Eleven Minutes

She turns her head to the quiet clock. “If sex is what you want,” she says, “we can have sex.”

He will always remember this: “If sex is what you want,” she said, “we can have sex.”

In no way does he take this invitation to mean that she wants to have sex; he is not that thoughtless. He recognizes her sadness. He knows a thing or two, also, of his own desperation. Given a moment of introspection, he might rise and walk away. But, really, where would he go? He would probably prefer that she wasn’t there at all. More to the point, perhaps, he would prefer to be alone. How did she get there, anyhow?

And, yet: Why not?

She is there, after all. And, after all, they are in bed. And, so, yes: Why not?

In any case, he’s ready.

Soon, though, he finds that she is not. “You don’t have to be gentle,” she says.

“Gentle?” he wonders. “Have I been gentle?”

He tightens his hands around the steel bed frame, tangling some of her brittle hair between his thin fingers, pressing hard against the dusty wall, weighing into her heavily until her shoulders and chin collapse together, until her neck is invisible, until her head is angled awkwardly up against that dusty wall, and he pushes harder.

And he pushes harder.

And it feels like:

1. styrofoam
2. a knotted ball of rubber bands
3. a wax crayon

“Do you like it?” she asks.

“Yes. Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want you to enjoy this.”

“I’m getting there.”

But it’s too late. Or too much. Then again, maybe it’s not enough. We can’t be sure. All that’s certain is that this thing is coming from him – not love, not even relief – just a thing, squeezed from him, and that’s all.

She accepts a dull kiss on her open mouth. He sighs.

She turns her head and looks at the red digits of the quiet clock.

“Eleven minutes,” she announces, finally.

In Love

Bruno and Mia are in love.

They danced until three in the morning when the lights came on, the stools were turned upside down, and the music stopped.

“I gave it up,” Bruno says. “I sold all of my instruments.”

“Do you miss it?” someone asks.

“I miss it, yeah. But I travel, I see new places, I meet people, I go to work.”

Someone nods, smiles.

Bruno lifts his hands into the space in front of him and smoothes out the air, as if settling a wrinkled sheet.

“Things are good,” he says.

And then: “I’ve never been happier.”

I Hope You Like It

He mourns the aborted conversations, the stillborn words left to be rubbed into the smooth skin of the bar on Essex Street, an echo of the five fingers of his left hand pressed into her soft white sleeve, a memory of a dream of how it felt to kiss her lips.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I hope you like it,” was his only reply.

All My Hopes in One Envelope

I said goodbye to someone that I loved.

I’ve got a friend in Havana, Cuba. She knows nothing of this New York City madness, knows nothing of the gossip or the fever, doesn’t care about the galleries, the openings or the closings, the come to my show tonights.

Play a song for me, buy a drink for me. By day by day by day. The Searchers sing on needles and pins. Jeff Baker thinks it fucking sucks. Jeff Paris thinks it fucking sucks. I think it fucking sucks, too.

What are you doing now? Sometimes I cry because I think no one knows me. I want to wake up with you slowly on Sunday mornings and listen to crackly old jazz records and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and look at photographs. The plan is to fuck this City and move to the suburbs where the sky sees stars. I’m only kidding about the cigarettes. They’re bad for you. You will remember me; you’ll keep in touch. I want our nights to be documented in the grooves, to be rediscovered in some cluttered closet with dirty rugs and dead roaches and wire hangers and overcoats.

They’ll make a compilation of us, a four-disc box-set, with extensive liner notes and a get-one-free promotion.

While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Not As Nice As Yours

Outside:

1. A string of golden dots is making its way from the sky to the ground;

2. A dirty, old train is hollering for New York City;

3. The Passaic River is beginning to freeze.

He takes a hold of her pretty blue sweater and pulls it up and over her head. Beneath, he finds a sudden, simple thing: A thin, gold chain carrying a cock-shaped charm. It smiles and winks and rests gently against her white, white skin. He’s slightly surprised, she’s slightly embarrassed. He laughs his slightly surprised laugh. She follows with one of her own.

And then he touches it.

His eyes from it to hers, her eyes from it to his, and he asks, without words: “?”

She answers: “I like penises.”

“This is a nice one,” he admits.

“Not as nice as yours.”

Inside:

1. What music is playing?

2. Is she lying?

3. __________________

The Passaic River is beginning to freeze.

A Condition, Time, or Period of Flowering

“Okay,” he says.

The last few echoes of classical guitar knock up against the cool glass of the revolving doors, falling to the ground with little drunken plinks before finally giving up. One by one, the partiers push through into the chilly October air.

The chilly October air pushes back. It’s so beautiful. It is.

They leave the party feeling good, I think. This is the life. This is New York City all around and everywhere. Eating us, keeping us, teaching us, pointing at us and laughing.

Their private tour bus is waiting for them; waiting to take them slowly down golden Fifth Avenue with its open windows and its old stories. One by one, they board. There is no other way, but one by one. They climb the abbreviated staircase to the upper level, so that they can feel the chilly October air, so that - perhaps - they will have to push closer together, through whatever cool glass there may be, in order to keep warm. Above them now is one of those unreal New York City skies; a T.S. Eliot sky - veiled in fluorescence.

(Or is it veiled in florescence? he wonders. He has to look it up so that he can spell it right: f-l-u-o-r-e-s-c-e-n-c-e. And then he reads: “The emission of electromagnetic radiation, esp. of visible light, stimulated in a substance by the absorption of incident radiation and persisting only as long as the stimulation radiation is continued.” And then he goes back: f-l-o-r-e-s-c-e-n-c-e. And he reads: “A condition, time, or period of flowering.”)

So, which one is it? Impossible to be sure, perhaps.

This is the way. They touch, they make jokes, they make fun, they laugh. This is the way. The tour guide must be drunk, too.

“It would have been nice,” he thinks.

(Nice to what? I wonder.)

And, then again: “It would be nice,” he thinks.

(If what? I wonder.)

And the woman sits beside him thinking of what.

(Of what? he wonders.)

What was so special about this?

“It’s nice,” he says, “to hear people talking like this. To hear people marvel over their city as though they’ve never seen it.”

She nods, I think. Or perhaps: “Yeah,” she says.

It is difficult to be sure because they have had much to drink.

But the thing of it is this: they are only a few feet above the ground - not so far from where they usually stand at all. But they are now so close - this close - to the street signs, to Fifth Avenue, to the sky, to the traffic lights, to the tree branches. The tree branches! They can touch them.

“Don’t touch those!” the tour guide cries.

They look into other people’s apartments and wonder. For passing moments, they look into other people’s lives and wonder. She makes an observation. A very good point. She is right. He will remember it. Something about her is glowing like Fifth Avenue.

Someone from the back of the bus calls out to them. They turn around, pose for the camera. The white flash.

Too soon, they reach their destination. The tour guide says something that she has said one hundred thirty-six thousand, three hundred fifty-seven times before. Her words collapse onto the abbreviated staircase with little, helpless thuds. One by one, they fall away, like nothing. Like nothing.

With spots of dark and light in their eyes, and green flowers on their happy lapels, the partiers rise and slowly proceed, following in line, stepping gingerly down the abbreviated staircase and carefully around the helpless, forgotten words.

Complete Self-Annihilation

She shakes her head almost violently, her eyes directed down toward the white candle and the cold, wet glass. “I don’t believe,” she says, “in that compromise-and-settling bullshit. You have to give yourself up. Complete self-annihilation.”

In the air above them, some love song is flittering about. It scoots easily through blue strings of light and expertly around an exposed ventilator shaft. A common love song, a Top-40 love song. I can’t decide which.

He looks up at it, watches and smiles.

“You’re mocking me?” she asks quite seriously.

“No,” he says, “I’m smiling.”

“At what?”

“At the song.”

She looks up, searches about, gets a hold of it, and begins to sing along.

Not Like That

In this dream I had, we were walking together. I’m not sure where we were, or even where we were going, or why we were alone, but it was outside and I think it was night. It might have been Manhattan or it might have been Jersey City. It might have even been Brooklyn.

Every so often, we’d come to a certain nameless corner or an underpass of some sort, and we’d stop and kiss. This happened over and over again, all along our walk. We were both smiling.

The kisses were very good: passionate and maybe a bit desperate, but still kind and sweet.

I asked you: “Does it make you happy?”

And you responded quickly: “No. It makes me feel awful.”

This only somewhat surprised me. Though I didn’t want it, I certainly expected it. Maybe, then, it didn’t surprise me at all. Maybe I already knew it.

“Then we should stop,” I said.

Smiling still, you asked: “Why?”

“I don’t want to do this if it makes you feel awful. I want this to make you feel happy.”

You shrugged your shoulders and continued smiling, happiness becoming irrelevant.

Together, we kept walking, soon making our way to another stopping point, another nameless corner, or an underpass of some sort.

I turned towards you and put my arms around your lower back – reaching, grabbing, tugging, tugging. And you, pulling your shirt up so that I could easily slide my hands beneath and feel your cool skin, smiled: “Not like that.”

Beneath the Brooklyn Sky

The sky over Metropolitan Avenue is mostly light blue, with very thin streaks of white, white cloud. The sun is all gone, but it is still bright enough out. No need yet for streetlamps. Twilight, he assumes. It’s that time of day when he really has to struggle to see anything clearly. He’s told you about this before: When you were walking somewhere near Astor Place. Everything seems grainy and slightly out of focus.

They are standing outside of a dank bar. He’s waiting for her to finish her cigarette.

“What are Puerto Rican women like?” she asks.

He searches, but abandoned by his own blood, he cannot find an answer. He lets her continue on her own: “His last girlfriend was Puerto Rican, and she was so jealous about everything that it totally fucked him up. He thinks he should be the center of my universe and that all my attention should be devoted to him.”

Standing there, beneath the Brooklyn sky, he considers how sensitive, insecure, and jealous he, too, can be, but doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he offers: “It shouldn’t be that way.”

For the time, it’s the best he has to offer.

Finally, they go inside to get a beer. From the jukebox comes the old line: “I hate myself for loving you.” He shakes his head and fakes a laugh.

Big, Big, Black

“Because it’s easy to fall in love,” he tells her.

“That’s because you’re so open to it,” she responds.

He nods, uncomfortably.

“But,” she continues, “whoever you end up with is going to be very lucky. You’re so honest about everything. You have so much to offer.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I like to think that’s true.”

“And I feel the same way about myself,” she says. “I can be a very devoted person.”

“I know that,” he tells her.

There is some tension. He turns and finds a small amount of relief from his bottle of Budweiser. There is a heavy pause.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get home later,” she suddenly says.

He begins to worry that she’ll want to go home with him. They’ve written this story before. He knows how it feels and he wants no part of it. “The L is not far from here,” he replies, “or you could take a cab.”

She digs into her silver purse and opens her little subway map. She takes a good look. He points it out to her: “There.”

“So tell me about your lady friend,” she says.

He gives quick, one-word descriptions about her lips, her eyes, and her hair – in that very order.

“Well,” she laughs strangely, “she sounds beautiful.”

“She is.” 

Another thought blooms gently, and he looks back to check if she – his lady friend – is coming through the door. She isn’t.

As he turns, someone else gets up from the bar and feeds more money into the glowing jukebox. A roar emerges. I think it was an old Metallica song. I can’t remember.

The Tune is Nothing In Particular

In his black suit and red tie, he is whistling as he walks up Fifth Avenue. The tune is nothing in particular, the tune is unfamiliar. Perhaps he is making it up as he goes along. Yes, it is improvised, as any good whistle should be. Nearby, construction is taking place inside of an old building. It is gutted like a fat fish. Soon there will be new walls and floors and things to be sold. It will not take long at all.

The suited man notices that they have barricaded 16th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. He can see orange and yellow air-filled things - contraptions, tents; he doesn’t know what to call them. They are for bouncing. He thinks of the Barthelme story that he was made to read in college. It was about a balloon. The balloon reminds him of the giant red wall workers have built around the construction site. The red is so very festive, he decides.

He can then see a volleyball net. He hates volleyball. It demands too much waiting and looking up into the sun. Besides: it hurts the hands.

Closest to him, he can see teams of whiffle-ballers. The ball they use is yellow. The teams are made up of students from Xavier High School. He wonders what they are celebrating. Perhaps the end of the school year, he imagines. It is spring.

He would like to play whiffle ball. He hasn’t played since he was young, but he believes he can still hit any pitch. The last time he played, he struck out three times. A hat-trick, they call it. On the last swing and miss, he demanded another chance. Upon receiving his extra chance, he swung and missed again. Four strikes. He accused the pitcher of cheating and charged the pitcher’s mound.

He wonders why he didn’t simply laugh. Instead of charging the mound, he could have laughed. Would he laugh now? Yes, definitely. He would laugh.

The tune he was whistling has transformed into one more familiar. He knows this song well.

Departing Departing Departing

A small, anonymous cough is let loose, setting off a chain-reaction of coughs - some bigger, some smaller - throughout the entire PATH train car. He sits still and quiet and alone; he does not cough. Outside the car, a flashing yellow light announces:

DEPARTING
DEPARTING
DEPARTING DEPARTING
DEPARTING DEPARTING DEPARTING...

The flash gets faster and faster until it is no longer a flash, but only a hard, solid yellow light. An old, raspy buzzer buzzes. It is neither high nor low, but somewhere in the middle.

A woman dressed in many layers of green and orange and brown races into his car just as the doors are about to close. She sees the empty seat beside him. He sees this green and orange and brown confusion approach, and he makes room. The two recognize each other.

“Oh,” she says.

“Hello,” he says, “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

“I just returned from Savannah, Georgia.”

“Oh, yeah? Do you have family down there, or...?”

“I was visiting a friend.”

“That’s nice. I would love to go down south.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“How was the weather?”

“Well, I couldn't get in the water, but I could dip my feet in.”

There is a long, magical pause. Or is it a common pause? Regardless, there is a pause, during which he looks up from his folded hands and into the lap of the couple across from him. Their hands are joined. From their hands, his eyes rise to their faces. They are smiling. He looks elsewhere. He stops for a long while on the face of a sleeping woman. Her hair is short, black, and curly; her eyelids are large; her cheeks are angled sharply; her lips are full; her skin seems very smooth. She reminds him of someone else. He leaves her and notices a person who is reading a paperback; a person who is listening to music through headphones; a person who is standing, holding onto a shiny pole, sighing. Finally, he returns to his folded hands.

“Are you still working on that magazine?” she asks.

“No. I wrote one article for them, and then decided I didn't want to do it anymore. I needed to take some time off from things in general.”

“Why is that?” she asks.

He’s surprised by the question – it demands some intimacy, doesn’t it? – but he answers: “I felt as though I was doing a lot of things for the wrong reasons. I was doing things for other people. And I just wasn't happy.”

“I can understand that,” she says.

He wants to say more, but he realizes that he is about to cry. He is now struggling against letting the tears go loose. And then it occurs to him. He thinks to himself:

There is nothing wrong with crying. It’s just like anything else we do. It’s no different than laughing or talking or reading or sleeping or sighing or coughing.

Still he doesn’t cry. He wonders what would happen if he did. Would it set off a chain-reaction of cries? And what would that be like? Would we all hug and console one another? Would we do anything to stop the person closest to us from crying? Would we make love? Would we promise each other eternal life and love?

He thinks about it again. He decides he doesn’t want to use the word eternal. He deletes it from the thought.

The train comes to a stop at the Pavonia/Newport station. The woman wraps up her layers of green and orange and brown and rises quickly. Over her shoulder, she lets out, “Have a good night.”

“See you soon,” he says.

He closes his eyes and tunes in to the band that is playing in his mind. The music is soaring, the singer is singing:

...and if the snow buries my neighborhood / And if my parents are crying / Then I’ll dig a tunnel from my window to yours / Yeah a tunnel from my window to yours.

Introduction

“Yes,” he admits.

“Well, why the fuck did you tell her that?” she demands.

His hand is finding some sort of comfort, doing a clumsy dance with a wet bottle of Budweiser. He doesn’t know what else to say. He looks down, smiles at his Budweiser, shrugs.

“She probably sensed something in your voice,” she continues. “Girls aren’t stupid.”

“I felt like I was lying to her.”

“You don’t always have to be completely honest.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

She looks at him.

He returns her look. “I’m asking you – seriously,” he pleads.

Imagine her aggressive, jagged motions hollering frustration. Her hands suddenly taking off like pigeons and exploding into the blue-lit air above their small, glass table.

Quickly now, and her words are circling around him: “You’re killing yourself with this bullshit. Why should you have to tell her everything? You don’t have to think of it as lying. Come up with a way to deal with it. Call it something you can handle. I don’t know –

“Call it – ”

She pauses. He waits.

Trying to untangle himself, now, he waits.

And then, finally – finally – she ties the strings with one red word:
“Discretion.”