"I Detest Cheap Sentiment."

The last summer in Westerly, Rhode Island. As Ray and Mikevil are so eager to point out, I am given to sentimentality; this was just a few years ago, before September 11 and we were forced to sell the place. (I must have been feeling butch that summer.)

I sat on that porch so many hours each weekend, drifting in and out of reality. Hydrangeas surrounded us with a air of unending happiness. Those were the summers of afternoons on the nude beach (Moonstone) lobsters boiled in champagne, and my favorite: the weekly opera. Every Saturday night, we would MAKE our guests watch our rendition of La Forza del Destino by Verdi "play-acted" (like my grandmother used to say) by us. I always assumed the role of Leonora with a gown of pinned bedding and sometimes a quilted lampshade on my head. What we put those guests through! Yet, they always clapped when the show ended.