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Marriage Encounter

Reading through my parents’ journals from Marriage Encounter in 1980, I’m surprised to find my father acknowledge in writing his faults and shortcomings, listing his insecurity and low self-esteem as elements of himself he doesn’t like.  I am surprised to find my mother talking about my parents’ open sexual relationship, wanting my father to “hate quaaludes,” pledge that she would try not to smoke pot daily.  I feel shocked and disappointed that while I was nine years old, my parents were struggling not with drug addiction or swinging, not with curtailing these behaviors and looking into their possible effects on themselves, their ability to raise children, on us, the actual living, breathing children, but with how they could live with these things and still be happy, how they could have the lifestyles they wanted, only better.  My mother says that my father’s need for sex sometimes seems more mental than physical.  She says she has a terrible time accessing her own feelings.  She wishes my father wasn’t so focused on sex and drugs.

Reading this and knowing the ending of my parents, knowing how they failed to find happiness in each other or, for my father, even in himself, and who died from his secret needs and private life, makes me feel pessimistic for the future.  For if my father knew in 1980 exactly what his weaknesses were, why didn’t he ever try to overcome them, or if he did try, why didn’t he succeed?  Was it just too dangerous to him, too revealing, too shameful?  What was the pain that he was trying to mask?  Was it from his childhood?  Were his parents abusive, as my mother suspects?  What did he want from my mother?  What did he have to give?  Why didn’t my mother, setting out her needs and never having them fulfilled, continue to live with my father?  Why didn’t my mother, whose only goal was to give her children a good life, fail to see how the life they were living was depriving the children of the things they most needed, emotional love and stability?

In some ways, I know why.  My mother was lost after the death of her father and never recovered.  Her mother disappointed her and she never accepted her stepfather or step-siblings.  She wasn’t ambitious and had no career interests which were stronger than her desire to have children.  The additional shock of her mother dying right before my parents’ wedding was overwhelming to her.  Except for her sisters, she had nothing left, and my father was something.  She was young and naïve and he was exciting and unusual.  He introduced her to sex and drugs, to a world she had never known.  She found happiness in her children.  But was she ever happy?  I don’t think so.  Was he?  Definitely not.  Or maybe I’m completely wrong.  Maybe

And finally, why am I finding it so hard, after learning so much about my own life and that of my parents, knowing my parents’ faults and weaknesses, to overcome my own problems, which mirror theirs?  My insecurity, my low self-esteem, my sex addiction.  Why can I have so much information and feel unable to apply it.  Why, once I discover what is missing, can’t I add it? (March 10, 2003)

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Photograph

I grew up in a very sexually charged household. My father was famously flirtatious and had a lot of female friends. My parents dressed up to go out on weekend nights, and hosted loud and raucous parties. My father, in particular, always received sexy presents at his birthday parties. Once, he received two large ceramic mugs, one of their handles shaped into a pink, curved erect penis, and the other a life size, mauve colored woman’s full breast, its nipple a pouring spout. Another time, I woke up on a Sunday morning to a mess of leftover party food and cake on the kitchen table, including a cardboard bakery box from the Erotic Bakery in Manhattan. Inside were a collection of hollow chocolate genitalia: a penis, a vagina, breasts. I broke off pieces of the chocolate and ate them while the apartment was still quiet, the curtains still drawn.

One of my parent’s friends was dating a man who had slicked back hair, a mustache, tight pants, and a fancy white sedan. We went to his house once, and I had to use the bathroom. I closed the door and sat on the toilet and stared at the poster on the wall in front of him. A little girl and boy stood naked, holding hands and looking at the camera. The words on the poster read “They’re Never Too Young.”

My brother and I had bunk beds, and I slept on top. Our sheets were white with blue and red cartoon characters — mine were of Superman and Spiderman, and my brother’s were Sesame Street. On the wall next to my bed, I had a blue and white poster of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, eighteen or twenty bright-eyed young women wearing blue sparkly vests and tight white shorts with strong tanned legs in white cowboy boots.

On a Sunday afternoon, my father took me to a friend’s apartment to watch a football game on television. We sat on a couch in a small room looking out onto a parking lot. At one point, apparently without any regard for the child in the room, my father’s friend produced a Playboy magazine and showed it to my father. I don’t remember saying anything, but my father unfolded the centerfold and showed it to me. See? he said. It’s no big deal. It’s just a naked woman. No big deal.

In fourth grade, I went to a friend’s house after school because he had all of the Star Wars action figures and the Death Star, which I’d never seen in person. After we’d finished playing, we had a snack in the kitchen and my friend asked me if I wanted to see something cool. He led me into the woods behind the house, where he lifted a log to reveal a hidden glossy magazine. I recognized the name — Playboy — from my own house, but I had never seen pictures like these. One in particular showed a man kneeling in front of woman, holding a straw in his mouth up to her vagina. My friend laughed. “It kind of gives you a stiffy, doesn’t it?” Even though I wanted to see the pictures again, I never went back to that boy’s house.

My mother had a friend who visited often. She was at all of our parties including the children’s birthdays. Once she was sitting at our kitchen table smoking a cigarette and asked me how I was. “I want to put my face in your vagina,” I told her.

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Blackout

I drove home drunk last night.

This morning, sitting alone in my quiet dining room with my breakfast of fruit, yogurt and coffee, previously a person who would never drive drunk, I try to rationalize it. I drank a ton of water (I know those Lollapalooza bathrooms intimately) and spaced my drinking over the entire day, but then we left at 9.30 instead of eleven like we planned. I thought I had more time.

I can’t rationalize this. The truth is that I had been working at Lolla since 9:30 a.m., was alone and had nothing to do, and I wanted a buzz. I actively sought intoxication. At 5:19 p.m., when I was on beer #2, I wrote myself a note: “I need a new drug. Beer makes me pee too much.” The other truth is that my only barrier to drinking was that drinks were festival-expensive and I didn’t have much money. My plan to drink for free in the VIP area for as long as possible, as I had on Friday, didn’t work because of a specific crackdown on free crew drinking.

And so over the next six hours, I bought a $10 beer, and then another, and then a $30 bottle of wine (two 375ml cans poured together into one plastic bottle with an easy-drink flip lid) and then another $18 can of wine. I even took a picture of the bottle of wine because it was ingenious (a water bottle but with wine!) and also an ostentatious display of alcohol. I ignored the outrageous $68 I spent, and way overshot my drinking goals, blowing right through the buzz and into true-blue intoxication. I was drunk. Fail a DUI test, spend the night in jail or cause a horrific accident drunk.

And then I drove my 14 year old son and his friend home. We can stop there for a second. The ending of this story is not tragic. Nor is this story only about excessive drinking. This story is about the first time I have ever blacked out.

I remember having the first beer, the second beer, the bottle of wine, and buying the second can of wine. I don’t remember drinking the second can of wine, or whether I drank from the can or poured it into the bottle, which I remember considering. I don’t remember disposing of the bottle or the can. I don’t know whether I finished the wine. I do remember that I bought some ooey-gooey cheese fries after I bought the can of wine, because I remember setting the can on the counter while I paid. I remember eating the fries, refraining from licking my filthy fingers clean and wiping my fingers on the wood chips I was sitting on. Although I think I was sitting on cement. Or maybe I was standing. I took some pictures of the band I was watching from a standing position.

I remember my son texting me at 9 pm to ask if we could meet at 9:30 instead of 11:00. I replied, coherently. I even asked a question about whether I was driving anyone else home and told him about the band I was seeing. I remember winding my way out of the crowd. I remember thinking I should pee before I left, but I don’t remember peeing. I don’t remember finding an exit. I don’t remember leaving Lolla at all.

I don’t remember walking down Michigan Ave, although I remember being at the meeting place. I texted my son saying I was there. From my texts, I can see I waited for him for 8 minutes, but I don’t remember that. I remember going down the stairs towards the parking lot with my son and his friend, I remember showing them the picture on my phone showing where I’d parked my car, I remember getting into the car, and pulling up to the gate, inserting the ticket and putting my phone under the scanner. I remember driving up onto Michigan Ave, being careful of the cement walls on either side of the ramp, telling the kids how lucky we were to beat the traffic, turning onto Randolph and then onto Lake Shore Drive. I remember telling my son’s friend that I missed the North Ave exit because it came up too fast and I would take Fullerton instead. I remember asking something about Halsted, turning on Halsted and then on Armitage and then pulling in front of his house. I remember him getting out of the car seemingly very quickly.

I don’t remember pulling away from his house. I don’t remember talking to my son on the way home. I have no memory of which way I drove back to Lake Shore Drive. I have no memory of driving on Lake Shore Drive, exiting Lake Shore Drive, driving to my house, and pulling into my garage. I remember being in the kitchen and asking my son to be quiet so my other child wouldn’t wake up. I remember going upstairs and my child had in fact been woken up. I remember kissing them goodnight. I don’t remember going to bed.

When I woke up in the morning, I experienced the very unfamiliar feeling of disorientation. I knew where I was, but immediately realized all I did not remember, and I felt horrified. Shame, and more than a little terror. My son was asleep. What would he remember? What did I do? What did I say? Was my driving bad? Was it scary? Did he see how drunk I was? Did his friend? Would his friend’s parents be calling me? Was I an alcoholic? How come I didn’t have a hangover? How could I feel fine?

As soon as I was alone, I googled blacking out. Not surprisingly, there were tons of hits. I learned that blacking out is seen as a problem of binge drinking, although it used to be thought of as a symptom of advanced alcoholism. While it’s not considered “normal,” it’s definitely widespread. And my drinking last night fell squarely in binge territory.

I learned there are two kinds of black outs: partial and total. Because I can remember some of the events, mine was partial. Total blackouts are when people remember absolutely nothing from one point forwards. And in partial blackouts, some memories can be refreshed or recovered, while in total blackouts, memory is gone. In fact, it was never there: blackouts affect the part of the brain which creates memory by transferring short term memory to long term memory. In a blackout, that process is affected, and the events of a time period may never be recoverable, even though the person was awake, interacting, talking, and DRIVING.

All of the information included warnings about the dangers of blacking out, like unsafe sex and violence, but the one I was particularly interested in was driving. Because I have no memory of driving after dropping off my son’s friend, that memory might be gone forever. Yet at the time, I was awake, I was talking to my son, I obviously successfully navigated home and caused no accidents, but HOW?

Now, a couple of days later, I’ve decided to take a break from alcohol. For a week? A month? (How will I handle my vacation coming up?) I don’t think I’m an alcoholic because I don’t need alcohol and I will not have trouble taking this break. (Could I quit? I think so. But I don’t want to. Does that make me an alcoholic?) But I drink a lot – does that make me alcoholic? I read today that 60% of Americans have less than one drink per week, which seems low to me. Does that make me an alcoholic? The fact that I’m asking definitely means I should watch my drinking. I’m fearful – without any evidence – that this blackout has triggered something deeper, that it’s not just a result of one night of extremely heavy drinking. I’m afraid that I might black out if I have one drink. I read that that could happen.

But so far, there have been no consequences. I have seen my son’s friend and nothing was abnormal. My interactions with my son have been the same as ever. Although the next day, when I asked him what he ate at Lolla, he said, Dad, I told you last night. We had a whole conversation about it.

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1992, London

A night of darkness spilling into my bed and thoughts

I want to let the glorious sunshine beam through my open window to light my pale face, Share a taxi to heaven. Seems too good to be true. She was lonely too, and that’s why she didn’t mind my exposed and vulnerable heart.

Wonder about pain; not of love, but of nipple clamps and cat of nine tail whips and steel and leather and the weight of body on top of body, the taste of joy from talking with Josiah. You loving bastard: I woke you up.

That’s all I really wanted to do. Really don’t want to do anything else Ever been in a threesome with two dominant lesbians? Maybe fuck but don’t try too hard Because it will be guaranteed to be unsuccessful, frustrating and embarrassing for the two or three of you Maybe five or ten of you.

Living to be living Breathing to be free Thinking to stay alive Wanting, yearning, kissing, touching To become a part of that brown haired girl in Levi’s looking at me as I write Too much too soon Be delighted if she wanted to talk or other things too delicate to

Mention

Did I really describe myself as emotive and delicate? Fragile, flake to the touch Crumble to the poke Shatter to the embrace? This day is too beautiful and too enormous for practical inspiration. All it can do is produce intangible and inexpressible emotion dying desperately for release. Brown hair, long brown hair. I just looked again and she’s looking again. What does it really mean when I say close your eyes and open your lips to feel me embracing you, touching you, breathing on your skin as we both feel all there is to feel? I don’t even know what feeling means or how or why I feel it

Feeling.

That is: how and why do I feel so much all the time? And why is indifference the best way to seduce? I think seduction depends on unwillingness being transformed Changed from casual desire to passionate togetherness. You can be in love for a minute Or an hour Or a week Or a lifetime And flourish, rapture, ravish, revel, and explode. It’s all just words and pictures. Images of yourself, myself, she and he And others Projected onto the blank screen of idealism and hope.

I miss you. And don’t have any conception of how you or I define that emotion That feeling That state of being I. Am. Just. Being. I say I will lie and deceit, and cheat and steal to get you here Just so I can gaze

On your beauty and indestructibility Your willpower and ambition Your I can’t go on. I’ll go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

What else is there to do but life and death? Fucking and dying, as they say. Teasing the odds, raising the stakes, Existing vicariously through the very idea of life and existence. Never looking at the time, pen in hand, Tongue in mouth Ready to write Ready to move Ready to record and rediscover Able to break new ground when there is none left Nothing to see but waste and recycled music. There is no choice, I think, but to continue and listen to the bass drum and the violin Be romantic as you can. Worship and kneel and respect.

And stare, want, and need And feel and lament Lose one thought and create another. There truly is no end to passionate existence Except doubt and fear. If you can stay strong Relish your power And keep these away Your success wells will never go dry. Dead as a door nail; what is a door nail? (I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Know what one is.) I don’t know much but I do know The more I learn, the more I know I don’t know. I know what I know And crave to know more. Hungry and thirsty, Letting myself starve for experience. Tasting, and sipping, drinking and never ending Never stopping, It’s true that when you taste

Your dreams you can never get enough.

I’ve stopped wondering where this will go And instead concentrate on laughter, Which I do every day whenever I feel like it Sometimes it’s silent Sometimes it’s audible in West England, But it never ceases to be alive.

Oh, if they knew what I thought What I wanted, What I felt, They’d be repelled in terror Or they'd grasp my honesty in warm open arms. A welcome to newness and inspiration, Aspiration, Respiration. Doesn’t matter if you forget to breathe when someone is braiding bright strings into your hair That’s silk and love, flowing uninterrupted, Waiting for chances that need to be

Approached and attacked.

Passive attraction accomplishes nothing Fulfills nothing, Which we are all looking for all the time: Fulfillment and longing. Or is it that we long for fulfillment?

Where are your opinions And where do they come from? And where will they lead you Or will they go with you when you leave?

The path of choice is unobscured Except by exception. Taking and giving, Blocking what is or should be rightfully yours Lonely for home, Yearning to be filled and secure, Hoping that security is never at a bargain sale Because compromise is the enemy of individuality Which most people think they want And less get.

The great and the committed can achieve that state, But it is the rockiest and curviest road to stay on Without crashing On those drugs They're just reminders and reachers Substitutes for Or false renditions of life: That plain and despicable situation faced by us all That we can adorn Decorate Adore, abhor or just leave alone.

I choose To flourish. And split rainbows To make new and better pleasures of purity. There are depressingly few pure joys left, But they can be found in a thorough search A true interpretation.

Don’t let me start in on truth. Don’t let me go overboard Or self indulgent Don’t let me spell things wrong And wish in the wrong direction.

I need the straight antithesis of weakness. But the virtuous attributes of vulnerability Which my brain and my suffering back Fight so hard against.

Where is your streak of confidence? Your belt of reason and interest Your headband of togetherness Your desires to propel? Where is the fire that needs to burn into other peoples souls to help you find your own?

Where are your sketches and ideas Your brilliance and shine Your intrigue and responsibility to yourself? Why not allow yourself to be the slave of your soul Which sincere fulfillment demands?

Why let Anything go?

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Broken

I'm disappointed with how I've communicated with you. Only six attempts since your last email, nine months ago. I write to you like I write my life; lacking intent for success Or strategy, not the real, profound, starving, sweating, pounding desire Marching time against my unknown genes, the unstable path. Nothing to write a poem about Or even a social media announcement Celebrating, reminiscing, tracking vigorously with breathless hope, Revealing the desperation bubbling beneath my cooling skin The itch under my arms, the black holes of my eyes The restlessness of my feet, the wetness of my mouth For barely a handful of likes.

The woman in the blue coat and broach wouldn't tolerate this dead zone Wouldn't let anyone shun me this way Would wonder why I gave her respect And kept trying to re-engage. She might even humiliate herself, secretly. Untraceably.

If you count texts, it's more than six contacts. Also, Three scripts, a story, a poem, two draft chapters, Without response in the last five years; I've been here before. I've stayed Despite sadness, hurt, trampling, being uncared for. Until a friend asked me why, and my perspective changed. But I can't see you negatively; I forgive you instantly. In my mind, you always come back, you never left. Instead of whispering in my car, telling me it's over, You whisper your secrets, your heart, your breath, Your hands open, your hair in your eyes.

Why can't I quit? Accept your crystal clear rejection, Never tell you I came for sex but stayed for love, or Describe the searing you-shaped hole in my beating heart, or Map the distance between our doors Or ask for a path forward for us because you loved me once, and I love you still, or Remind you how I never once asked for sex after we stopped Even when I would have given the world for another kiss When I thought of nothing but, When I myself was nothing but, And I didn't know how to be anything but with you. I repented and went to therapy And tried to be different in your presence To be a whole other reborn person, To say your name, to make you known To face your face in daylight plain At coffee, at lunch, always near your house Failing like a wet hotcake on the floor A dull re-run, the sound off, the colors running My eyes and their silence.

There is only one me. And only one you.

And yet.

I only know you in increments of hours Thousands and thousands of texts Your couch, fat cat and flat screen TV Coffee in winter coats among lululemon ladies Pit stops between naps Your love of beauty and dedication But never again the way we were The way I rushed through the bright lit lobby Head down, eyes averted, feet in front of the other Stared at the mirrored doors of the elevator Stepped quietly in your hall, before knocking softly To where unspeakable heaven awaited every single time Months and months and months and months Of blissful, perfect, pure love, without fail, The best of the best times I had ever imagined, Despite the tottering towers of my mind  Surrounding and infecting us.

So like the emails I didn't send The texts I erased The imaginary conversations in my head The dreams and waking memories The days, sometimes long, The not knowing what to do The consequences, the real impact The comet trail in the dark sky My pupils, blended, indistinguishable.

This will sit quietly, unseen.

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Note to Self

Work backwards. It's not a surprise to you; you're deconstructing.

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Cheyenne

Maybe the kid could read my mind. I watched his father put a six pack of beer in a white grocery bag into the long yellow Cheyenne pickup. The deck was littered with tires and crushed Budweiser cans. The man tightened a dangling black rope that didn't appear to be attached to anything, while the kid wide-waddled across the sidewalk and climbed into the cab. He looked to be about 15, with a crew cut and a doughboy face. I watched his long plaid shorts ride up against his thick calves and automatically assumed I'd see him pick up a can of coke and a bag of Cheetos. He pulled the rusty door closed as I passed and took a long pull on a tall bottle of water, glancing out at me. Then he yelled something unintelligible at me. It was insult and observation, taunt and provocation. It was designed to elicit a response. I turned and glared at him. He was laughing maniacally. The truck pulled out onto Clark Street and roared into life. He leaned out and yelled something else, his father veering to the right approaching Pratt and passing the long line of waiting cars on the right, Ranchero music blaring. The license plate was paper yellow and red, temporary. I crossed at the light.

Part two, in which the Cheyenne pulls over just north of Pratt and a violent altercation ensues, the kid pulling a gun, me rageful and disheveled knocking him to the ground as he smiles and points the gun at my head, and my kicking his head in and calling 911 and waving his gun in the air until the police, unusually motivated, appear, hasn't been properly thought out yet.

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Orange Peel

They says it's all equal But we knows nothing does The way it is the way it hums The words they play bat for To go inside for to play my mind for And no matter what temperature Hots and colds on at the same times And you on top and you underneath But the twists and turns and ups and downs And rights and wrongs and grins and frowns and Wet or dry or low or high to live or die I say to you fairytale the ending is not just Happy it's also about more than lust There's the end and there's the end But nothing ever really ends, it's back at The beginning for credits to roll again So you say it's a joke, it's no joke, no, it's all that it is And the proof is in action, the camera in focus There's no hocus pocus no joke us or poke us Just the day and the night and the wrong and right And the wait and the give and the take and I live.

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Day One

No blackberry, no anxiety, no fear, no window flipping, no apprehension, no tap-tap-tapping, no guilt, no corporate updates, no panic, no frantic thumb scrolling, no sense of disorientation. 

No dress pants, no signals, no seat concerns, no creases, no snow stains, no missing buttons, no seam bulging, no high breaks, no perception of destination. 

No dress shirt, no long cuffs, no stiff elbows, no collar stays, no waist ballooning, no watch catching, no shoulder bunching, no sticky mouth rings, no sensation of strangulation. 

No briefcase, no lap barrier, no prop, no carry-all, no gum, no tissues, no novel, no pens, no headphones, no change, no breath mints, no thumb drive, no old bills, no New Yorker, no illusion of responsibility. 

No job, no keycard, no security, no elevator crunch, no morning greetings, no coffee talk, no desk space, no dress shoe changing, no routine to follow (no ringing phones, no emails, no lunch rush, no train schedule, no laying down the briefcase, no excited kids). 

No reason to rest. 

No time to withhold.

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Satan and the Thousands of Girls

The final tapas were canned olives but I drank Green Line and talked trash about frugal mutual friends. 

It’s your upbringing, I screamed to the first girl, in fancy fishnets. 

Then I saw Satan. He gave me a tour and made sweet shots appear at every bar. 

The second girl had immigration problems and the third was a boy in a leather hat who directed the video and was a cool 37. Satan gave me a fat bourbon and said he saw I was old when I walked in. 

Girl 4 was tiny and swarmed like a scented mosquito; her girlfriend was the video and the entertainment, teased hair and sleeveless union jack. 

I told girl 5, with silver knuckle rings and fingerless black leather gloves, who compensated with her camera, that she wasn’t supposed to be more glamorous than the singer; she tossed her wild mane of slippery ice locks but I could smell her skin. Satan plied me with more drinks which clinked between my teeth and made my eyes begin to roll back. 

Girl 6 sang as if flooded with orgasms, her teeth bared and her gold tassels swung in an arc around her nestled breasts. 

I was 4! shouted Girl 7, when I inquired among her clouds of waves where she was 16 years ago. 

Girl 8 was a blonde snarl. I just couldn’t keep track anymore, even though there was dancing and everything was very, very small.

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Opera

Living or dying of angst, consumption and hysterical jealousy, white hair cashmere scarved tuxedos, heaving bosomed up-doed calicos, thrusted goatees and the respectful throngs clasping their hands in their laps, their bellies contentedly full with Lloyd's pre-show prix-fix three course. During the first intermission, I wander the dazzling lobby with my measured single shot of bourbon in a real 8 oz. glass, measuring myself just as strictly against the formally dressed wealthy expansively conversing with one another in opulent sophistication, and concluding, hardly for the first time, that I could never pose as convincingly even with the natty beard or Mephisto loafers. And as the baton flies and the timpanis bowl across the deep stage, almost naked children in angel's wings flitter from one eave to another, the dream of the governess turned murderess turned freedom fighter. In the dark, the pale tops of the grid of heads spreading out around me, I breathe in mothballs and old man breath and remember the singing of a viola, when I too had a moment as large and expansive as this, too much to contain, gilded edges a precious delicate bubble which didn't last nearly as long as what I could see before me now.

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Cold

Weighed down with two bags and a sleep-aware sense that what I once believed is not necessarily true any more, if it ever was. Sideways out the window, leaves bare, houses shades of light brown, dark brown, gray and white, ringing sounds, stuffed nose sounds, motion sounds. It is as likely that my perspective has evolved as it is that what I read is penned by the future, carrying far less than me.

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Alight

Where taste the sheen of airport lights and the straight arrow balanced on toy wheels as reflections glaze amber and endless? Or the disappearing wings and circus trains zipping fore and aft over the jet whipped puddles, backwards without music? Perhaps the mechanics of choreographed routine; the rising pitch of spinning turbine; each click and snap on stainless steel beverage carts, silver trays for first class, orange and green glowing coffee in the shipshape wall.

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Girl

I was deep in a high school friend's Facebook philosophizing about something or other and didn't see her approach. "Excuse me," she said, "can I sit here?"

It was late on Saturday night and I had just pushed through hordes of Halloween revelers getting off the suburban trains decked out as zombies and slutty superheroes and headed for downtown excitement. I climbed upstairs and sat in one half of a hinged train seat, the kind that flips back and forth depending on which direction the train is heading. Instead of all facing the same way, the one I sat in was facing me: a nice position for a couple or a family, maybe, but not for strangers, especially one wearing such a short skirt.

I looked up at her. She was very tall, and she had her head cocked to the left under the curved train ceiling, her long brown hair falling off to the side. She was probably mid-twenties, and wearing noticeable cover up on her face. Swinging the seat back on this train was pretty typical; most people would have just pulled it back without saying anything, but as I nodded my assent at her, she swiveled around and slipped herself down in the seat opposite me, her bare legs so close to me that I had to shift my bag from the floor onto my lap and push my knees against the window.

She was so close that I could smell her: a sharp mixture of sweat and musky perfume. The broad side of her thigh was directly in front of me and I saw her skin was flushed with cold and heavily goose-bumped. She pulled a blackberry from her bag and I looked back down to mine, back to reading about all the fun people were having while I had worked late. She shifted and her leg bumped up against mine. Her head was down and she was looking around the train--which was completely full and quite loud-- nervously. She looked at me.

"Can I use your phone?"

I looked at the phone in her hand.  "It's dead," she said. "I can't get it to work. I think someone is following me. Please. I'll give you ten dollars."

I was taken aback by the offer of money (and the specificity!) but said okay and started to backspace out of my browser to get to my phone. She shook her blackberry like a thermometer and I told her that there were some dead zones between the station and Clybourn. She didn't seem to hear me. "It works now," she said and put the phone to her ear. I didn't hear her say anything. The conductor came by, and she handed him a ten dollar bill from her purse for a ticket to Glencoe.

As my stop approached, I asked her if she needed my phone. "No-" she whispered and looked back out the window. The rushing trees were slowing in their black green blur. "Are you okay?" I asked her. I had stood up and her body shifted to take up the space I had abandoned. She pressed her blackberry harder against her cheek and sunk into the chair.

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"We had a fight about art, which was really about meaning and existence, which was really about money and the rent, which was really about Annie being pregnant again and seeing her future narrow into a lightless tunnel."my favorite sentence you've ever written that I've read

Thank you!  I didn't even know if anyone was reading this.  I hope you continue...

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Fight

We had a fight about art, which was really about meaning and existence, which was really about money and the rent, which was really about Annie being pregnant again and seeing her future narrow into a lightless tunnel. 

That place made her lash out in desperation. Nobody wanted to represent me, she said, and therefore we were going to be homeless, because nobody wanted to buy my art because I had no talent, and therefore all time prior to this moment was a tortured, extended giant fucking mistake.  (In fairness, she didn't say "no talent."  She said something like my vision was incomprehensible and my choices were derivative and that my hostility and nihilism had flattened my work to the point where nobody wanted to be near it, especially a customer or an art dealer or her, which, incidentally, I didn't think was true.)  While Annie and I possessed near limitless talent in raising each other's blood pressures, this night felt singularly raw, and I stayed uncharacteristically silent.  My tongue was drying up inside my mouth. 

Since it was Tuesday night, my friends were supposed to be stopping by for our regular jam.  Annie usually played her cello, which made our music sound far more sophisticated than it was.  But now she left me by the dish-piled stainless steel counter (foraged on a long ago Tuesday night from a foreclosed restaurant across the street) in our kitchen area and slammed the door to our room.  I could hear her throwing things around, although our bedroom was so spartan (by design for better dreams and vastly freer sex) there would be almost nothing to launch into the air.  But since the walls of our bedroom only rose halfway to the ceiling (which was a heat stealing sixteen feet) and also because the only light source in the bedroom were floor lamps next to our bed, I could see the long piercing shadows of her flailing arms flinging books and shoes against the walls.  The shadows themselves spilled over the rim of the unfinished drywall.  I heard my son start to cry but didn't head towards his room.  Going in could set off an hour long struggle; since she woke him up, she could put him back to sleep. 

He of course was part of the problem, although neither of us would ever admit that.  His room was Annie's old studio, long and narrow along the south wall of the loft.  We had built a work table along the windows and bolted that into the wall and a deep cabinet for Annie's metal at the end where now the crib sat.  The work table was now in my studio and still strewn with welded elbow joints and round tubes of green glass from a piece Annie had barely worked on in a year. 

I decided to clean the kitchen and eat something.  Behind me, I heard Annie go to Basq.  He was almost two and already trying to climb out of his crib.  We had a futon on the floor in front, so when he eventually took the plunge, he wouldn't bust his head on the cement floor.  The thing about living--or raising kids--in an industrial loft was that there weren't any soft corners or easy surfaces.  The pipes running along the ceiling dripped and clanked and were surely asbestos insulated.  The outer walls were brick, and the inner walls gypsum board and every twenty four feet there were square cement columns.

Outside our loft was a service elevator which had the original set of lift gates and a manual control and was big enough to load most of our furniture at once when we moved in.  There was one other occupant to our floor, which took up almost half of a Williamsburg block, and he painted enormous canvases on custom made steel frames hanging on rolling tracks at intervals from the ceiling.  He loved what we loved about the floor though.  In addition to the cavernous space which echoed and was easily filled with sound, in which you could practice your skateboard or hold a dance rehearsal or a roaming secret dinner party with scaffolding affixed over the table to suspend movie prop house borrowed chandeliers, and the privacy which was buttressed by the three foot thick concrete floors and the sparse residency of the building, there was the light.  Our loft was on the tenth floor, and nothing except the river stood between us and Manhattan.  The Williamsburg bridge glittered and shone to our right, but the sun floating high above had a direct route through our four by twelve foot windows for which we couldn't even improvise curtains enough to cover all of them, and why would we want to?  Light flooded in every morning from the uncrowded air space east over Brooklyn, and then all afternoon from the west.  The only thing the space wasn't was soundproof.  Although four blocks away, the BQE could be a loud roar all day, and the rising exhaust, among other industrial along-the-river emissions, should have been added to the list of reasons it's better to bring your children up in the suburbs. With our view, though (which I knew Annie was right that we might not be able to afford for much longer if I didn't manage to make some big sales), our kid (plus) would never want to live anywhere else. 

Annie came out of Basq's room and sat on the couch, her hands in her hair.  I was pulling a pot of leftover lentil soup from the fridge.  "Do you want some?" I asked.  She shook her head without looking at me.  My cell phone buzzed.  It was Jims, wanting to come up.  The biggest problem with our amazing industrial space was that you had to take the elevator downstairs to let someone in.  It was too high to throw keys down--although that was common--and it wasn't as if the landlord, who inherited the building with his three brothers from their father, and who ran some new media company on the first two floors was going to invest in an intercom system for a twelve story. 

As I unlocked the door to go out, Annie said, "Sam's coming over.  She's bringing her trombone."

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Crush

She was always on the train platform with me, until the day she wasn't.  

I had come to count on her for so many things.  At first, just to know whether I was on time for the train.  If she was there, I was fine.  But then, our relationship grew.  One day she asked me the time.  Another day, she returned my smile.  There was an unmistakable chemistry between us.  

She was very short, with a crown of blonde hair which she tried to tame with a variety of accessories.  No matter what barette or clip or rubber band she chose, however, I could see the full, healthy and fertile locks for what they were: the siren call of the most ancient form of attraction.  Hair was power, and she wielded it freely and effortlessly.  

She frequently had headphones on, and held a Zune in her hand.  I could tell she didn't have an iPod because of a distaste for the Apple culture.  Her head would bounce, and sometimes, she would tap her feet.  Did I mention her boots?  Every day, leather boots, no matter the weather.  She had three pairs: tough black with a thick heel which came almost all the way up to her knees, dressy black with a high heel which were shorter, about three quarters up her calf, and stylish brown, which folded over at the top and barely reached halfway up her shin.  Which boots she would wear became sort of a game with me.  I would guess on my way to the train station and then almost always second-guess before I got up to the platform.  Sometimes I was right; sometimes wrong.  

She wasn't consistent, which got me to wondering if she was married.  My wife always paid attention to what I wore; if I put on the pants or sweater I'd worn the day before, she'd let me know.  "Didn't you wear that yesterday?" 

Also, this girl carried a little black nylon lunch bag, but I recognized it for what it really was because my wife had the same one: an insulated breast milk storage bag.  Inside there were little slotted areas perfect to hold 4 oz bottles of breast milk.  But it must have been her sister's or friend's because I never saw any kids with her, and she never sounded as if she was talking to or about kids when she was on the phone, and she had the most stunning little figure (which I often observed), and which I could make out whether she was wearing a dress, or slacks, because it was that kind of figure which was evident no matter what clothes were draping it, but in any case a body like that certainly would have been marred like my wife's after she had our kids.  

I checked for a wedding ring, but she didn't wear one, which ultimately was inconclusive because I didn't wear one either; her fingers, though, were slight and delicate, and she painted her nails in a french manicure style.  One day while she was on the phone, kind of facing away from me, I examined her fingers.  For such a small woman, they looked strong.  I couldn't help but look at the back of her hands as well.  They were smooth and hairless; I couldn't even see any hair follicles, although it was windy that day and tiny blonde hairs wouldn't have been visible.  It was hard to concentrate, though, because she kept turning from side to side as if she were shooing a fly away.  Eventually the train came and her hands went into her pockets, stealing them from my view.  I had a favorite spot on the train: right in the corner seat by the door (so I could get out quickly in an emergency, of course) and she usually walked to the middle of the car and sat next to a woman, even if there was an empty seat.  

One day, though, we ended up sitting next to each other.  She sat straight up, her breast milk bag on the floor between her feet and her actually kind of cheap looking purse on her lap.  In one hand she held her Zune, and in the other her phone.  It was nice to sit so close to her, and I could smell the shampoo in her hair.  It was floral and reminded me of a girl from high school who used to sit in front of me and constantly take her hair in and out of her ponytail, which spread that clean and fresh shampoo smell around like a cloud of invitation.  

I could just barely hear the music through her headphones and wondered what it was.  It sounded like classic rock, but she didn't look like the kind of girl that liked classic rock.  Maybe thoughtful folk music, but that wouldn't be this loud.  I ruled out classical and jazz because of her boots.  But I must have subconsciously been moving closer to her because suddenly we bumped.  She looked up at me, a little startled.  I guess she was really in her own world.  I gave her a little smile, and she smiled back, and I decided to go for it. 

"What are you listening to?" I asked.  She pulled away one of her earphones.  "What?" "What are you listening to?" I repeated, and I could hear my voice come out just a little more aggressively than I'd intended, and she said, a little meekly, "Dave Matthews," and stared at me for a second with her walnut colored eyes before sliding her earphone back into her ear and turning to look out the window.  

Wow.  I never would have pegged her as a Dave Matthews girl.  She didn't seem to be the type.  Just when I thought to ask her some followup questions, the train stopped and she stood to get off.  I let her walk in front of me and then lost her in the crowd when I got distracted by a phone call from my wife.  I walked out a side entrance which was in the wrong direction for my work, and joined a stream of people crossing the street.  

I looked down, and there she was, briskly walking besides me.  She had removed the earphones and was walking with her hands free.  I tried to be cool and not draw any attention to myself, but she must have sensed my presence because she suddenly looked up at me and began to walk faster.  I was late to work, too, and I kept up with her until the end of the block when she turned right, and I had to keep going straight.  She clearly wasn't in the mood for chit-chat because she didn't even turn to say goodbye.  

I only saw her one time after that.  She was on the platform wearing her tough black boots, which, in the end were my favorite.  A guy was standing right next to her, and he kept looking at me for some reason.  I tried to walk around him to stand next to her on the other side, but there was a woman there reading her newspaper in that annoying way where someone opens widely both pages at once and takes up all the air space on either side of her.  So I contented myself just with being near her.  She didn't respond to the two or three smiles I beamed at her.  It was if our chemistry had just disappeared.  

After that, I didn't see her on the train, even when I took both earlier and later trains, waited on different parts of the platform, and even walked through the train a couple of times.  Sometimes people move and fail to say goodbye, and while it's painful, it's just something that you have to deal with.