Bosie

What was I like back then, when we first met?, W. wonders It was a long time ago. I was a little raw, a little rough, he says. I knew little of the finer things in life. He introduced me to coffee beans and coffee grinding. He encouraged me in my study of ancient and modern languages. He taught me to pronounce the words hyperbole and synecdoche.

It was a bit like Oscar Wilde and Bosie, W. says. Wouldn't he have defended himself like Wilde at his trial by evoking the model of the Greeks: of a man in a tutelary relationship with a beardless youth? Of course, I wasn't beardless, and nor was I young. I was already vast. Already Divine to his John Waters, and like Borges's Baldanders, I wouldn't stop growing.