The Salon, the Night and the City

Brother Dan Harder has more dimensions than a last-ditch defense of string theory. He can do that intellectual thing, with his intricate zipper poems whose innards swirl around one another like a DNA double helix. But when the fit is on him, he may also try to get you to soil your underwear as he did last night at the Salon of Mystery at the Harder Estate in San Francisco, so lovely a home in fine weather, so close a match to the house on the hill in Psycho -- when it’s a dark and stormy night.

Harder finished up the salon with a ghost story, having hidden his own brave boys in the damp bushes outside with flashing lights and garbage lids … I’m just saying I’m glad I keep a change of NASA-certified adult diapers in the car.

And yes, those of you who were afraid you would melt -- oh, I can't go out in the rain and get my wittle toesies wet -- *it was a splendid salon*, the very essence of salonicity, the A Team bringing its A Game.

Of course, Harder did a zipper. (Try saying that three times really fast.) Of course, Gayle Feyrer did a Mary Oliver. Of course, Bob Wieder exposed John Updike as a shallow fool. (This may take some explanation. Buy me a drink.) Of course, Jon McKenney juxtaposed Keats and Wallace Stevens, dashing them together and drawing sparks. Of course, yours truly read at great length from Nathaniel Hawthorne reminding us once again that that boy needed to get out more.

Of course, William (Bill) Allard showed up looking as if he had just jumped into the river to save some drowning kittens but the kittens fought back. Of course, he did the boiled-down plot of a minute movie in which love between a lady golfer and an aphasic finds its way.

After he dried out. (Bill, not the aphasic.)

And it must be added that Robert (Bob) Wieder shared a tweaked version of his classic Calories Burned During Sex bit, which made me laugh and laugh until … Out to the car for another Depends .

It was a good salon. There will definitely be another one May 5 in the Rococo magnificence of Sue Russell’s San Francisco aerie.

Those of you -- that means you Edith, Richard, Pat, Joyce, Donald, Danny, Dean, Margaret, Ora and Merrill (if that was indeed your name, striking lady) and the brave Harder boys -- all of you who braved last night’s weather: Order of the Duck Medal with Cormorant Cluster.