Collateral damage (2016)

Pauline Pfeiffer, 1934

Collateral damage

You never know what you’re going to find,
where you’re going to end up.
I woke up this morning thinking about Hemingway,
Ernest, his house, the sun, Key West.

I went to his house once while visiting Key West.
I remember the pool, the catwalk connecting his home to his writing studio, the spacious art deco bathroom, the heat.

Hemingway lived in paradise and died in Idaho.
He was born in 1899.
There is now, only one person in the entire world,
one lonely soul that was born before him.

He was married four times.
His second wife,
the American journalist Pauline Pfeiffer,
died on October 1, 1951.
She and Ernest married in 1927,
honeymooned in Le Grau-du-Roi
in the South of France and
divorced on November 4, 1940.

Pauline Pfeiffer died of an acute state of shock.
It was precipitated by the news that her son Gregory,
who had experienced gender identity issues for most of his life,
had been arrested entering a woman’s restroom in a movie theater.

When I woke up this morning,
I didn’t know
that anyone had ever died because of a transgender bathroom issue.

You never know what you’re going to find,
where you’re going to end up.

Daniel H. Dugas
May 14, 2016