibble at the lobe of the ear. As if love were a buyable, as if you’d ever ask a total stranger -- somebody you just happened to bump in the subway or pass on the street or behold in the bole of a tree in the heart of a circle of hounds -- for a kiss. Who would even dream of. Would in their right mind would ever. A kiss is just a kiss they say, yes, but not if you have to ask for it, to spell it out, to circle the sky in a crop-duster with a plume of smoke the color of chalk, puff-puffing away at a please and a thank-you in the face of a gathering squall. Does the flower pay to bloom, the fish to swim, the baby to suckle? Does the earth owe the sun a bucket of nickels for every do-si-do across the quiver and the boom of the floorboard of the barn?

No. Unbidden is what a kiss is, is what it ought to be, oh buddy, oh bro, oh compadre of mine, the unmeltable weld of the you and the me – the we! If we starve, we starve together. If we drown, we drown together. Such bruises as I have, I give unto thee. You say that you do not want the bruises, you rascal you, but I can tell that you’re just being polite. I’m not worth it you tell me, but No I say, I insist. But no you say. But yes I say. I rise. I lift. My hand I hover. Enough with the bickering!

In a better world, a world with ample donuts, there would be no bickering. Not that I am the bickering sort. Simmering, yes. Maybe. Sometimes. But bickering? Far too busy to bicker O pal of mine. And who knows? Could it be (should it be, would it be) that the donut we do not have will turn out to be, reveal itself to be, as donuts go, not such a good donut after all? Could it fall short of the promise of glory? Could it betray us, the bastard?

The clock ticks. The sun sets. The dog barks. It’s not like we’ve never been betrayed before. Betrayed, betrayed by things that are not donuts, by donut-like things, by apparitions of donuts. But donuts. You can always trust a donut. That’s what they say. The people with the donuts. And we were young. We believed them. And look at us now. Where is it, the donut? Where did it go? Is there a God? If there was a God we would have a donut. A God. As if. Where was the God of Donuts when we were here, here in this place, waiting for a donut? Waiting and waiting. He had the donuts, and even if he didn’t, he could always say Let there be donuts and lo, and behold, there they would be, the donuts.

Not that it matters to us. Even without a donut, it is (is it not?) a wonderful world? A world of wonder? I wonder what will become of the us, the we who carry within us the hole of the donut, the hole where the donut would be. About you as well I wonder, I wonder and I worry. You say that you do not have a donut, but I wonder about that bulge at the intersection of those handsome-ish legs of yours. You say you’re a man but I wonder, I cannot help but to wonder, to doubt and to wonder. There’s always room for a doubt, no? Room for a wonder. Room for a donut.

A truck pulls up. On the curb of your house a box appears. I carry a crowbar. No. Not to open the box. The box belongs to you. If you need help with the box, I am here. Here I am, behind the tree. At your service is what I am.

My, my. Will you look at that now? Just look at you, you with the box, the box with the lid with the picture of a donut. How very so very special of you.

But no, you say. It’s not a donut. Why would you think – just because there’s a box with a picture of a donut on it – that inside of the box is a donut?

You got me there! I never thought of that. It stands to reason. How many lids have I opened, how many crates with a crowbar pried? How many lips have I liquored – letters, zippers, coconuts opened, only to find, on the inside, a hefty heap ‘o nothing?

Here with the crowbar let me help you with that. How disappointing it will be for you to open a box with a broken -- with a promise of a donut broken? Sad. Sad to be, once again, betrayed by a promise. My understanding was that – but no. That is no longer the understanding, the understanding we had about the we, about the donut, about the you and the me and the we. And now you say (here, with the box with the picture of the donut) that you have a different understanding. It seems that you have lost the understanding, the understanding that we had. Sad. How sad. Here. With a crowbar I will help, help you to find again the understanding.

No. No, no. Do not cry. Why are you crying? Is it because you miss the days of yore? The cradle? The kiss? The zest of the lemon and the lime and the salt on the skin of the lover? The days of your youth when the sun bubbled up from out the sea, and from out the shell the birds they burst, they shot, they bazooka-ed up into the blue? Do you long to gather again the grain in the day of the harvest, taste again the flame of that first, that burst of the breath, to swim again the stream that spun the wheel that drove the stone that ground the flour back in the day, in the day of the donut, the flour they milked, and egged, and sugared and shaped and bubbled in oil, or baked, or braised with a blowtorch or a flame-thrower or the blast of a Saturn Five? A tear to the eye is what it brings. To you. To me. A muchness. A more.

I drop to my knees beside you. With the crowbar I cuddle you, cradle you, whisper in your ear. “Are you crying,” I say, “because I spoiled the surprise? The surprise of the donut you’ve been saving for me, hiding (you rascal you), hiding from me?”

How tender the tumble. We toss and we turn. We give and we take. With my hands I – happy I – hug you, hold you, circle that neck of yours with the secret sign of the donut.

How big the sky but – mercy! -- how little the breath. Heavens to Betsy. Here is the breath, this breath of yours I hold, I hold in the hasp of my hand. When you give me back the donut I will give you back the breath.

No no, you say, you seem to say, keep it.

No no I say. I insist.

No no you say, with your eyes you say it, with that ready ruddy face of yours, with that last little ripple of wonder up over and under the flesh, you say a single breath between us is more than enough.

You rascal you! I give and I give and you trick me into giving you more. Okay. You win! Such as I have I share with you. Can you feel it, here, in the heat of my hand the beat of my heart? Listen. Shhh. Listen. Can you hear it?

Donut it says. Donut… Donut… Donut…