Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

199. WHERE THE MOON NEVER SETTLES AND THE SUN NEVER SETS (aug. 1967):

When I heard the gay guy talking I knew I just had to stop : 'your big dick adds nothing to the situation' and the way he said that it was all just so funny - he spoke deliberately and sharply and denoted every word like it was a bullet and that nasally high twang that gave gayness away was benumbing and startling at the same time as well - whatever these two idiots were talking about went far beyond me but I enjoyed every moment of it for the few it lasted - sputtering gays having a spat I figured - and where else you gonn'a see that 'cept right where I was - some slop-hole pilastered barroom storefront Sheridan Square pisshole now so long gone it hurts just thinking back - but that wintry night it's what I remember best and if they were sports fans for sure I knew I'd have liked like to say 'what would you rather be ? a Yanker or a Yankee?' but they'd probably have squared off together and hit me hard and that would've just solved everything for them - I never knew and I never cared where the meat-cleaver came down and the old dirty ramp where the guy with the horses kept his wagons was always good to sleep in - bundled straw and closed from the worst of the night and kind of warm enough and I just noticed now it's a parking garage today but it's all the same all that huge heavy old concrete and plaster and the ramp and the old wooden beams in the ceiling and roof but no instead of horses and wagons and carriages they stuff in as many freaking-ass automobiles as they can for like a hundred and forty bucks a day and a few motorcycles too and other shit and they call it convenience and the whole modern day has folded in on itself like some Grethen Falkern hideaway with no story to tell (Gretchen Falkern was a girl I knew back then who catered to fucking expensive men - escort cum service exactly and they couldn't never be betrayed at penalty of death and she knew that - politicians ballplayers priests reverends doctors and famous assholes everywhere - so I called her place the 'hideaway with no story to tell') but that episode's over years back and probably all those fuckheads are dead by now anyway - reverence for the dead and reverie of their memory thinking back of those many times they'd spent with Gretchen Fetchin' Gretchen - that's how cool life is : all those things you learn along the way and then keep with you for the hundreds of thousands of the rest of your days and hours - where the moon never settles and the sun never sets - in the very old ancient recesses of the mind.