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Every day I walk into the nineteenth century with Oscar Wilde on my arm and in my mind. It has been sixteen months now and the love affair has peaked. I am at that first stage of the biographical process: identification. I make notes on the words and deeds that made Wilde the most fascinating personality of his time. I envy him even as I wish to lose my shyness in his social bravado.
Be it the Savoy, the Café Royal or Kettner's, Wilde is a dutiful escort; I hesitate to say date. Everywhere and anywhere he is the center of attention. I slip from his arm and leave the party alone and unnoticed. I cannot compete with his syntaxial acrobatics. I am fearful of the next epigram. Will I understand it? Should my response be a sardonic laugh or a smile of complicity?
(I remember family dinners. We were required to answer the Reader's Digest word quiz. I bought the magazine ahead of time. Oscar would have approved. One must accept Wilde and not compete. His rapt listeners are grateful to be relieved of the burden of their own wit. I too become part of a passive audience watching either a performance or a grown-up man seeking attention.)
Why do I find Wilde so attractive? It must be the eroticism of charm. I haven't dreamed about him yet. I doubt if the dreams would be sexual. I would not want to kiss him or hold his hand. I find his large pouty lips distasteful and his large pasty hands unattractive. One offended woman likened him to a giant white caterpillar. For me, he is neither sibling nor parent but some kind of unattainable other. In my daydreams we are always at a restaurant, my chin cupped in my hands, elbows burrowed into the crusty linen tablecloth. I lean into