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Cabins | Jul 08 2002

I just finished reading Cemetery Nights, a collection of poems by Stephen Dobyns. Over two decades ago Stephen Dobyns had sex with a woman who I later had sex with, let us call her Mila, in a cabin. He was twice her age and possibly married. I’ve never done such a thing, feeling it wrong to have sex with someone so young, unless one is equally young oneself, or nearly so. Stephen Dobyns felt differently no doubt, or made an exception for Mila, who told me this story so long ago that I’ve forgotten where the cabin was.

However I do remember that Stephen Dobyns asked first, I mean before proceeding, which I confess I’ve never done, not with Mila or anyone, although I can see asking if the woman is as young as Mila was and I am as old as Stephen Dobyns was (which as it happens I am) outside that cabin.

In lieu of asking, I simply do what feels right and see what happens—a more subtle and interesting approach, although far be it for me to criticize Stephen Dobyns or anyone else for asking, particularly in a case such as this, wherein you are (I only just remembered this!) the young lady’s poetry teacher at a summer workshop.

Cemetery Nights was published in 1987. I slept with Mila in 1981, three or four years after Stephen Dobyns. I believe I had difficulty maintaining an erection, for reasons that escape me now, assuming I ever knew.

A few years later Mila won an Academy Award for something. By chance I visited her soon after, and she brought it out to show me. It looked exactly like an Academy Award. Mila asked if I wanted to hold it, and I said no, not wanting to. By this point I had stopped liking her very much, for reasons I only dimly recall and which in any case no longer matter.

The only reason I read Cemetery Nights was to see if it had any allusions, direct or otherwise, to cabins. It doesn’t.