Inside the party.

The girls, all together, say something vague and cutting. Something about shoes or the size of their waist. Whether it is said out loud or not, well, that does’t matter. It is said over and over and over, repeated so many times it becomes a warm, dull chorus of young discontent. I grip my scotch and soda the way an old woman holds onto her walker. And I let it take me away.

Flinching

We went to a comedy show. He insisted.

It wasn’t even a normal showing of stand-up circuit comedians. It was worse because it was just joke writers. Most of the jokes were about how they were Jewish or hated themselves or both. People laughed anyway, too much, because they had paid and they had made plans that night to drink watered down cocktails and fucking laugh. They even laughed at the joke set-ups, like they had been so conditioned to the situation that they couldn’t help but flinch laughter. So I drank extra so I would laugh more, like my laughs would soothe him. I drank extra so he would drink extra, too, and maybe he wouldn’t think too much about the news that his grandfather had died that morning.

It might have been the morning, or the night before. He didn’t know, and he didn’t ask. I don’t know why it mattered to me. I guess it doesn’t matter when time stops, if you think about it. When the ride is over you have to get off.

The comedians were terrible. We each had six scotch and sodas and shared an order of greasy fried shrimp. I had the urge to pat them off with a cocktail napkin but I didn’t want to garner the attention of the comedians. I had a panic attack that they would run out of material and angle in on the audience, notice me patting off a basket of fried shrimp and ask what I was doing there, and I would blurt out, “His grandfather just died,” and everyone would laugh and laugh, looking at the joke writer for the punchline.

Togetherness

alone in bed, heavy sleep-soaked breaths, his knee raised up in the sheet like his body is about to set sail. a bed is just a frame for blankets. he is all things we come home for. there are no reasons, no answers flickering along under his rapid eye moves. he is my togetherness, simmering like a stew.

Up, Up

The sun shines harder if that’s possible, from one end of an island to another, brandishing an impossible amount of trees. Puddles smell  of sterile name brand Band-Aids and rusting tin foil. I walk slower, but I twisted my ankle and it still aches every morning. Bed sheets like bandages. The subway stairs was an early casualty. The sharp rays of sun the second.

Nowadays

This should be like riding a bike.  But it’s really more like diet and exercise. It’s a lifestyle. Blogging is just as tiring, time-consuming and self-indulgent.

I go back and read through old posts and remember that person. Or, I remember the feelings, but not the agony and anxiety and razor-sharp reflexes that led me to the corner of the room. My heart was always in my throat. My lungs were always full of heat and sweat and New York subway air.

Then the goodness came through me and I softened. We all do. Everything unclenches and the edges all blur just enough to look less threatening. It’s a careful assumption, just sweet enough to wrap around all the paper cut needles in the haystacks.

Doubt

I doubt everything except doubt.  It’s my one constant — it’s omnipresent. Noise pollution. The narrator.

My boyfriend is drunk.

“Who are you? Where did you come from? I feel like you were put on this planet to fall in love with me. I wake up and see you every morning, and I think, who the hell are you? Why are you in my face? And if you’re in my face, how and why are you in my face? Furthermore … no. I’m not going to finish that. I love you. I love you.”

There’s smoke in our apartment.

Introduced ourselves to the old man who smokes pipe downstairs. He’s lived—and—hoarded in his apartment since 1979. With a pipe. And a cat.

I don’t think he’s left that apartment in years. Through the smoke and dust, there was an amazing outline of our apartment’s former self.

“I just picked it back up a month ago,” he confessed. He put the pipe down on his bookshelf, guiltily. “Another good reason to quit.”