Rich was a guy who must have been
wounded in his youth, and rather than
making choices that would lead him
to healing, he chose to spread the pain.

Women were his bete noire. He really
hated the slightest flash of self-assertion,
the slightest sign of intellect sharper
than his own (not hard to achieve).

And if a woman left her apartment
wearing a cover-everything bathrobe
to visit the recycle bins, he'd fling
around words like tramp and whore.

He lived in my old building for my
first seven or eight years there. I think
he ended up in a nursing facility, as his

shaking head foreshadowed Parkinson's.

Ordinarily, one's heart would go out
in empathy to anyone so afflicted.
Rich would have made empathy a challenge
for Francis of Assisi, for Francis of Rome.