The Book of Delights

In this first entry, Gay reflects on the miracle of his birth and how incredible it was that his white mother and Black father ended up on the island of Guam. Though Gay spent many years ignoring his birthday, this year he turns 42 and decides to wear bright colors and floral patterns, even down to his underwear. He rebels against the stereotypes he was taught about men wearing bright colors and patterns and decides to bedeck himself in whatever he likes.

He also records as many delights as he finds on his first day of recording delights. As he walks through Manhattan, he sees a fruit truck selling lychee. Later, he watches a Transbridge teller almost smile when he is kind to her after some particularly rude customers heckle her. He noticed the trees outside his building, the beautifully shaped handle on his coffee mug, the saltiness of his peanut butter, the glance of a man passing by, and the shape of a woman’s foot as it steps in and out of her shoe.

This essay begins with Gay describing his garden, taking special care to describe the oregano, goumi bush, and rhubarb, as well as the hummingbird, deer scat, and deer hoof prints. He then remembers how his family never had the opportunity to delight in inefficiency because they were trying to stay afloat with two kids, a broken-down car, and multiple jobs. Instead, his family experienced un-delightful inefficiencies, like driving from Pennsylvania to Ohio to register the car in a state without inspections because they could not afford to replace the car even though two doors would not open and there was a hole in the floor.

Gay then lists some of his favorite delightful inefficiencies, like not carrying the groceries in one trip and wandering through the city with a friend trying to find a café that may or may not exist. In a recurring dream he has, he is consistently zooming from place to place in a hurry to catch a flight, but always stops for a perfect veggie burger. In the dream, he stops for the burger but almost always misses his flight. When he does catch the flight, the plane drops from the sky.

While carrying his groceries home, Gay realizes that he takes the same exact path every day that leads him past his childhood friend, Don Belton’s, old home. Belton lived in that house for a year before moving away and then being murdered. Gay thinks of his friend and the memories they share every time he passes the house and decides to rename that street Belton Way. Toward the end of the street, Gay sees a startlingly bright red and gold flower growing through the cracks of the sidewalk. Another bud that hasn’t quite opened is growing beside the blooming flower.

Gay notes that his mother has been praising his discipline. Though he doesn’t know why she has recently begun praising him, he believes her. In this essay about discipline, he records that the first time he decided to blow off writing his daily entry about delights was the fourth day. He easily could have tortured himself about losing his discipline and forced himself to write an entry, but Gay remembers how he never skipped school, basketball practice, or his paper route. He also remembers the day he asked his father to blow off his shift at Applebee’s and how wistfully his father had said “I wish I could” (18). So now, instead of forcing himself to be disciplined, he finds delight in his ability to blow things off.

In this entry, Gay thinks about strange etymological sayings like “one needs x like one needs a hole in the head,” as a dramatic way of stating that they do not need x. Gay writes about a trailer for a documentary called Hole in the Head, about a Black boy named Vertis Hardiman from Lyles Station, Indiana, who endures radiation experiments in the 1920s. Due to these experiments, Hardiman has a fist-sized hole in his head. Gay frequently thinks about the violence done to Black people and remembers a friend saying one must be ill-advised to not be paranoid as a Black person—ill-advised not to think that they want to put a hole in your head.

This entry focuses on Gay’s friend, Walt, who experiences agoraphobia (the fear of being stuck in a situation without an escape or help if things go wrong). Walt was diagnosed with myeloid leukemia seven years ago and was given seven years to live. Gay remembers the day Walt was diagnosed, and then when Walt received a second opinion from Gay’s uncle that told him the same thing. To treat cancer, Walt underwent an interferon treatment that involved intense flu-like symptoms. The treatment was so awful that Walt checked himself into a psych ward to keep himself from dying by suicide at the thought of going through the treatment again.

A praying mantis stands on an empty pint glass on the red table of an outdoor café. Gay stops to examine it, noting its yellowish-green color, heart-shaped head, and rhythmic movements. To Gay, the mantis looks like it is dancing to music he cannot hear, so he listens to the cicadas and crickets chirping nearby. For 20 minutes, Gay watches the mantis and believes that the mantis watches him until the insect climbs down the pint glass and to the edge of the table and spreads two of its legs, looking like it wants to dance with Gay. He then remembers doing a poetry reading at a friend’s farm which was filled with flowers, insects, and birds. As Gay walked through the field, he knelt beside a large zinnia and watched a praying mantis bite off a dragonfly’s head.

In Bloomington, Indiana, Gay sits on a bench and watches another one of the few Black men in the town ignore him as he walks by. Gay and the nameless man are wearing similar red sneakers, and Gay wonders if maybe this man is simply rejecting the pressure to nod at every Black individual he sees. Gay refers to this as the “negreeting.” He remembers that when he spent two days in Canada, he was never “negreeted,” yet when he returned to Denver, he was “negreeted” multiple times in 10 minutes. This felt warm, familiar, and welcoming.

Gay reflects on innocence, and how Black people in America are always presumed guilty. Gay views the “negreeting” as a way that Black people acknowledge one another’s innocence, even if the nation does not. Gay wonders if perhaps the man in the red sneakers is not ignoring him but is imagining a world where one does not have to acknowledge the innocence of other Black people because it is considered inherent.

In a small town in Indiana, Gay notices a statue in front of the town hall carrying a gun and wants to replace all the statues holding guns with people holding babies, chinchillas, or nothing at all instead of guns. He continues to a small café where many other Black people appear to be hiding and begins transcribing notes from his journal into his computer while listening to music. A short while later, a young-looking white girl stands beside his table, encourages him in his work, and gives him a high-five. He delights in these pleasant public physical interactions but realizes that what is pleasant and delightful is not universal. What is pleasant to him as a large, male, cis-gender Black man may not be a pleasant experience to someone else.

Recently, on a plane, Gay saw his Uncle Earl and stopped beside his seat and put a hand on his uncle’s forearm. The man did not turn out to be his uncle but looked like his uncle would have looked 20 years earlier. Still, Gay’s uncle died six months later, and Gay was happy to have been able to gently and lovingly touch this stranger who looked like his uncle thousands of miles away.

While writing by hand in a small notebook, Gay feels freer to express his thoughts and write slowly, and intentionally, capturing the accuracy of his thoughts and feelings in a way that cannot be replicated on a computer. While writing on a computer, entire paragraphs can be deleted without a second thought, while writing by hand leaves an indelible trail of thought. Similarly, computers consistently correct spelling and grammar, changing the original feeling of a written piece. Therefore, Gay argues that writing by hand is the best way to record unadulterated thoughts and feelings.