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Award-winning author to visit Ferndale

Author and psychologist Gary Glickman will perform scenes from his novel "Aura" at A Woman's Prerogative on Wednesday, June 23. In addition to his first novel, "Years From Now," Glickman's work has appeared in anthologies and magazines from "Vanity Fair" to "The Penguin Anthology of Gay Fiction." He is the recipient of an NEA in Literature, the New York State Council on the Arts Fiction grant, and other awards and is also a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.

The following is an excerpt from "Aura":
{ITAL Jane summoned Richy to her apartment, and he took the bus over on a Saturday afternoon just warm enough to go shirtless underneath his blue bomber jacket. In the elevator going up, a white-haired executive, close shaven, elegantly suited and scarved, stared imperiously as if such types should not have been allowed in the front elevator.
When the door opened at eleven, just across from Jane's door, the man put his arm across.
"Want to see a penthouse?" he asked, smileless, finally with a little curl to his lip, as Richy let the door slide closed. Some things he learned that afternoon: the penthouse of Jane's building had a wrap-around terrace, and an unobstructed view of both rivers; also an aphorism he enjoyed explaining in after years: when the wife's away, some men are gay.
"You're late," Jane said, unlocking the door for Richy but going back to her desk, where she took up her pen, doodling.
"Tell me a fantasy."
"The guy in the penthouse just fucked me."
"Not that kind. You know, a fantasy I might have. You know, if I did have fantasies –like that. You know, alternative lifestyle."
"Let's see," said Richy. "You're in bed with that actress."
"Who?"
"You know which one."
"Stop! Too fast! What do you mean, in bed! Oh my God!"
"You meet her after some party, and she comes over to you, whispers that she wants to know you."
"Oh God." Jane's eyes were closed.
"She sends a drink over to your table, nods slowly when you look over."
"Oh God, oh God," said Jane. She put her head down on the desk. "Go on."
"'Hey there,' she says, coming over to your table. And puts her hand casually on your cheek. Then, with her other hand –"
"Stop!" said Jane. "I don't want to know! You're obsessed."
"But you asked me."
"I'm just curious. You know me. You know I'm interested in people, Richy. The way you're interested in — what are you interested in, anyway? Fantasy? Fame, I suppose. Power."
"Jane, you're the one who's got all the fancy new friends, all the cocktail parties."
"That's just what's happened, it's not anything I've done. I have to go to those parties, for my career. And some of those people are very nice, it turns out."
"You always wanted to be friends with movie stars. With Vanessa Redgrave."
"That's not true!"
"Susan Sontag."
"Okay! Yes, it's good to know interesting people, creative people, that's what I've always said. And why not? Why shouldn't people want to find the most interesting people to be friends with? I want you to find your niche, too, Richy. We'll be like John Lennon and Yoko Ono."
"I know, I know. And you're John Lennon."
"Well, yes. But she's his guru, his inspiration. Really, I can't wait – until you're somebody who – " Jane looked at him wide-eyed, trying to imagine in what way she might someday be proud to know him – "Well, somebody!" she said, and laughed in her way that made him laugh along as well.
A few weeks later Richy was waiting to go up to Jane's again when the elevator disgorged the executive from the penthouse, Phillip Risley, CEO of Barlow's Internal Audit, same cashmere coat, tassled silk scarf, faint smile, this time with his wife and two children, whom Richy recognized from the photographs in the bedroom.
"How're you doing?" Richy said, nodding to them all. Neither husband nor wife seem to have heard him; but one of the children turned around – a boy, seven or eight – and as the elevator doors closed between them Richy winked at him.
Ten years later that boy wandered Christopher Street obsessively, shy but all the more desperate to find the man in the blue leather jacket from the elevator ten years before, who had winked at him as the doors were closing, just in time; a message for the future. Fifteen years later, arm in arm with a first love, he did pass Richy on the street, and stopped and looked back after him with a curious feeling. Ever after he wondered if he had recognized the man in the blue jacket who had winked at him, too early, long ago.}

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