Friday, February 27, 2004

On the cab ride home.

I had just kissed L. in front of her place in the cold and she'd stopped shivering as soon as we kissed and we kissed at length, elaborately but not extremely, she reticent with the tongue. Yet when I pulled away her lips were dewy, her eyes misty, and she bore an expression I'd never seen before, a faintly melancholy yet expectant look, and I kissed her again, pressing her left shoulder blade with my hand.

On the cab ride home there were men climbing into a hole in the street.

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

We had that simple life, you and I. We scrounged up change for coffee. With our needs attenuated by our means we were happier than happy.

Friday, February 20, 2004

I slept with K. all last night but didn't fuck her. Wanted to of course, sort of, maybe not. And not that it was necessarily an option. I sensed a stiffness in her frame, something closed. But it was no different than it ever was with her so who really knows. Nothing she did, no gesture, no movement, no words seemed to indicate the slightest desire or  even inclination. Besides the time I caressed her back and stopped and she protested with a pleading murmur. So I continued.

I should have caressed the small of her back and slid my fingers under her waistband and caressed her ass and moved my hand lower as I kissed the nape of her neck and her spine and stroked her thighs where her legs meet her ass. Finally touched her cunt, seen her try to maintain that passive composure.

Which I'm sure she would have. But with a little strain now.

And then this, that, the bleary pauses when someone takes off a shirt or underwear, trying not to slow the sex momentum.

And before you know it.

But I didn't and I don't know why. I was reluctant, afraid she didn't want it perhaps, finally daunted by her melancholic and icy Scandinavian manner.

And then there were the bones in her emaciated torso: her shoulders and rib cage seemed scarily sharp, poking her skin into stark relief like the buttresses of a circus tent.

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

On the subway platform Saturday or was it Sunday. A disheveled black man with lunatic eyes played the violin for change. He sounded surprisingly good – he played shit like "Ma Vie En Rose" with a delicate touch. A beautiful young woman put a dollar in his case and he immediately stopped playing and handed her the fiddle and bow to play. Strangely, she accepted them without hesitation, as though that were exactly what she'd expected in the transaction. She was French or Italian or something and so he gestured to her how to play. She held the violin stiffly in the crook of her collar and clutched the bow like a knife. The man bobbed his head and pointed for each string he wanted her to play, Like that! Like that! and she drew the bow across the open strings, articulating in succession WANH WANH WANH WANH, four hideous rasping notes; a jagged, tuneless melody from someplace in hell. He nodded and smiled vigorously and she smiled and handed him back his instrument then slipped sprite-like into the dour crowd.

I gave him all my change on the way onto the train: quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies.

Thursday, February 12, 2004

The cabbie again. Went the wrong way. I didn't even notice until the neighborhood got shitty on 3rd Avenue. 101 Street, 102 Street.

"You have to go across and stop on 105th and Fifth."

He didn't seem to understand.

"I go left, I come back up."

"No, you have to take a right." I felt my voice tighten into the speech of an unapologetic and resolute prick. There was a mean pleasure there. "You have to go right on Madison. No I mean right on Park. Right up to 106th. Then 105th and Fifth."

There were some unfamiliar garbage cans in the street before my building.


The suicide note said, "I love you! Bye!"

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

On the fuselage at the edge of the doorway a faint trace of a word had been left, in paint that perhaps had permeated some tape or a sticker since removed. The word was repeated five or six times in a column: VOID.

    VOID
    VOID
    VOID
    VOID
    VOID

It was the muffled, lustful plea of all the plane's pressurized contents, static yet animated with the potential to explode into cold, dark space.

Coffee maker 1.

Thursday, February 05, 2004

I tried to go to the Y the other day and was put off by the entire experience, spoiled as I was by the other gym I'm trying, the New York Health & Racquet Club, with its petty amenities and sickly sweet odor of eucalyptus and complimentary body wash, the beautiful front desk girl, the carpeted locker room, the mustachioed attendant dressed in blinding, immaculate white.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

It was the kind of morning where the alarm goes off when you least expect it.

Monday, February 02, 2004

There is no correct way to live.