New York Interlude II

Last night at Michael Mejias' reading series at Kettle Of Fish in Manhattan I read for the first time from my fictionalized autobiographical collection of stories We Give Ourselves Habits In Order To Live. In doing so, I realized two things:

1) Apparently the Joan Didion reference embedded not-so-subtly in my title (I am pretty much blatently ripping off her quote "We tell ourselves stories in order to live.") is not so blazingly obvious that I need worry about a lawsuit.

2)The last piece I read, "New York Interlude II", will eventually be where the collection ends. I need to revisit it, edit it again (and again, and again, ad infinitum) with this newfound knowledge, but it's sort of thrilling: I have a beginning, and an end, to this set of stories that are stupidly close to my heart.

This, then, is where that story stands now, before the revisions and scissors and night-time and knives and blood and glitter all come out to play.

New York Interlude II (the streets are so empty at this time of night)

I am here, but I am still not moving here. This is something that is still not happening. Not for her and not for us. Not last time not this time. Last time I didn’t like her abundance of dirty fucking rock and roll bars, and this time I don’t like her lack of fucking. And this city, her city, is not yet actually a city that opens herself to me, either. I am learning that I like possessions, like things I can imprint upon, things I can call mine. This has come to me as a bit of surprise, because in my younger years I thought I wanted to be owned myself. I would seek out only those who were more than the sum of my meager parts, who would string me along ‘til I was strung out on what I would think was love. I enjoy being hurt, yes, I enjoy being used, but I want to own the hurter, the user, the experience. And this is not a city that could ever belong to me. That is part of the challenge. This challenge is why I am crossing the street. Like a Japanese tourist whose eyes function as a Kodak Kwik-shot, I turn to take in any/every/all on the walk from the subway stop proclaiming itself to be West 4th St but is, in actuality, anything but. I arrive into the chilly city afternoon, in search of something I didn’t know and couldn’t be sure I’d find. But, really, how hard could it be? Streets here run in numerical order, after all. Logic-in-construction. Admirable. Unfamiliar. Threatening to me. As threatening as the fact that, here, as I step onto the sidewalk, if I were to be hit, my body crushed by taxi or bus or car or even an unyielding high-finance businessman, I’d decompose, rot in the middle of the street and be no more than a step-around nuisance to hundreds. In this city, at this moment, I have no impact at all. And that’s a turn-on.

So I submit. I give in to her, to New York. I give in and allow myself to join, to become a part of her, unnoticed and unimportant but still willing my steps to match the pace of the afternoon breathing beating business. There’s a certain sense of cocksuredness accompanied by my powerlessness, naturally, as I raise my headphones to my ears and turn my ipod on, New Order’s Low-Life now an aural second skin. I never dress warm enough in New York from fear of looking stupid. Bibs and bobs of scarves and gloves, so much strange accoutrements, were so much decoration in my sun burnt southern childhood, so even well-sized they fit me poorly. Like a boy in his father’s salesman suit they feel uncomfortable on me, and so I end up swearing into frost-red fingertips as I put one foot in front of the other. I am not moving here. This is a city out for blood. Namely, mine. This afternoon fades, though, and things are different. I feel almost welcome, kept warm from her  teeth marks nestled between my neck and shoulder.

And this is the part oral history will re-write. The thrill of this city’s mouth taking me in entirely. I give her a copy of Less Than Zero and she gives me a blowjob and this is not something that can go home with me, and this is not something that can be my home because I am not moving here. This is a city that doesn’t understand my southern morals. I cross the street, half-smirking as the only sincerity one should expect from me not coated in a layer of publicist bullshit, come to be less my second language at this point than my first. I’m jaywalking or bluejaying or whatever they call it here in full view of cops but that synthetic bass washes in and it’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” in my headphones and fuck all goes away as last night rushes back in and every time I saw her falling I got down on my knees and prayed and prayed and I came and it has come to this. How has this become so much a thing, tattooed on my palms and inner eyelids, bruises on my thighs serving as a road-map to what New York has been to me. I like possessions and this one won’t be mine. And I am not moving here.

This is an Avenue. It isn’t supposed be but this is New York, so I’m in the wrong. All I want is to pin her back against a wall, take her, ass against the sink, make something that’s so far beyond what my reality has been. Be honest with yourself here, though-you are not moving here. Admit that you can’t ascribe meaning to this, and that’s why you hate her, this city. You have the next 12 hours to figure out what this means. You’ll spend 3 of them, won’t you, crossing streets or avenues, or whatever, allowing the lyrics of New Order to explain it all for you like that girl Clarissa did. Memory stumbles like an untied shoelace. Clarissa-did you date her? There have been so many… No. That was an Nickelodeon show, asshole. And so now? Now. Now I will wait for two girls: one who knows and one is who unawares. 3 if I break that wall and acknowledge they’re all the same, my bad metaphor for New York. But she’ll never make her mind up. I am still not moving here. I am lost in this. Or maybe found. And I am still not moving to her, or for her, or towards her. Doesn’t matter, thought-the city is infallible, and she has brought her, this unknown, to me. And it is waiting for my move.

Comments

[becca]

:)

[Kristin Ross]

My very favorite of what I've read so far. Congrats on the reading last night!

[Timmy Christ]

Well, my friend, your angst has found its voice, and perhaps her form. In the end, she will love you for it.

[Stella]

Muffled cries coming from your head, far up your anus.