Your Pussy Has Left New York

“Are you kidding?” she asks, but doesn’t expect an answer. She’s leaning against the bar, her long arms draped over it, her fingers dipping in beer spills.

Wagner is silent. He isn’t kidding, clearly.

“She left, and she’s not coming back!” she exclaims.

Wagner nods. “I know. It’s too late.” He moves closer to me, in the middle. I move closer to her. She looks at herself in the mirror. We all look at ourselves in the big mirror behind the bar, continuing conversation through glass.

“What am I supposed to do?” Wagner asks.

“What are you supposed to do?” she repeats. She turns away from the mirror and at the crowd of men gathered to her right. “What is he supposed to do?”

The men perk up at the sight of a friendly, intoxicated blonde. “What is he supposed to do?”

The ringleader motions for the group to stand up. They circle us like vultures. I notice wedding bands. I sip my whiskey, neat, and shift away from Wagner, who is fingering his cellphone and staring at me in the mirror.

She sits up straight. “He dated this girl for years. And he’s here from Florida. And she left, she went back home, and he let her go.”

“Where’d she go?” asked one of the married men.

“Home,” she answers.

“The Lower East Side,” adds Wagner.

“Home,” she repeats. “But then she’s moving. This is it. She’s moving back to California.”

“Oh god,” moans Wagner, and I can’t tell if it’s the crowd, or the booze, or the thought of Los Angeles.

“Wagner! You’ve got to call her!”

The crowd of men agrees, sipping their beers and nodding enthusiastically.

“You’ve got to call her or else.”

“Or else what?” asks Wagner.

“Or else she’s gone. She’s practically gone already. This is it!”

The men offer suggestions, like witty text messages and come hither smiley face emoticons that would convince her via SMS to felate him. Wagner just fingers his cellphone, passing it from hand to hand, staring at himself in the mirror.

“You’re going to wait too long and that’s going to be it.”

“And then what?” asks a married man.

“And then your pussy has left New York.” She excuses herself to use the bathroom. The men slink away, back to their beers and conversations and boring, married lives.

Wagner looks at me in the mirror. I take his phone and text her for him. And then I go back to my whiskey, neat.

We Won’t Be Hungry

The bed was perfect, the sheets tucked exactingly into the navy blue bed frame. He sits at the desk with a ziplock bag of grass and a neat folded paper. Why is the door locking? And when we all sit together, draped over the bed in our gray shifts and pale sweaters, blowing wind at the corners of the hotel room, our lungs expand and collapse and when someone uses the bathroom we can all hear them piss into that gorgeous white industrial toilet. We clutch our feet together. We take turns at the bedside table and clean up neat little expensive rows, our fingers tracing over the invisible dust of whoever was in this room last. We won’t be hungry. Tender noise in the window. The traffic lights in Tribeca turn red like a parade or a funeral procession. There is someone in the bathroom. There is someone at the door. Why is the door locking? Our ribcages rise and fall as we inhale, exhale, laying on the bed with our warm hands outstretched. Bring us water when you’re done. Clean up the remains of the desk, of the squat bedside table when you’re through. Jaws clenched, chins up, eyes closed. Don’t mess up the perfect sheets and whatever happens don’t lock the door.

Foam Explosion

I came home drunk last night and cooked something—a toasted bagel. I put the plate in the dishwasher, threw in some soap, turned it on and went to bed. The hours were all wrong. I was confused and passed out with the bagel on my pillow.

At nine I woke up and walked to the kitchen for water. And I got water—and foam. The entire floor was soaked in foam six inches tall. I stepped in the foam, got a glass of water, and sopped back to bed.

When I woke up at three—yes, three—I went back to the kitchen. The foam was gone and the floor was squeaky clean.

Was it all a dream? I decided to investigate.

The box of dishwasher detergent was empty. The antibacterial handsoap was, it would seem, my drunken way of cleaning the dishes. I must have used half the bottle, which lay in the sink looking guilty.

I turned the dishwasher on once more to rinse the dishes and foam poured out from the machine. “Shit!” I yelled, and unrolled long squares of papertowels on the floor, dancing on them and slipping around. Five minutes of internet investigation later, I returned to the crime scene with a bottle of vegetable oil and a prayer. I emptied a cup of Wesson into the machine and turned it on once more.

The foam stopped. The floor is squeaky clean.

The only downside, I think, is that I’m all out of oil. That and my dishes feel slightly greasy.

The Entertainment

I finished Infinite Jest tonight. It’s Halloween—how apropos. It only took my five months and two copies. I would be the P.G.O.A.T. for Halloween, but I don’t have a veil or a crackpipe. Plus, I’m trying to fold a toga out of a sheet. It won’t stay on. Boo!

Social Networking

Facebook is no place to air your dirty laundry. It should be washed thoroughly and air-dried on Twitter.

Swollen Shellfish

There are other things that turn purple—lamb chops and bruises and watercolor monsters. These are all the shiny ways, not the atrophied purple, like swollen shellfish.

Like Egg Yolks

How does love fit into this equation any differently than my career? I don’t know. How do you strain and separate your life, like egg yolks? My life is divided by seconds—not that I had any say in it. Not that anyone asked any of us, did they? But that’s what we get. Daylight and darkness, divided up amongst us like work and home, like youth and old age.

Wants & Needs

There are two types of people in this world: those who fight for what they want and those who settle for what they need. The problem is, I have no idea what I want or what I need.