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Sun | March 26, 2006

One Night

He said hi to me when I was standing on the balcony of Mason's apartment, sorry I came and waiting for the courage to leave. On another Saturday I would be at home, dozing on the couch, the pillow between my knees. I would sit up occasionally, lift my shirt up, and look at the fat above my waistband. And I would resolve to spend less time blubbering on the couch.

He brought me a beer, and I thought of my waist but made an easy exception. I considered the consumption before me, beer flowing into throats salty with chips, not a vegetable in sight. The girls stuck out their chests and stretched their torsos, always aware of which way their asses were aligned. Everyone was solitary... everyone looked happy while scanning the room.

In the kitchen there were pretzels and the sink was full of dishes. The black cat lept onto the counter and licked the mouth of the Stella Artois that had just left my hand.

"I'm going." I said. "Leave with me."

I looked to the side while I said it, so that I could not see his response. In the pile of black jackets on the bed I found the variation that was mine. I walked down a flight of stairs before I heard a sound. It was not him.

Outside I drifted towards the subway entrance. I measured the time it would take to walk sixteen blocks to Penn Station against the time that I had to get there against the laziness of wanting to take the subway against the need to save two dollars against the fact that the train would probably not come right away anyway against how comfortable my shoes were that day against the knowledge that if I walked I would think and move and comfort myself.

When he walks he bobs a little, as if he were on a carousel. That was the first real thing I noticed about him that night. It was a warm spell in January and a night that made me think of fireflies.

"Are you coming?" I called out.

Soon I watched him move not with reason but with instinct, the muscled shoulders and the hairy chest incongrous with the shaven face and glassy eyes, now closed.

Every minute I felt that he would call. I would hear that grainy voice, a textured paper wasted on phrases like "a bit of beauty in an ugly world." I would cringe again at his words while comforted by their sound, and shake my head at the squeeze bottle of hair gel in his bathroom.

Later-- weeks later-- I fell asleep and did not think of it.

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