Because the Stars Incline Us
Michael,
You won’t believe the story I have to tell you.
Seriously, you won’t.
But I have to tell somebody, and of all my close friends, you’re definitely the one who loves Oscar Wilde the most. (And judges me the least, as a rule.) So whether you believe what follows or not, you’ll want to believe it, and that’s something. And even if these pages spend the rest of their days languishing in the dark recesses of your filing cabinet, at least I will have put it all down on paper somewhere. If I just keep it all in my head I’ll be doubting that it happened within a week, and two weeks from now I’ll swear an oath that it didn’t.
Never have I used a cliché so aptly when I say that it started quite innocently. Three days ago I was researching my thesis comparing the prison experiences of Wilde and a 5th century Roman emperor named Boethius. Of course I reread De Profundis, from the book of his collected correspondence that you gave me on my 40th birthday. I came across a passage that stopped me in my tracks just as it had when I first fell in love with his writing so long ago.
On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o’clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look…
