Today I accompanied J to his medical appointment, a post-surgical exam. People want other people to go with them to the doctor, for moral support, even though they can't actually go in all the way, into the deepest zone of terrible murmurs and shallow ceramic basins and sterile gauze, oh the gauze. There's always a door at which friends and loved ones must stop, and pick up an old Newsweek, and look around at the framed posters from the National Air and Space Museum's "A Century of Flight" exhibit. Sitting next to J as we waited for his name to be called by the slightly put-out looking attendant with big dark bags under her eyes, I reminded myself repeatedly that I am not unwell, that I am a healthy person, relatively speaking and to the best of my knowledge. I tried to become engrossed in the advertisements for sectional sofas in the Portland Monthly. After a short time a middle-aged couple emerged from the inner sanctum and spoke softly to one another as they put on their coats. Clearly they had just had a consultation with one of the surgeons. They were a couple, a wife and husband, naturally he was present when the surgeon delivered his grim prognostication or his detailed description of the necessary procedure, its difficulties and its aftermath fraught with hazards. No, not grim perhaps, they were poker-faced but somehow I noted a nimbus of relief around their faces, the exchange of brief, exhausted smiles, a lightening. That made me feel better. He was carrying three books under his arm, the only one I could see was a copy of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Who would dare to bring a book about justice to a doctor's office? What kind of sick joke is that? When I saw this book in the man's hand I naturally thought of Lou Rawls, being ignorant of political and social philosophy, and that old beer commercial at Christmastime, and Clydesdale horses clomping through snow. I dislike horses. When it comes to animals I'm in it for the fur; I am no aficionado of hide, let me tell you, I have no truck with hidebound creatures. And hooves, forget it. Hooves are repellent. Horses! Those terrible curling lips, eyes of anger and fright. It was not difficult for me to watch the slaughterhouse scene in Maîtresse, the Barbet Schroeder movie starring the beautiful Bulle Ogier, about whom Gary Indiana wrote a wonderful article in the current issue of Film Comment. That Budweiser commercial is one of my strongest Christmas memories of childhood, by the mere thought of that commercial the richest associations are evoked, and that's why I so deeply resent the elegant singer Lou Rawls, a man I would be otherwise indifferent to at worst, possibly even admire, Lou Rawls who sang "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" and many other well-known numbers, the smooth vocal stylings of Lou Rawls, in the round, one night only, an evening with Lou Rawls, no relation to the renowned political philosopher John Rawls of Harvard University. Did you know that Lou Rawls provided the excellent backing vocals on the immortal Sam Cooke song "Bring It On Home To Me"?