man, though old

In the evenings, with the sun behind, 

you dawdle,

your old boots, assets.

Your hairline a wayside

for a worried head,

in the shape of a W

and

words have lost their meaning since the last time we’ve spoken.

Life is, well, rain now. Telling how we were—

weeding

in Montauk and that worn woolen chair. Father,

and the handsome uniform

you wore

had still, 

a window of sound

advice.

to a daughter,

This is my grief

good sweetheart, thirteen-year-old girl, look

at my knuckles, my ankles, my hairs like wires,

the strain between my shoulder blades.

My face bled for your face—

the idea was beautiful.

All I wanted

was for you

to catch it.

someday

Their dreams, were

stationary & hollow,

shackled, splendid,

& admittedly awkward-

hopes, forgotten entirely.

Their love, lay

always in some other

place, at the far end of a narrow

room, just a few more

years, and a little more

effort.

une femme et une femme

northern light dreams

So, how had it started?

            They thought they’d economize by sharing the same bed and then the pieces just formed themselves when they watched the children in their neighbor’s yard, fascinated that life just remained so thin.  Their faces, godlike, trying. 

            Hmm, she said, staring at the tiny hairs floating off the surface of his spoiled-milk skin.

            Would you mind, she starts, if there was this giant explosion in the sky, right? And all the stars would just come crashing down on us, on our hats, on the sidewalks, on faces, and we’d just stand there in amazement, because, come on really, what do you do when the stars fall out of the sky?              
            Her fleshy cartoon eyes blinked.

            The sky was falling she said, it would consume the surface of the earth like a blanket gently covering a bed.  It will rest here, like plastic, like water, like dust, coating the skyline and maybe then we will look like souvenirs.  I thought about it once, she said, thought about it twice, and then three times and now I can’t stop thinking about it.  In fact, it’s already begun to consume me more than I know.  It’s like a rash we’ll all share.

            The fan left the room spinning even after she left, got up off the chair, taking her scent with her, walking out of the kitchen into the front yard. 

            He saw her through the window mouthing words that read look, see for yourself, as she pointed to the sky.

            Indeed, it was raining.  Raining, hailing, snowing, the colors nowhere to be found. 

She’s left a trail of coffee stains, and cigarette ash, and sometimes just touches off her fingers, the pairing of circles resonant of hundred year old oaks.  Her age was written on the tips of her fingers.  What a beautiful idea, destroyed.  I touched her fingers often in the mornings, when her age felt fresh, puffed up from the rising heat.

            I spent years trying to figure out why she dangled her feet off the edge of our roof, why the walls have been painted different colors, and why the coffee is never hot.

            I spent years trying to figure out how she’d gone.

I dreamt:  She was naked, for naked’s sake.  Her quivering breasts, rouged flawless.  A birthmark the shape of a wing, looks, in the light, as though it were crawling down towards her stomach, a nave.  She shakes.  I feel myself, realize the nakedness, and though fully clothed, watch her move swiftly, comfortably, luxuriously in the enclaves of her own olive skin.            

            I find myself.

            In her hips I see my own hips, narrower, still the same legs attached by thick intricate bone.  The smiles of her butt cheeks, a V in between the start of something.

            She is free, and not in the knowing of me watching her, but with her eyes closed, content.  I coax myself.           

The first time, she is wearing tight leather pants that hang off her protruding hipbones, and an old t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the exposed remainders of black thread itching at some nerve like fired electricity.  I am standing in the hallway of a building, a worn out Persian carpet covering the floors, the lights dim, four of them for all the doors I see.  Someone is with me leaning on her still closed door.  We knock and someone is ranting frustrated with necessity for something to say, after a long time of not saying. 

            There is a story. 

            Somewhere.

            In between the lines.

            Here and there. 

            If you really want it, that is. 

            If you want to hear things like ‘there is a man’ and ‘there is a woman’ and ‘how real is this?’ 

            If you want concrete details, you can hear cities being named, New York, L.A, Wyoming.      
           Wyoming? 

            Sure why not?  If cities need to be, then I’ll give them to you. 

            You want identities?  Fine.

             I could say ‘they are lovers”, I could say ‘they are friends”, I could say ‘they just happened to find themselves in the same place at the same time’, but you wouldn’t believe that, would you? 

            So, something failed, and something got higher. 

            They knock again and she is looking at her feet.  Yes, she probably has clothes on, what kind of silly question is that?  She can’t be naked the entire time because someone might have a problem.  Certainly not me.            

            But it’s your story anyway. 

            Besides, I don’t care about her clothes.  Clothes we hide in, like accordion skirts, and a used pair of church shoes, a shirt, buttons, and sleeves.  These clothes can’t speak.

            She looks and feels hopeless.  Distant sounds of a television show, the timed laughter exploding at random intervals between periods of speech we cannot make out. 

            She looks at him, he looks at her, maybe they don’t even see each other.  A closed door, the boundary, in the doorway to which it is hinged. 

            It is late.  She is unsure of herself. 

            Who is she? 

            Who am I? 

            There is no more time, yet it is late.

            Wait.

            There’s a minute.  A push, a pull, a loss of balance, a fall. 

            Who are they?  What happened? 

            The door opens and the television fills the corridor like thick cigarette smoke, leaking through the cracks, braiding between our feet like spirits spreading themselves thin. 

            No, this is not a scary story.  Besides,  I never said I would tell a story. She stands at the doorway, the archway, the highway, balancing on one foot. 

            Want more description? 

            Fine, there are combat boots, black, dirty, bought somewhere that is not here with a currency that doesn’t exist. 

            There are triangles formed by legs, the modern art of the body, the post modernism of post modern.

            Beer, fingers, mouth. 

            Rolling Rock beer. 

            Greasy fingers. 

            Succulent mouth. 

            Too much.  Glossy mouth. 

            Too clean.  Her mouth.  Alone, beside itself. 

            Just the mouth. 

            There is no more she, just a mouth.  

            The mouth is the protagonist and there’s a green beer cap between the upper and bottom teeth.  Movement.  And then it’s gone, it’s now on the floor, at the foot of my ugly, ugly Church shoes.

She says hey in a smooth, breathy, moan.  But she’s just saying hi. 

            The he is back now, alert, in the bathroom, making phone calls, asking questions, moving things, sitting on furniture, reading catalogues, forgetting things, remembering letters, feeling something, far. 

             A yes. A rasp.  Bet you haven’t heard that before. 

            Shuffling.  All of them, together now, whichever way you’d like.

            Do you miss the sensual part?

            It’s dark and I don’t understand.

            Fine, let us go.

She stands in the middle of a living room a kitchen and a bedroom at the same time and in the corner there is a mattress with gray slept-in sheets, and a pillow at the foot of the bed and in another corner a large sofa chair in the shape of a giant red mouth, lips, and you sit on the tongue looking as though you were being swallowed and near that is a couch paned along the wall with room for 1 or 2 or 3 if you sit side by side, the fabric used and ragged, ripped pieces sweeping along the wooden floor, a large coffee table with no free surface, nothing visible, labels, names, labels, names, shapes, sizes, colors, sizes, colors, shapes, and it smells like eucalyptus in here.

            How’s that for imagery? 

            He turns towards her, she turns towards him, there’s probably movement but it doesn’t matter.

            Sit wherever you can.

            Beer?
            She has hair like worn out denim.

            You don’t drink?

            It tastes funny.

A refrigerator opens and closes, opens and closes, he sits close. 

            To her? 

            Close. 

            She feels like they are at a cocktail party and she is a waitress and never-mind, this metaphor isn’t working for you.

Time to insert the lights, the northern lights, the potent northern lights.  Drugs? Yes. Drugs. They make the story better.  So she is sitting, hunched, working on the northern lights, the pieces sticking to her greasy fingers, her fingers sticky, not greasy, sticky.  The stems, the leaves, the seeds, the tools she uses.  

            Well you have an imagination, don’t you?  Think, think for yourself.              She turns a palm sized fragrant green bush into olive gold dust, shredded, minced, dust-like, I want to lick it, to blow it away, to let it fill the room, like sunlight, like a flood, like the black filling the white. 

            She mutters, because that’s what she does, that’s how she does things, in a mutter.  She mutters softly because she does things softly, because she is soft, like a pillow, an angel made of cotton that flies into the clouds and falls onto the earth like snow. 

            What? 

She muttered softly and the syllables were delayed in reaching my ears.

            More things happen.  He speaks.  She speaks.  No one speaks. 

            No one has to speak. 

            The paper doesn’t say anything, the clothes don’t say anything, the people don’t say anything.  Are you starting to get the point? 

            I understand if you stop, reading. 

            Or you stop reading. 

            Or you, stop reading. 

            It will change anyway.  It’s already changing.

            She takes a hit behind the lit match, a fire she can’t possess.  Yes, that says a lot.  About her, about the fire, the fire in her heart, in her loins, in her hand, it’s just a match people and she is just taking a hit.  She takes a long hit.  The smoke coming in and the smoke coming out, one by one, she inhales and then exhales, she takes pride in the movement, the actual rhythm of the in and the out, the smoke coming from her, through her, she is changing it, it is changing her. She is the smoke. 

            What are we talking about anyway?

            She holds it like people hold cigarettes in the twenties.  Maybe she belongs there.  Maybe I put her in the wrong decade.  Maybe she is not even alive yet, half formed, just a walking talking mouth that inhales and exhales but doesn’t have anything to say or doesn’t know how to say anything, or maybe there are just too many words.

            She is nursing the smoke.

            She wants music.  She wants music to tell me about these dreams and suddenly, unprecedented, out of nowhere, for shock value, a symphony of notes explodes inside her.

            She feels like she is drifting in and out of the room, in and out of the music, in and out of her mind. 

            She is on and then off the paper.

(In dreams I walk with you. In dreams I talk to you.
In dreams you're mine. All of the time we're together 
In dreams, In dreams.)

            In the morning, in bed, I watch her get dressed rolling her black stockings up her smooth thighs, calmly combing her rainbow hair, yet she feels like she should be getting rid of something.

(But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone.)

Maybe it should have been: I go, you stay, wait.

            (It's too bad that all these things, Can only happen in my dreams

Only in dreams In beautiful dreams.)

            She speaks like spring has come to cover her, like cardinals sing, and I feel not all the fervor in the world has gone out, just the lit match, just the smoke. 

            I am wistful, or at least I was, before the dream cracked like glass shattering into millions of little pieces, the illusion of her, of me, of life, finally lost, in this moment.

            Still, somewhere, even if only in dreams I could find it hiding behind corners, or in sinking cups, or in the rising steam from coffee. 

            If only in some moment.

x

my, what nice hills you have

            Outside it was dusk and the sky was a dulling red, peaking through the branches that sunk over the only bar on the street.  The pavements were free of people.  The wind had just begun to pick up as the door opened to let out a woman in a tight dress, stumbling on her high heels and into the night.  With her exit she let out sounds of chatter, laughter, and clicking glass, hinting momentarily of a presence in the silent night.

            Across the street and directly opposite the bar, was an apartment building composed of mahogany brick—the paint peeling off the fire escape and the dirty stoop leading to a wide entrance hidden in the shadows.  From the street, one could assume which apartments were currently occupied, as the lights flickered from the windows.  In the darkness, one’s eyes could not help but gravitate towards the light. 

            Once more the door to the bar swung aghast, and this time, a man well into his life, stepped out.  He carried grey from head to toe, the suit light, the shoes a shade darker, and a fedora on his head, the most potent grey of all, with a white feather to give the illusion of gaiety and trust.  He looked down the street, and fixed the hat on his head, tilting it slightly over his eyes, and then he reached into his left breast pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboro reds.  He treated it with such fragility one might insist it were made of glass. He slipped a freshly packed cigarette into the right corner of his mouth and sparked a match.  The flame hovered before his face, and illuminated his clear blue eyes—fierce in the night.  He watched it dance, as the red flame dripped lower down the matchstick, his fingers beginning to sense the approaching warmth. And then something else caught his attention.

            On the second floor of the building opposite the man, one lit window stood out from the rest of its bright yellow counterparts.  On the second floor was what looked like a peephole into sultry hell, the red wallpaper a sure representation of fire. Affected by the strong liquor now running through the man’s warm blood, he felt in the window what he felt in the flame.  And suddenly he found something else dancing.

            In her room, a girl stood facing a mirror, her exposed reflection staring back at her.  She stood naked but the light that bounced off her reddening walls seemed to clothe her, shading the lines she had found fault it.  They are quite nice, she thought, sliding her matted palms over her own breasts; they felt like small malleable hills.  A breeze flew in through her window and she felt a shiver, the thin hair on her skin rising.  She shot a glance towards the night—darkness.  From well inside her cozy cave, she could not make out the streets, nor the people, nor the sky beginning to show the onset of rain. 

            From beneath his lowered hat, the man outside had set his eyes on the girl in the window, following her as he did the flame.  He felt her warmth reaching him despite the distance and suddenly the night was colder and the bar, although brimming with people, felt empty.  He looked down the street once more, and dropped his cigarette where he stood, letting the breeze roll it off the curb and let it die, alone.  He put his hands in his pocket and began to walk.

            The girl stood looking at herself, turning slightly at times, angling her hips, watching the way her form changed, like clay in the hands of a skilled sculpture.  She needed hands like that, to mold her curves, to make them feel as though they were once  greatly worked on.  Finally, she sighed and turned away, approaching the window.  She knelt over to see the street, and found no one, the bar across from her building sat in a deceiving silence despite the movement within.  She backed from the window and gliding towards her mirror, she paused in front of a table lamp, which cast her shadow onto the red walls.  Again she examined herself, in a different form now, but a sudden uneasiness crept into the pit of her stomach. She jumped, her breasts rising then falling in one swift wave, when the doorbell rang, hitting a long droned out key, as though someone had fallen asleep pressing the buzzer.

dinner in the west village

I don’t know anything

here. your white collar shirt makes me think

I’ve never really had scotch before.

I say: here,

I am young.  I go on lying. 

He asks: where have you been?

I tell him it doesn't matter, that

we’re conquered people

of clean linen, of white soap, of our mothers

this, that once we were children

he says: childhood was a loaded pistol—

exposed at the bar ‘til dawn, midsummer

cocktail napkins with solemnity, and

memories of dreary Sunday afternoons

passed out in phone booths,

we’re still very small, he says.

I tell him not to worry

it’s always like that, circumstances.

the noise of the city that’s loud.

he says: I wish I could take you somewhere, go away

with you. I say:

the sidewalks. great crowds of them

splitting, the voices strident

he says I’d been asleep and he’d taken a shower

that it’s a city of pleasure reaching its peak at

night, how

he used to talk about staying at the Chelsea

with two brunettes in stretchy miniskirts

strategy: nowhere to go

and the party ended hours ago like

the instinct under our sweaters.

what goes on at night, anyway?

the elevators open and we stumble in the hall

New York, right?

one day she’s a goddess and next,

a woman with a few minutes before midnight

she says she made love once. says it wasn’t enough.

late afternoon and a table filled with bottles.

he sits on the bed, shirt rumpled, his eyes,

one hour and three whiskies later,

rain and the lights,

people.  

rapture, and not the good kind

For reasons I cannot comprehend, the recent natural disaster trend is taking over my mind and most importantly, my sleeping schedule.

Let me start by saying that while the entire tri-state area is freaking out, I have mostly remained calm, and my family just might be the only family who couldn't care less that there is an evacuation warning scheduled for our area.  In fact, Stop&Shop ran out of food today, and we thought we'd laugh about it.

Yesterday at the office, my co-workers entertained me with questions like: Should I stock up on extra milk? What should I do with my air-conditioning unit?  To all this, I snickered quietly to myself, You have got to be kidding me.

We all know how devastating hurricane Katrina was,  and were once again reminded in the wee hours of today's morning, during my first class this semester, when my goof-ball professor was being really adamant about letting us off a bit early so we can begin evacuating and preparing for what he believes is the dawn of the apocalypse.  Once again, I snicker, for lack of laughing in everyone's face, and say to myself - Seriously, this cant be it.

Maybe it's just my coping mechanism, extravagant ideas aren't to be entertained, maybe it's my jaded thought process, maybe it's my naiveté.  Whatever it is, I am beginning to think that this scorching hot dinner we are about to get served, deserves at least a bit of examination. And I only say this because matters were made a lot worse when I actually dreamt about the end of the world.  Twice.

The first nightmare came to me in the middle of a sleepless night in Prague when I dreamt some sci-fi malarky about how the government was turning against humanity, and the sky had become this manipulatable mirror reflection of all the people on the earth.  The dream began with me and my friend Elina, realizing that looking up, we could see a reflection of ourselves, of the whole world in the sky.  All these people moving about, houses standing, cars driving.  However, our reflections were being controlled by some exterior force and we soon began to notice that this force was eliminating life off the planet.  So we ran, eventually taking cover inside, thinking if we had roofs over our heads, we'd be less discoverable.  We found ourselves in a bar, filled with people I felt I knew but all of whom had unidentifiable faces.  Then the entire place got blown up, and it was all over.  Except for me, left wandering alone in this empty space of a 'world'.  Hooray?  Anyway, that dream felt like utter terror.  I woke up sweating, convinced that I actually spent the night fighting for my life against a force unbeknownst to anyone.  This was 3 months ago.

Last night, it happened again- part 2 of the end of the world series, starring my friends and family, and without a doubt myself.  Except this time it was longer, and potentially more plausible, which is not a good thing.  It began with my friend Marina, who was sitting on the curb along with a bunch of other students, somewhere on a huge school campus.  Behind her was a huge door with the sign 'ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, CLOSED'.  At some precise moment, she turns to look at the door, and notices a man sneaking out, causing her to have some sort of epiphany.  Now, my dreams seem to operate by way of feelings which indicate the set of actions being made.  It's hard to describe what this epiphany of hers actually looked like, because you know how dreams are . . . they are fucking weird.  Anyway, she has this epiphany, and then the next thing I know is that I am running with Elina, and we are running away from this enormous cloud of white smoke that is enveloping everything in its way.  I tell Elina we need to seek shelter, because the smoke is radiation and we need to avoid it, that running will not work since it is spreading exponentially fast.  So we are running, and the smoke is closing in all around us and the last image I see is the ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT door, and then the smoke is everywhere.  At this point I wholeheartedly believe that I am dead.  And when I say this, I mean I literally thought I had died.  I still seem to exist as a body, but Elina is not with me anymore.  I find myself in a dark space with no sense of depth, and I pick up my cellphone to call Marina believing that if the phone call goes through, it means I am still alive.  The phone call does not go through.  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a row of people shuffling past me, and I dart to join them.  There are 5 of them, all of whom I do not have the sense of knowing.  The girl leading the line, is using a map, and the girl I am following, last on the line, has very crazy hair.  I feel as though I have met her before.  Where are you going I ask her, and she replies We think this path might lead to one of those abandoned subway stations where we can take shelter.  This exchange felt so real and I felt unsure of whether this plan would lead us to safety.  In fact, I thought this was organized to lead us to our deaths.  So we walk through unused subway tracks for what seems like a very short time, before we reach a sort of dead end wall.  We start to hear sounds, murmuring.  I look at the wall and notice that it is thin, breakable, transparent even.  And suddenly I see movement, shadows.  I lean in to touch the wall and it evaporates, exposing people and sunlight.  Next thing I know is that we are in a monstrously large field, and it feels like a high school reunion.  It is sunny, and there is grass.  People are wandering around, looking lost and confused, but everyone is discovering old acquaintances and trying to figure out what the fuck just happened to the world we knew.  I spot Marina.  She is extra tall and although she is wearing pyjamas, she is very fancy.  We begin to talk and join 3 other people, one of whom is a good friend of ours, Marcela.  All of us decide to explore.  The space we're is like a funeral version of Coachella without the music.  There are whole areas dedicated to survival kits, food storage, weaponry, etc.  I imagine this is what Burning Man must be like.  So we start walking down this path, and I feel very Cormac McCarthy.  Marcela and I are in front of the group and she is telling me how she needs to go back home so she can pay her rent, and I tell her this is our home now. Suddenly, a handmade cart on wheels, made out of wood, rolls past us, and on it is a sort of carnivalesque theatre.  There are two dwarf jokers, and Robin Williams (I know, WTF right?) sitting on a chair.  Someone from our group, a male, jumps on the cart and begins to cry, whispering philosophical nothings to Robin Williams, who is unaffected by this charade.  I can't recall anymore what he was saying, although mid-dream I was very aware of every word, and it made me feel shaken and changed.  It was mundane and incomprehensible but clearly powerful, life-changing,  some Waiting for Godot kind of stuff.  As soon as this is over, I am being harassed by a woman, who appears disheveled, and is carrying more books than she can handle.  She is yelling at me, waving papers, and throwing pencils in the air, begging me to document everything that happens in this place, to document our fight for survival.  I begin to panic, thinking back on all the time I have spent not putting pen to paper, and I say to her there is nothing else to do here but write and she smiles, promising me that there will be great use for the work I produce.  All of a sudden, the dream takes me back to my house, where I know my family is.  They seem to not have made it to this 'other' world.  They are still inside the house, and the house is in the perished world, and for some reason I am in the bathroom washing my face. Outside, there are ravenous souls hunting for life.  I think to close the only window in the bathroom but I hear footsteps, and I am sure they have already gotten into our house.  I hear my mother's screams, and the bathroom doorknob rattles.

I awake, panting, and sweating, and still fearing for my life.  It is dawn, the sun just rose, and the day is nice.  I skip breakfast and sit on my porch sipping coffee, trying to understand why my brain functions the way it does.  I think about how I would like to bring back Freud for a chat, spill my soul to him, and maybe get some answers.  But then I think about how I awoke from a nightmare only to find myself in another one.

Is this what the beginning of the end feels like? Or should I start drinking more?

I'm gonna go with the latter.

//Thank you dear friends for gracing my nightmares.  I am sure that my twisted mind does not mean to hurt anyone's feelings by killing them off.  And while I am not a licensed psychologist, I think it is safe to say that I don't want any of you dead, even on the days that I secretly wish you were dead.  Which is never, obviously.  Plus, this should make you feel better about your sanity.

come to think of it . . .

I never cared about doctors.  I never, ever wanted to go to one, and I definitely never wanted to be one.  As a kid, the thought of going to see some strange man(1) dressed in a crisp starch bleach white robe, with a fancy name tag on his left breast, looking so fascist with his manicured smile and miserable life, was one of the very few things that made me want to vomit. In fact, today, as an almost-adult, I hardly ever go to see a doctor.  I realize this might sound like an in-your-face ass shake about my swimmingly perfect health(2), but this is not true.  To those facetious pricks, I say - I have known ailments.  Not all health issues are unavoidable, as germs do exist, but for the most part, and in utter gratefulness, I have been existing with no real threat yet.  And for those like me, you lucky bastards should rejoice in every moment of your easily perishable lives that you have two honest feet to walk on, at the least.  Because the world is not fair to everyone. 

Anyway, I digress.

It's just that, going to the doctor could never be, you know, fun. Like how much fun could you possibly have?  I remember this one children's physician I had when I was about  9 or 10 years old, and his office smelled like the inside of a sealed plastic container that you haven't opened in a long time.  It smelled fake, like stale humans.  Like peroxide washed skin, left soaked to a prune and then dipped in wax.  It smelled too clean.  Like it was covering up something unforgivable, something lurking beneath the building’s bricks.  That high bed table, strewn in hospital paper, making noise as you tried to climb, then sitting under a phosphorescent neon light, and this man observing you like a specimen of some sort, a robot covered in pink flesh, shaking in discontent.  My body would fall limp but I’d remain tense. And he’d order me to raise my arm, to lower it, to look left and then look right, to open my mouth and say ahhh, to follow a pencil with my eyes, to breathe.  Very nice, he'd say.  Above, a carousel of hanging strings carried little origami sharks.  Look up at the little sharks, he’d say enthusiastically, and  this was the moment I'd start screaming like someone was cutting me alive, even though he hadn’t so far as touched my arm, and I'd watch the preying sharks, swimming in circles from the breeze of the fan and finally one would bite me, directly piercing my arm with sharp pain, and I'd raise my voice up a notch before a lollipop got shoved in my mouth.

Yeah, at one point I decided, that if given the choice, I would actually stand naked in front of all the bitchy judgmental popular kids at my middle school, than go to the doctor.  Not much has changed.

Fortunately, as I got older, and stopped giving a shit, I've realized that unless you have some immediate health emergency, you don’t really have to go to the doctor.  I mean, who regularly does annually check-ups anyway?(3)  And if you do go, you can kind of slip by with the minimum, like: oh hey doc, whats up? yea, still smoking.  I know I know, im trying (total lie), yea I know but I'm gonna do it, really this time (another total lie) no, nothing hurts.  yeah, I take them all the time (lie #3 within five seconds of conversation) ok yea, great, it was good to see you too (lie #4) thanks a lot, doc! (lie 5) ok, yea, same time next year (unless I fucking fall and crack my skull open in which I case I won't be going to you anyway 'cause I'd be looking for the nearest fucking hospital, you pretentious dick! remind me, why do I fucking pay you?)

But in that case, in which you actually go for your check-ups, you officially win as a human and to your benefit, will never die(4). You win because, unlike me, you cared enough about yourself to have called the doctor's office to speak to the bitchy secretary who pretends she works for facebook, and has a bad left ear, so that you'll have to inconveniently take a day off work, or cancel something totally fun you had planned on the weekend, so you can go see some idiot playing dress-up for money because he uses a lot big words and knows the anatomy of the human body(5), after which, he'll take your money and tell you to fuck off since nothing is wrong with you anyway.  

Aren't you glad you're no longer a kid?  But wait, you docs are getting way too much credit here. I mean who keeps us smiling, really . . . only my most favorite professional in the world . . . the dentist.

. . . the dentist is great, 'cause at the dentist's you can just settle in for some degrading humiliation, as you're transformed into a victim of a slow silent torture, lying reclined under an enormous operational lamp with the voltage of a city power plant, and yet another strange middle-aged motherfucker sticks his fingers in your mouth while metal hooks pry it open, and all your saliva is being sucked out by miniature vacuums dangling from your lip, while this moron is asking you how your summer vacation has been.  I mean, do they seriously think we want to talk to them while they dig around in our face, 'cause it's actually physically impossible trying to utter words because if you try to move your mouth to speak, the air vacuum sucks your lips to the back of your throat and you feel like an asshole who lost control of his face and resort to the awkward nodding and shaking of your head,  hoping they stop delivering questions so you don’t feel obligated to answer.  

One time, I went to the denstist, who was a very good family friend, and as I lay there, strapped, she began interrogating me with all sorts of mundane questions about my life.  Side note: all dentists are just wanna-be therapists with sadistic personalities and a compassion for Stalin.  I decided I would ignore my therapist dentist.  I avoided her nose hairs, and tried not to inhale her unfamiliar breath.   I wasn’t going to nod in agreement, nor shake in disregard.  I would just lie there, letting her do work on my mouth.  And you know what? She didn't even notice. She asked, and talked, and made up her own responses to those prying questions, meanwhile nonchalantly rummaging around in the staircase of my face like a busy bee digging for pollen.  But for the first time, I walked out of the torture chamber with just a little bit of my dignity still in tact.

I realize I am a little biased with my slightly more passionate hate for dentistry because I had to wear braces for 5 years, only because this meant that I spend most of my teenage life at the orthodontist’s rather than at home.  And yes, these were indeed the best years of my life.

My apologies to all the current and aspiring do-people-good-ers out there.  Note that I am in no way mocking the amazing work you do, I for one, am clearly not smart enough to be a doctor or dentist (thank god), but that doesn't mean I can't point out how really fucking annoying it is to visit them sometimes.

1  sexual stereotyping at it's finest

2  watch, I'll get the flu tomorrow

3  seriously, live a little, will ya!

4  no, actually, you'll still die, just maybe not as fast, or perhaps faster, depends on which way you look at it

5  oh and they can add, but, whatever.

if you hadn't closed your eyes

It was something forgotten - like yesterday's bad weather, or the still, wet clothes in the washing machine, or the years that kept slowly, surely slipping away from me.  It was those poorly lit days that produced the richest nights, so far as one could say that a light breakfast led to an excessive lunch.  Our minds were stronger than our bodies.  The mind had the ability to not let the body rest.  But if you tired the body, the mind simply followed.  And if you were there for the moon's slow increase to full, for the loud garbage men, the sound of beans grinding, the morning dew, and for those courageous early voices that lived in trees and sometimes perched on my window; you would ask: why have you never planted flowers? and I would say: why had some people chosen to sleep with the lights on?

Sleep was for people who had time to waste, but I wanted to be awake forever.

The moon appeared and the city died every night for a couple of hours when you could really hear the silence, and sometimes you believed that this is what it was all made for.  During these lonely, barren hours that went deserted during the night, the city that cradled us, vanished, sinking into itself.  It was easy to forget that other lives existed, that it wasn't just you and that big, white crescent thing up there which served as a better indicator of time than any old clock I knew.

And then the dawn, which came like springtime, like lawn sprinklers, like cavities - a surprise crawling at your shivering feet.  Before you could catch the precise moment that darkness covered light,  the sun slowly rose to illuminate all the cracks that were still in the pavement and it appeared like a king without a crown.  People were waking.  It was time to rise, to live again.  But I hadn't slept, I hadn't died.

a food lover's guide to staying thin healthy

Its been a month since I began my get-rid-of-baguette-baggage diet.  It has been really helpful not having 12-inch freshly baked so-good-they-make-your-mouth-water cylinders of bread lying around the house.  Giving that up was the first hard step I had to take, and because I had to rid myself of all carbohydrate madness, I chose to also give up pasta, potatoes, rice (except the one in sushi), and sweets.  Yes.  All that good stuff.  Now, you’re not going to believe me when I say that these past 4 weeks seem to have been a lot easier than I initially thought they would be.  The reason for this is largely due in part to my extraneous overindulgence in all the above during my short-lived stay in Paris where I couldn’t allow myself to say no to anything that could've potentially been a party in my mouth.  It has been especially helpful not having Patisseries on every corner, with those sweet fumes busting through the creaks of their doors and all that inviting colorful glaze of pastries so exotic it was necessary to have a piece, or 3.   I appreciate the absence of Boulangeries, a heaven for bread lovers and a paradise of carbs, smiling at you with their warm flaky goodness.  Oh yes, its been very helpful.  It seems as though the options for healthy eating overseas were lackluster.  The French didn’t know how to diet because the French didn’t see a need for it.  Besides the fact that they were all already incredible thin (genes, I tell myself to feel better) they also don’t believe in what we Americans call 'moderation'.  If it pleases you then do it, eat it, be it, feel it.  In the French world there is no time or use for restraint.  They have inhabited and become the sole promoters of Oscar Wilde's famous words – "the only way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it".

And believe me, I tried.  Oh I tried hard.  Unfortunately a diet of bread, red wine, and fatty meats did my non-French body no good.  I couldn’t process it the same way the French could.  And no matter how much I walked or how many cigarettes I smoked (the one French pleasure that suited me just fine) I couldn’t  curb my cravings for another order of the bread basket, with some butter please.  I was insatiable.

I quickly learned (ok fine, it took me the entire 6 months) that more than one delicacy a day becomes overbearing after a while.  The reason they are called delicacies, instead of grub, is because they are reserved for those once-in-a-while moments when you want to treat yourself to something god-awfully appetizing.  And their rich in flavor after tastes are supposed to linger on your tongue and in your memory just long enough so that the next time that once-in-a-while moment rolls around, you think – "I remember that tasting very, very good".

A few years ago, someone told me that I was a gluttonous freak.  That if I liked something, I would overdose on it until I couldn’t look at it anymore without getting nauseous.  I was offended by this statement and thought it was just a smart-asses way of saying ‘hey, you’re fat’.  But having recently lived the good-food life in Paris has helped me better identify with that not-so-attractive part of myself.  I guess maybe if you could use gluttony as a trait not only reserved for consumption lingo, you could call me a hard working overachiever.  But lets not sugar coat the problem here (or as my previous gluttonous self would say ‘yes please sugar coat that shit!’)  After-all, we're talking about my stomach here.  And my stomach is definitely missing a threshold.

Anyway, by month 6, I realized that there is no bad food in France.  It simply does not exist.  Also, it's hard to grab a light bite to eat such as a slice of pizza, or a small salad, or a hot dog (not that all those things are healthy).  If you want to go eat, you go out with a bang.  You sit down and you have a full meal and you really enjoy it.  Everything is gourmet.  Everything is good.  Perhaps if I resorted to shopping for groceries and cooking at home, I could have cut down on the amount of calories I digested daily but who wants to stay home and cook when you’re living in Paris?  Not I.

Eventually, my greedy self accumulated favorites.  Café Charlot was my sanctuary.  It was by far the greatest café I ate at and it quickly became a regular dining spot (the close proximity to my house did not help).  The standard Charlot meal? For starters, escargot, with bread for dipping into the sauce the snails were cooked in; ceasar salad with smoked salmon, which at first sounded weird but later you wonder why you don’t eat your salad with salmon every time; then the best tartare de beouf in the city with the crispiest French fries ever (I can attest to this because my mission for a long time was eating tartare de beouf at every cafe just to find one better than the one at Café Charlot); and for dessert crème brulee.  The meal was always accompanied by a good bottle of Bordeaux, and sometimes more than just one.  If a puddle of saliva has not yet accumulated at your feet, let me tell you that there were other dishes at Charlot that still make me salivate just thinking about them – like the perfectly cooked chicken topped with some sort of sweet caramel sauce sided with the most cheesiest, creamiest risotto I have ever tasted.  Every meal at Café Charlot was eaten in silence and in one breath.  You didn’t stop until you cleared your plate because in all honestly you couldn't if you wanted to.  And you never left anything on your plate.  'Cause that would really just be a slap in the face to all that good food.

Café Charlot was also the home to some of the best burgers in Paris, even though French etiquette forced you to eat them awkwardly with a fork and a knife, which is really impossible and should be totally done away with as a mannerism.  Sometimes you just need to get in there, and not with a utensil.  It truly pained me to watch those thin Parisians slicing and dicing their burgers with perfectly shined cutlery.  I sat through a dinner one time growing hot by the second because of all the dirty looks I was getting.  As a kid I learned that you eat burgers with your hands and in the midst of my hunger I wasn’t about to try to change my ways.  When you’re hungry and the only thing standing in the way of you and that large juicy piece of perfection is a fork and a knife, you say ‘fuck this’ and you grab that blessing from god and you bite into it and really you don’t care if there’s ketchup on your cheeks or if there’s burger juice dripping down your forearms.  The strange stares are worth it,  but the French would beg to differ.  And that’s fine.  Some things never change.

But Café Charlot was not the only hot spot in town.  There was this restaurant called L’entrecote.  Get this: you come in, sit down, and there is no menu.  The only thing you have the freedom to choose is what you would like to drink and what you want for dessert.  The restaurant serves only one dish to everyone, all the time.  It's their speciality and also one of the few things that makes me very, very happy.  The dish is simple – perfectly cooked, thinly sliced beef, covered with a creamy green sauce (think: pesto alfredo aesthetically, not taste-wise). And you get a plate of really good fries.  It looks like middle school lunchroom food.  But it tastes better than [insert favorite expensive steakhouse].  The best part, for the taste buds, not the waistline, is that you get two servings.  Yes, you heard me, two.  Even if you don't want it.  Once you finish your first, the waiter quickly rushes over and slabs on another serving of delicate beef with that mysterious sauce dripping all over, no questions asked.  Oh and you get more fries.  Now, seriously, how can anyone say no to this, ever? 

After 6 months of literally stuffing face, I slowly began to lose all appreciation for what good food meant.  Not to mention, I was no longer listening to my body’s needs, just gorging down meals that were too appetizing to resist.  I will never forget the first time I had escargot – a friend took me to lunch at a fancy hotel near the Tuileries.  The only affordable dish on the menu was the escargot and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it, given that I was in the land where they could go no wrong with making it.  Waiting for it, I realized how much I didn’t belong there - starkly under dressed in my T-shirt and jeans, I spied flawless women clad in Louboutin heels and impeccably tailored Chanel dresses.  I bumped into Jessica Alba in the bathroom, nonchalantly washing her hands, and thought “what is this place?”  I returned to the snails lying dead, freshly cooked on my plate, seethed in the most delicious pesto garlic sauce ideal for bread dipping.  There was a miniature fork and there was this clamp thing that looked like something my gynecologist holds in her hand every time I walk into the office.  I froze in fear.  How am I going to properly eat this?  All I wanted was that gross slug looking salty thing inside the shell but there is no way to get to there.  It goes without saying that most of the pesto garlic sauce ended up on my shirt instead of in my mouth or on my bread.  It also ended up on my forehead, on the table next to us, and on my friend’s plate.  But I got those scrumpuous little suckers into my mouth and I knew I was addicted.

The 20 plus times I ate escargot after that, I do not remember nearly as clear enough.  Yes, they were good.  They were always good.  But just like buying expensive clothing makes you immune to the quality of what your wearing, so does eating well prepared food.  My jaded taste buds were taking over my life.  All I thought about was where I would have my next meal and how good it would taste, while my body was growing outward in size.

Then, one day, I was struck with the observation that my used-to-be loose jeans were no longer loose and I said to myself that once I returned to the good ol’ US of A, I was going on a strict diet.  And that’s exactly what I did. 

All the good eating I have done was 100% worth it and I would not take back any of those last good natured plate licks.  But I have, as natured proved it, maxed out my gluttonous inclinations and forced myself to resort back to an opposing extreme – banning anything that excites my taste buds.

Unfortunately, once you forbid yourself to have everything you used to eat, temptation moves in to neighbor you, always creeping over your shoulder, screaming in your ear, fuming at your nostrils, itching your tongue.  Sometimes I walk into grocery stores with a single mission –  something like ‘must buy toothpaste’, or anything else that is entirely mundane and totally not relatable to food.  Yet all I see when I get there is 100 flavors of ice cream, 30 different kinds of potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, large cakes, small cakes, and candy - salty, sweet, hard, or chewy.  The options are endless and the temptations firing away.  But I deny, deny, deny.  I stare and day dream sometimes of what the flavours would be like in my mouth, and that seems to keep me going just enough to not have to buy the thing and eat it.  Thank god for my imagination.

Last week, on a midnight snack run, my friends brought ice creams but I, instead, was chomping away at a measly fruit salad.  Pitiful, huh?  But it’s not so bad, really.  Since I have been eating healthier, I have begun to feel so much better – mentally and physically.  And I know that every choice I make matters.  Food is no longer everything.  I can now better manage my food decisions in order to prevent myself from overindulging.  And honestly, I have grown to love all the healthy things I eat because I love the way they make me feel in the long run.  Yes, ice cream is really good.  But sometimes it's just not worth it.  And when I go out for the occasional dinner, I can guiltlessly indulge in those few delicacies that I still really love and just simply cannot give up.  But instead of eating as though the world is running out of its food supply, I can wholeheartedly enjoy their tastes.  I chew slowly, I satiate each bite, and eating is now more instant pleasure and less future pain.

a trusty stranger (?)

Be nice to strangers lest they be angels in disguise, or run like hell the other way preferably to the nearest police station just in case they are clandestine psychopaths looking to put their sharps knives to some bad use.  Can anyone be trusted anymore?

One time, sitting at a Parisian café in the early morning hours, I witnessed along with another 20 somewhat coffee drinkers, a homeless drunk man, pant-less, bent over and washing his backside with a bottle of water and his right hand.  While I watched with a dropped jaw, I was also noticing how no one else really seemed to be paying much attention at all.  Did the ‘so disturbing cant look away’ epidemic never reach these foreigners? How could they be so ignorant, I thought, when a homeless man is washing his ass right in front of their sun-kissed faces?

Overseas, I saw a lot of crazy people doing weird shit on the streets, but I failed to hear any tragic murder stories on the news.  Was the media hiding them, or did they simply not exist?

Unfortunately, here in New York City there is lots of murder in the streets, and you hear about it even if you try to preserve your virgin ears. 

Too much news intel in the past couple of days has led me to conclude that most freak events occur due to one emotion which humans cannot control.  Fear.  According to a confessional letter* (scroll down and read the news link if you're not in the loop and want to be before you read on), Levi Aron stated he had no initial intentions of harming Leiby Kletzky until he learned about the media’s concern over his disappearance.  He began to panic. Trapped in an overwhelming ocean of fear he decided that the best solution for this temporarily inconvenient situation would be to suffocate the innocent 9 year-old and then proceed to cut his body into pieces.  A head full of clear thoughts? Obviously not.

So what do you do when a seemingly kind stranger approaches you on the street, be you 9 or 25 or 43? 

About a week ago, I was stuck on 48^th  street and 5^th ave in the pouring rain trying desperately to catch a vacant taxi cab.  If you are a New Yorker, you know that your chances of immaculate conception are probably higher than getting a cab in the rain.  So I was haling hard for about 30 mintues and was completely soaked.  Because I was carrying a lot of bags, some of which contained new books, I took cover under a construction overpass to keep them drier than me and also to give my frail arm a little rest.  In the time it took me to wipe water from my eyelids, a pedi cab approached.  For those who are not familiar with this mode of transportation – it is basically a bike with a two seater attached to the back.

“Where ya headin’?”

“Kinda far for a bike ride.”

“That’s alright, I can take ya, but it might cost ya!”

“How much?”

“50 bucks.”

“Nah, I think I'll try to catch a cab, thanks!”

... and he pedals away.

For as long as I've lived in this city, I have somehow avoided acknowledging that pedicabs even exist.  I guess it's one of those things that city-dwellers have subconsciously conditioned themselves to totally tune-out, like ambulance sirens, car honks, tourist traps, and for some, even the sound of birds.  Now that I was aware, I began to notice how many of them crawled the busy streets of New York.  It seemed like the taxi cab/pedi cab ratio had evened out, and I guess if your distance isn’t too far and you have extra cash to dish out, the ride seems worth it when all the yellows are occupied.

I stood for another 15 minutes waling my arm around while filled cabs zoomed past me and I noticed another woman just down the block doing the same thing as me except she had walked about ¼ of the way into the street, and if she didn’t get run over, then her chances of getting the first available cab were far greater than mine.  So I'm wet and exhausted and have somewhere to be.  Incoming: another pedicab.

“Hey! Let me take you!”

“I'm not paying 50 bucks.”

“What? No, 25 for you.”

“Uhhhh..”

In the midst of just wanting to get going already, I began to weigh the decisions in my head.  I look at the guy. 

“Come on, you'll never get a cab in the rain. Let me take you.”

Why is he so pushy?

"Come on, it will only cost you 25 dollars.  I'm a good biker”

“Uh, I don’t think so.  I don’t have any cash anyway”

“Oh come on.  You’re already soaked.  You'll be waiting forever.  We can stop at an ATM on the way.  Any ATM of your choice.”

Seriously, why is he being so pushy?  I'm sure he can go down the block and pick up anyone else who in addition will actually be willing to pay 50 dollars.

“Nah, I think I'll take my chances”

He gets off his bike.

“Look. I'm Christopher. What's your name?”

“Simona.” 

We shake hands and do our ‘nice to meet you’s'.

“Where you from?”

“Uh, Brooklyn..”

“Cool, I'm from Queens. Astoria.”

“Okay..”

“How old are you?”

“22” 

Am I already giving away too much information?

“Oh shit! 11/11! That's ma birthday!”

So here I am, perplexed.  I need to get somewhere and the catching a cab business isn’t looking so good.  This guy seems nice.  I don’t know why he wants to take me so bad, and I also don’t know why he’s willing to shlep my 140lb self along with my three heavy bags all the way across town for a measly 25 dollars.  Herein lies the risk factor.

I could A- take my chances and hope this dude gets me to my destination alive, without kidnapping me and then brutally murdering me and leaving my body to decompose somewhere in a trash can (very popular trend these days) or B- I could be really adamant about trying to find a cab, which probably won't happen, and so I will have to find the nearest train station which won't even have the train I need to go crosstown and end up riding the really hot subway for god knows how long after which I will still have to walk 5 avenues until I reach my destination, most likely very late.

“So whaddaya say?” 

He streaches out his hand to help me into the shaky thing.

“Fine” and I get in.

First let me say, that this is not a comfortable ride.  I am sitting in the chair attached to the back of his bike with a canapy to shield me from getting any wetter (which is not even possible at this point, but I still have books to save) and the potholes are not nice when there are no hydraulics. 

My thoughts are raging.  What if this was a bad idea?  Now he can take me anywhere he wants.  I am at his disposal and I am going to be the most current missing person on tonight’s local news.  What did I get myself into?  I anxiously watch the street numbers to make sure we are heading in the right direction.  I watch his throbbing calves.  Every correct turn makes me swallow my fear just a little.

“How you doin' back there?”

Gulp.

“So tell me about yourself...”

“Uh seriously?”

I just want to get there already.

“Ya know, this is not the only thing that I do.  I also wrote a children's book.”

“No way!”

“Yeah! I'ma read it to you when we stop!”

Okay, so thankfully I wasn’t in the hands of a serial killer or even some psychopath ready to make me his next victim.  Well maybe a little psychopath but with totally good intentions at the least.  I got to my destination, still wet but in one piece, and while he was reading me his published children’s book, I wondered why it was so wrong to give strangers the upper hand sometimes and actually trust them.  Because if you think about it, millions of people do so everyday by getting into taxicabs, airplanes, buses, and trains.  We don’t know where the crazies lie within these streets but we have to take our chances so we can get by.

I spent the next hour raging to my mother about how there are some really nice people in the world, like this poor guy who pedaled for 15 minutes uphill and I only paid him 25 dollars (which is a lot compared to a cab ride, but given the circumstances, a pretty sweet deal).  He even let me in on a little secret – an open-mic poetry reading held every Sunday on the lower east side, and had I not taken my chances with this stranger, I might have never known.

But back to where I began-

This week, a 9 year-old boy lost on his way home from day camp, also took a chance with a stranger, hoping that the man’s intentions were coming from a good healthy place.  Unfortunately this little boy got the short end of the stick and now his family and the entire nation grieves at the tragic story flooding televisions everywhere.

Where did he go wrong, and where did I go right?

Leiby Kletzky’s death haunts me now.  And had I been stuck in the rain today, I undoubtedly would have said no to friendly Christopher.  Because it looks like you just never know these days.

// If you are unfamiliar with this sad story, read about the details here: 

Outrage in Brooklyn's Jewish quarter over boy's grisly killing