A Sail to Great Island

In My Dream I Appear before the Senate

35 In My Dream I Appear before the Senate Nobody’s truly bad here, or didn’t start that way. Imagine we could go back to what we were— the president’s attorney could rise out of his wheelchair, the president could come over in a T-shirt, and we’d set up the bases on the capitol lawn. Not like now, with him visible only on television with his pancake makeup, and his bullet-proof suit, and his words sincere and calculated to please. In summer camp, in our bunks at night, under our blankets, we might have dreamed of being the athletes we couldn’t be in the daytime, not boys different from ourselves, but boys made from highlights, our best moves. And, when sex came into our world, it was without context: maybe a girl in a training bra offering us her suntanned body in a dream, the way the summer offered us the sun, the diamond, the oiledleather smell of a mitt, the klock of a hardball against a Louisville Slugger. Back then everyone had a self (vague) and a baseball self: We knew who threw side-arm, and who, if nervous, was apt to throw wild. The president would throw me a ball. It would whack into the pocket of my glove, stinging my hand, both of us really there under the flickering trees. When camp was over, we’d go back to different lives. In my dream now I stand in front of the Senate: Let’s have some pity here. Imagine if you gave everything to public life? In the dense night of the central office of the world, your body wakes up, hums, tells you you’re human. 36 But you don’t kill anyone, or steal things. Remember back in camp? The weird kid who arranged mice in pyramids behind the crafts shop? Oh he was never caught, but we knew who did it, and he went home as friendless as he came in June. ...