The Book of Delights

Gay wanders around campus watching the soon-to-be-graduates posing for photos in their caps and gowns. He wonders what the average amount of photos taken per day of oneself is, and imagines it is more than one. He assumes that soon, the next generation will rebel against posing for photos and begin a new trend of posing like something else, which will then be stolen by brands and sold to the masses. As he reflects, he hears a sound like applause and finds a crow whacking its wings against the water in a creek. He takes this as a message to “take your head out of your ass and be glad” (158).

Gay references the previous essay “The High-Five Strangers, Etc.” when he again notes that statues, especially those near courthouses or public buildings, carry guns. This highlights his delight when he passes a statue on his campus of Hoagy Carmichael playing the piano. One of the statue’s hands is clasped loosely, with enough space for flowers, which someone or multiple people have decided to place in his hands. One of the flowers reminds him of a wand, or any non-military baton, while the other two flowers complement the colors of the first. This sight reminds him of how often people adorn statues with flowers, coins, or fruit, and he takes this statue as another proof of humans’ nature to make the world around them beautiful.

To set up this delight, Gay laments the lack of public bathrooms in New York City, and how the lack of public bathrooms reinforces that property is more valuable than humans in the city. He then tells the story of a time he had to pee so badly, and couldn’t find a bathroom in his small town, that he decided to pee in his car. He realizes that this may not be a delight for some people, but he was delighted in the release of the physical and mental anguish of holding his bladder. He also realizes that the delight of peeing in his car would not have occurred were it not for the deprivation of a public toilet.

He then remembers a visit to Greenwich Village, where he needed to use the bathroom and was directed to a porta-potty in a park across the street. The porta-potty was clean, thankfully, and because Gay is tall, he realizes there was a screen at the top of the porta-potty through which he could view the people in the park, like a priest looking through the screen during confessional.

Gay is delighted when two strangers wave at him. It reminds him of his grandfather, who waved at everyone by raising two fingers to the brim of his baseball cap, reminiscent of times men would raise their hats in greeting. Gay always assumed his grandfather knew everyone in his small town, but he then would wave to strangers when traveling through the city, or even to statues. Gay views his grandfather as an ambassador and a reminder of more neighborly times, which, Gay thinks, may still exist considering the two strangers who waved to him today.

In this essay, Gay remembers the regional phrases he grew up saying, like “not for nothing,” pronounced “not fuh nuttin.’” Growing up in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, he grew up referring to the beach as the shore, pronouncing water like “wooder,” and knowing the phrase “a real Philly guy” meant someone was tough and aggressive. Therefore, hearing his friend from Boston use the phrase “not fuh nuttin” reminds Gay of where he grew up and delights him.

Though bindweed is an aggressive, hostile plant that will ruin a garden, Gay tries to turn it into a delight. He loves pulling the bindweed out of the soil, pulling it in a way that the entire root comes out. He carefully stores it in his pocket because if any piece remains on the ground, it will root again. While pulling the weeds from his garden, he has the time to notice how his plants are doing, the tiny details of which cabbages are being nibbled, and how the worms wiggle through the soil. Bindweed gives him a reason to stay in the garden, with his hands and knees in the dirt.

Gay recounts a moment in childhood when the older kids in the neighborhood trapped Gay and his brother, and painfully pinched the back of their arms until it hurt. Gay and his brother hardly ever cursed due to their mother’s chastisement, but they were driven to call the older kids names like “asshole” and “shitbag” (171). When they told their mother what happened, she lectured the older kids and called them “guttermouths.” All of this shows how delightful it is when his mother, the woman who never cursed, calls her granddaughter’s third-grade teacher a “dickhead” (171).

Gay never wants to make fun of signs written by those who do not speak perfect English and remembers how often he was corrected as a child for speaking “improper” English. Now, as an adult, he realizes that the adults in his life—especially his father—were trying to protect him from being associated with people’s ideas of Black people, which was an impossible task. Gay’s father was incredibly protective, and Gay remembers when his father nearly killed Gay’s bullies, almost hurt a dog that charged Gay, and barely restrained himself when standing in court with Gay when he was arrested for sledding on private property. Gay considers this essay a tangent because he started it to note how a sign by the hearth of a fireplace felt like a haiku, saying “Fireplace / Out of order / Thank you” (175).