The Book of Delights

Gay and his partner, Stephanie, are in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, caring for Gay’s mother who had minor surgery. Before boarding the plane to return home, Gay performs rituals that he believes keep the plane from crashing. He imagines covering the plane in a blanket of light and guiding it safely through the air in his hands. Aboard the plane, he pays careful attention to the flight attendants and follows their instructions perfectly, even flipping through the safety manual. He turns directly to the page with the baby receiving an oxygen mask and life jacket. The illustrated child is cute and jolly, which Gay finds sad because if the child is being put in a life jacket, they are all probably going to die.

Gay read some poems to a group of 11th graders at Abraham Heschel School in Manhattan and saw a student with a Black Panthers pin. The student reminded Gay of himself in the 1980s when he wore an Ethiopian pin to his school in Levittown, PA, a town that was built as a segregated community. This reminds Gay that his brother’s first house originally had a clause forbidding the house from being sold to a person of color. Though his brother never seemed to care, Gay took great pleasure in the fact that a Black family now lived in that house.

He then reflects on the sparing stories his white mother has shared with him about life with a Black husband in the 1970s in Minnesota. Many people told Gay’s mother that she was dooming her children by marrying a Black man. Even Gay’s father once told his mother that he might be causing her too much trouble and that maybe they shouldn’t get married. Of course, they did.

Gay was in New York speaking as a panelist about Black people returning to the South and cultivating land when another panelist shared about a pecan tree in a backyard in New Orleans. Later that night, Gay and some others were sitting outside a fancy bar, eating pecans. A Black woman approached Gay and told him she was the roommate of the other panelist, the one who had brought pecans from New Orleans to Harlem. Gay thought it was beautiful that the pecans were smuggled across state lines thinking of it as some small healing salve on the violence Black people have endured and are enduring. The woman told Gay that to her, pecans taste like the South coming in her mouth, and tells Gay that she’s a hugger, so he hugs her.

Gay loves calling a “do-over” in pick-up basketball games and remembers how frequently it was called in childhood during games of four-square or kickball. He laments that, as an adult, the do-over feels like wishful thinking and cannot be applied to daily life. He recalls calling for a do-over during a game of wall-ball in his childhood, the version called “suicide,” or ass-ball, when he had to run and touch the wall before the other players caught the ball and pegged it at him. The essay ends with the reflection that the do-over is more present in “suicide” than it is in any children’s game.

Gay is writing this essay on the winter equinox, the darkest day of the year, and reflecting on how spring and winter endlessly fold into one another. The focus of the essay, however, is the lavender infinity scarf Gay is wearing around his neck. His friend Danni made it for him, and he is fascinated by the art of crochet, knitting, or whatever medium she used to make the fluffy scarf. He realizes that 10 years ago, he would have never worn this scarf, considering it far too feminine, and having a deep fear of being perceived as less masculine. He wonders which events in his childhood led him to those misogynistic beliefs—whether it was his father being disgusted by Gay’s tears, or his mother being glad she only had sons. Either way, wearing the lavender scarf Danni made him is a step in a positive direction for Gay, who wants to be softer.

At the time of this essay, Gay is visiting his mother and they are trying to decide which movie to watch. While scrolling through options On Demand, Gay’s mother notices the movie Ghost and tells Gay that his father loved that movie, and she used to come home from work to him crying while watching the film. Gay finds this hard to believe because, first, his father was always working, and second, his father preferred stupid movies with car chases and explosions. Gay then launches into a few paragraphs about how he has been told he looks like the actor who plays Patrick Swayze’s murderer, which could have contributed to the tense relationship he had with his father. He returns to the subject of his father, and though he finds it hard to believe, imagines what it would have been like to return to work and have his father look over his shoulder with tears in his eyes and smile as Gay walks through the door.

In this essay, Gay is reading a book about why the pronoun “he” has come to represent a person. Gay is sitting with Stephanie and asks her what the initials “N.B.” stands for and she tells him it means “note bene,” literally translating to “note good,” and means to pay close attention to the note. Gay thinks that the note bene should be good, then, but the one he is reading is not good. Instead, it states that using the pronoun “he” to refer to a person is not excluding the other half of the population. Gay shares this with Stephanie and her 17-year-old daughter. Gay tells the reader to note bene, or pay close attention, to Stephanie’s daughter’s reaction, which is, “What the fuck?” (87)

Gay recounts his association with an El Debarge song that plays while he sits in a basement café. The song reminds Gay of driving with his father, who almost exclusively listened to Philadelphia radio station Power 99. The song holds all the memories of puberty and the awakening of Gay’s sexual feelings and desires, which he likens to an animal caught between pleasure and hunger. He also recalls how the singer challenged heteronormativity with this androgynous song. Gay was delighted when, while standing in the Philadelphia airport, he heard a man question if the song playing throughout the room was a Debarge.

The song in the title reminds Gay of two childhood friends, one likely to get into mischief and the other not so. Once, these friends played a prank on Gay’s family by sneaking into the house and rearranging all their furniture while no one was home. Returning home that night, Gay thought his parents must have done it and went to bed, not thinking of it, until his mother woke him up angrily, accusing him of moving the furniture. He immediately suspected these friends and called them, lying and saying his mother knocked out a tooth by tripping over the rearranged furniture in the dark. The kind friend apologized immediately and wept. The other friend replied, “Bummer” (92), which is why Gay later left a dead possum on this friend’s doorstep.

In the first part of this essay, Gay talks about how he has been saving delights to write about them later, but that defeats the purpose of “temporal allegiance” or dailiness, the idea that one must sit with their delights on a day-to-day basis. This means one must be present and vigilant, and it means that one cannot hoard delights but believe that each day will have its own share.

In the second half, he decides to clear all his stacked delights and list them out before moving onto one daily delight at a time. This list of delights includes a book of essays he had been reading, a new album of music, gold rush apples, a regional colloquialism he learned, the laughing snort, cardinals, walking with a poet friend, and certain quotes.

In Donny Hathaway’s song “For All We Know,” the singer is talking about death. Gay says that imminent disappearance is always the voice’s subject, as sound naturally disappears. Donny’s voice reminds everyone that their own voice, and being, is passing away and that this understanding can lead to radical love.

Stevie Wonder’s song, “Come back as a Flower” is stuck in Gay’s mind as he walks around the Denver airport on a layover. He is anxious because of men surrounding him in hunting gear, because of the impending inauguration, and because of the Exxon trial. To ease his anxiety, he walks around the airport in laps, listening to Stevie Wonder’s song. As he walks, he sees four women in uniform on break, relaxing and chatting. One fixes the other’s collar and seems to take longer than necessary, keeping her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. Gay watches like a sunflower drawn to sunlight at this expression of human love and affection.

On an airplane, the flight attendant calls Gay “baby” three times while giving him pretzels and seltzer. He listens to see if she calls everyone baby and feels special when she does not. Whenever he thinks of special treatment, Gay remembers Eddie Murphy’s SNL skit in the 1980s when he delivered an analysis of racial privilege. So, Gay is feeling special and reflects on the familiarity of being called “hon” by a waitress, or when the AAA representative said “Bless your soul” for no reason (100). As the airplane begins taxiing, the flight attendant who called Gay “baby” ends her safety presentation by telling the passengers that she loves them and hopes they have a beautiful day. To Gay, this is both sad and delightful, because now everyone on the plane is her baby.

For much of Gay’s youth, he refused to acknowledge “prettiness,” both within and without. Now, however, he is quick to notice the beauty of the flowers in his neighbor’s garden and the dancing gait of a roller-skater on the sidewalk. To Gay’s delight, the skates are a bright pink that bleeds into purple. As he watches, the skater rolls over the words “Repent or burn” that someone has carved into the sidewalk. Gay delights in the erosion of the words and imagines birds in his heart flying unrepentantly into the sky.