Radio

I came here to laugh

and to succeed

I loved, I prayed,

I played a good game

and was happy

with the poet’s tears and

drunken smile, etc.

Later, I forgot

I acquired the habit of listening

all night to the radio

in my sleep

what kind of a woman?

where does she—?

where did I get all this money?

Gambling.

I found out that I was lucky

I found out about Wide Awake

I went to the Tower on 2nd street

and then to the House of Mystery

I went down to the river to pray

I remembered about the Lords Prayer

I remembered my manners

I remembered all about sex & beauty

& strength

About laughter & regret &

lovers & lost loves & whoring &

all that is celestial &

poor

Later, I forgot

I never could hear anything

important

pronounced in such a way

* **

I don’t love jazz because why would I

And I don’t want to be drunk anymore

It’s late

it’s late

it’s 4am on the 5th of July

it’s the saddest day of the year

when we have to take our flags down

and what else can we put up?

I love holidays

I love you and

I love America

I came from nowhere

else and today is the saddest day of the year

It’s easy to see God

from here

with a heartbeat

all red and blue

We’re alive and well

and I love that too

We can kiss at a party

where everyone’s an artist

where everyone’s on one

calling to each other in beautiful code names

til we remember the holiday

til we remember tomorrow

til we remember our names

and other more obvious things to say

like—I’m lost as last years easter egg!

I’m bratty and compact and all

painted up and

It’s not like I’m unhappy

I’m just wondering if we’re gonna cowboy up

or just lay here and bleed

***

summer reading

Listening to a lot of talk about

Sin and Influence

swirling about

in the dust and summer heat

Watching as if watching ourselves

ruinous and

out of reach

Heroes and virgins etc

& virginal desire is

fleeting and perfect until it’s not

That’s the rule

Unbelievable clarity

ugh

I guess

that’s over

It’s done

It’s bought and paid for

Back in TN again. Dad’s birthday tomorrow. We’re thinking of grilling some steaks in honor of the occasion, but none of us really want to, or know how.

There should be a grill that turns itself off— automated you know? my mom says.

That’s called a microwave, my sister says.

It’s against the spirit of the grill, I say.

We decide to go to this hibachi place that has half off well liquor before 7pm, and the three of us toast a few shots of tequila.

*

Yesterday I went to my sister’s friend to get my hair dyed blonde, and now I’m feeling really at home again in the South. Blonde makes sense here. I spent like 6 hours at the salon which seemed kind of excessive but was actually really relaxing and mde me feel like I was at work or something. Like I was accomplishing something. I was exhausted by the end of it, even though I was kind of napping off and on in the chair.

I waited at the Mexican restaurant next door when it was over because I don’t have a car, and this is a car town. My mom met me and we had shrimp cocktail and then went back to her house to feed the dogs. We were going to watch a movie or something because we were both tired, but ended up chatting on the porch under the harsh glow of Ms. Pam’s security light next door. My mother spends a lot of time spitballing about the ways in which she could sabotage the light, and it usually comes down to slingshot. But then Ms. Pam will come by in the morning to chat, and she’ll forget the plan again.

I didn’t have to drink most of a bottle of white wine, but there you go. My mother says I’m the last person she would ever expect to see glued to my phone all the time, and I say I know it’s terrible.

She asks me what the plan is. I say I dunno real estate agent? She laughs. And I’m like what?? She thinks I should become a therapist. Or a successful actress. I say there comes a time when you have to stop expecting to learn something new and just do something boring.

My friend and I sat by the pool and did an Ikigai which is like this Japanese thing I guess that’s supposed to help you with your career. The deal is you write 4 columns— what you enjoy, what you’re good at, what the world needs, what you get paid for and go from there.

We both write sex in all 4 columns.

Your problem isn’t one of skill, she says. It’s one of translation. You can’t translate your skills into money.

*

This time last year I bought a cheap flight with Spirit Airlines from New York to Nashville for the birthday celebration, but due to the nature of Spirit Airlines, got redirected to Florida last minute on a 12 hour layover. We took an uber and our suitcases from FLL to the closest beach— Hollywood Beach— which seemed creepy, and was creepy except for the fact that it was like the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.

Blissful blue water and skinny palm trees and a sort of neglected promenade where leathery beach ladies rollerbladed towards us to make conversation.

There was a single open storefront nearby— a deli where we wheeled our suitcases and drank Coronas with some Mexican construction workers and ate Cubanos.

We got drunk and sandy and in love and ubered back to the airport with wet clothes and slept hard and got back in time.

Better late than ugly, my sister said.

Sometimes you have to get fucked over by spirit airlines enough times that it horseshoes around— you get to Hollywood Beach and Spirit Airlines gets shut down.

Play it as it lays kind of thing. Play the slot machine til it’s primed for 7’s and cherries. Sometimes it’s nice not to be a real estate agent.

But most of the time it’s nice to have money.

I had to take a break from New York because it was getting to my head but also because I ran out of money for rent. I’ll be back, don’t you worry. In fact, I’m here right now, have been here the whole time, staying with a friend who happened to have an empty and paid for room due to circumstances both unfortunate and lucky. Well maybe not lucky. But wise, practical. That’s why you didn’t choose it, my friend said. You had to be forced.

I missed my flight. Forfeited it. Scorned by JetBlue. Scorned by JFK. Didn’t even try talking to people at the counter. Whatever. I get to a point where I don’t want blood money, consolations, sugar for the pill. Some would call it foolish. But I prefer to hang onto my pride.

A friend of mine tells me that my pride is foolish. Maybe I’m fool enough not to believe him. Or maybe I’m right.

Either way now I’m here overlooking the East River from a floor to ceiling window, and all my earthly possessions are in a Chinatown storage unit.

It’s truly it’s own world, the unit. A zone, La Zona, it’s own third space. Soundless and odorless and windowless and featureless. A real maze in which you can envision losing your mind or finding some secret key to something. The endless repetition makes everything that happens here feel very significant. Sometimes you encounter a fellow interloper, bag lady, student moving home, girl with too many clothes.

Mid month is the best time to go. No one’s moving en masse, so you only get the real unit heads.

The day I tried to leave and missed my flight I was carting my suitcases on a large cart down endless turns of narrow aisles with no one and nothing else around except the vague smell of weed and the echo of the rusty wheels. When I came to my assigned unit number— 42214—I was stopped. The only other person I’d seen so far. My unit neighbor— 42216— an elderly but put together German lady who had random boxes and grocery bags, and cardboard cases of wine sprawled out in the aisle obstructing the path.

I said Hi I’m your neighbor. She looked confused but then smiled back and said Oh hallo! and started clearing a path for me but in the process knocked over her open IPA and said Oh no my drink!

I helped her mop it up with a cloth grocery bag and she helped me pull the cart through and then opened a new one.

I was kind of quick, so had to go through this whole process again on the way out. When I came back up with the rest of my stuff she was gone, but someone new was talking on the phone in the next aisle. I was listening to Tanya Tucker while I tried to stuff everything in the little cubby. When I looked up there was a guy poking his head around staring at me. I pulled out my headphones. He said You didn’t hear anything. So I said Ok and he dipped back out.

He was in the elevator on my way down. When I walked in he took off his blue tinted shades and said Oh it’s you. Just like that.

I said hi and smiled. He looked at my empty cart and high heels. I make it a point to wear high heels whenever I move, in case some stranger with better shoes feels moved to help.

The city can be hard, he said, It’s a tough town.

You gotta keep moving I said, I move around a lot, and pointed to the cart.

Yep, he said. I tried. But they had my files.

He got off on the third floor and saluted me and I waved. Puzzling. But this is the type of exchange to expect at the unit, so I didn’t think too hard about it.

After that I got a diet cherry coke from a weird bodega. It was kind of lukewarm, but I drank it anyway. And walked to the park where I saw the kid from Floor 5 with all his books and his big sign that said “Books—Only the Good Ones.” We nodded to each other.

______

When I finally get to Tennessee I’m reading Faulkner and looking at old family photos and seeing myself in unexpected places.

I never met my dad’s mom, but in the photos she has the same look in her eye that I do. The same look my dad had. My friend calls it my long eyes. That’s the Oklahoma side of the family. The Indian side. The Bushyheads were Cherokees with wiry curly hair, like mine, and so hence the name. There’s a town in Oklahoma named Bushyhead where nothing really is except for farms and gas stations and quaint roads. Some of my distant relatives like cousin Earl Wayne live there. He’s the 7th son of a 7th son and is rumored to have healing powers and was my dad’s best friend growing up.

There’s a lot of pre-me photos of my mom and dad with their little trailer camper that ended up rotting in the backyard as I grew up. Don’t go near that thing or it’ll cave in on you, they always told me, even though it looked so enticing. They used to take it to Florida and Mexico after work on Fridays. Don’t ask why. But they did. In the kitchen my mom plays the Eat a Peach album by the Allman Brothers, and points up and says one of Roddy’s biggest customers.

When my sister and I were born, my parents scaled back to one of those big Chevy kidnapper vans with curtains and a ladder on the back, and we would take a tent and everything we needed and go places. It’s starting to make sense why I can’t stay put. Why the unit feels more like a home than an apartment.

So what’s next, you ask. Well. I’m not sure. I need a new place at some point. A new job. But the unit is mine. A room of my own. The only thing in New York City that’s mine.

Distracting myself with evil phone. Creating little economies. Something to focus on.

I don’t want to direct myself anymore. I don’t want to do youtube pilates on my floor. I don’t want to be alone. I feel solipsistic. I want to go shopping.

I want order and calm satisfaction and something to look forward to.

Today I feel like a woman. A real woman. Maybe it’s because I’m wearing a tailored shirt and high heeled sandals. And my hair is feeling lived in and voluminous and my nails are painted red.

I’m in control and not.

I have to visit my ex-employer again to see if he will finally pay me the money he owes me from a couple bounced paychecks. Wish me luck.

——

The other week I went home to Tennessee for Mothers Day, and everything was so green and blue and yellow with sun, and I didn’t want to leave.

My mom and I got steaks at Sperry’s and gossiped, and my sister and I traded clothes and laughed a lot, and Ms. Pam came over to the porch on Monday because that’s her Visitin’ Day and she came to see me instead of her brother at the nursing home because she said she could see him any old time.

The dogs ran around in the field and got ticks and we picked them off and bathed them which was long overdue. I hung out at the fire hall with Joe and Lucinda and drank Miller Lites and then walked around the streets in the warm quiet after midnight.

I got back into country music. Like kinda bad country music. Joe Nichols and The Wreckers and Trisha Yearwood playing on all the old stations.

I slept well. Woke up well. Listened to crickets and frogs and dogs and flowers opening up on trees exhaling earthy godly scents.

——-

On Mother’s Day I went to church with my mom. She’s recently been taken in by a MegaChurch. Which I was suspicious of, intrigued by, and able to take seriously all at once. It’s a Pentecostal church, which I really know nothing about, but she had sweet friends there who were very nice. There were lots of cool black guys with big families and Mexican teens and military families, and it was a good vibe even though the music sucked — bland and empty and with lyrics too full of I and me and my to feel like worship, or devotion, or anything really.

There was lots of call and response, and audience participation, and theatrics which drew me in and made me think that this was kind of the logical development of Orthodox/Catholic christianity in a modern American context. Everything came natural and sort of followed a format we were all familiar with—

I think detractors of American evangelical Christianity complain about the same things that Protestant detractors complained about with medieval Christianity. Lack of authenticity, selfishness, a lack of sincerity, awe-inducing theatrics which at the end of the day are manufactured by man, absolution which is too cheap, self-satisfaction.

But also there did and does exist something true to the Christian tradition which is good, and which has something to do with honor and integrity and respect for mystery and love of thy neighbor and a willingness to share something.

The pastor was cool, and huge, and was from New Orleans. He was speaking about Paul and the Thesselonians. I’ve always had kind of a problem with Paul and think he is a little too obsessed with himself and a brute, but that’s besides the point, and I’m sure I have more to learn on that front.

Paul and his buddies were preaching in the streets of Thessalay which was a cool port town, according to the pastor. An enslaved girl who was possessed by a fortune telling demon came up and hurled insults at the them. Hands were lain and she was freed from her demon, and her slaver— who was keeping her locked up with this demon— was mad as hell and had the boys locked up in jail. They made it out okay because everyone at the jail thought they were alright, but the real story was that a lot of people profit from your bondage. Which I really felt, especially after escaping New York for that week.

But I also wondered what became of the girl. Where did she go? and did she prosper? and how? and anyway was profit still the main question?

The church was very focused on evangelizing, which made sense, and I understand is one of the requirements and conclusions of Christianity, but not the only one. It can seem frenetic, and I think Christianity is the opposite of a conclusion, and instead like an eternal breathing thing.

I want to know what happens when the church isn’t focused outward, stops talking and takes a breath.

_____

I told my mom all this, and we had a nice discussion on the way home. She started talking about how she feels a little isolated outside of the church, and the street we’ve always lived on, with the neighbors we’ve always had. My dad has been gone for almost 7 years now, which feels strange because he is still so very present to me.

She’s ready to meet a new man, share life, share the grill on the deck during the long springs and summers. She’s extremely pretty and youthful and funny both in spite of and because of her age. She used to be a dancer and is very petite and graceful, and I told her I wanted to get her ballroom dancing classes. Or acting classes or something. Because I know she would meet and charm someone.

She said she thinks she needs to learn something before God brings a new person into her life. I asked what and she said she didn’t know or she’d be out on a date right now! Ballroom dancing? Yeah Ok. But probably, she said, something about marriage that escaped her last time, something about how to be a better, a different wife, some humility that she’s resisting.

She is very wise and tragic sometimes.

_______

On the plane back I sat next to a kid— early 20s I guess— and about a half hour before the plane landed he tapped me on the shoulder and said You seem wise, can I ask you something?

He wanted advice on his girl. She cheated on him recently and he found out and wondered if it would be stupid to get back with her ever. That’s what he said. Would it be stupid?

I asked if he loved her. He said yes. So I said no, it wouldn’t be stupid. He seemed relieved, but I told him he’d have to punch the other guy first. But I’m a nurse, he said, I heal people, I don’t hurt them. Just say you will, and see how you feel, I told him.

I was drinking white wine and feeling loose.

Maybe I should just cut her off and see what she does.

Maybe you don’t love her all that much.

Why do girls like bad guys?

Because they say what they want and do what they say. Unashamed, shameless honesty. A kind of integrity.

The plane landed and he asked me to rate him. I said I’m too old for him to be doing that. He hugged me and we parted ways, and he wished me luck and I did the same.

_____

The next day I had a funny job as an extra where they costumed me to look like a dullard. Completely anonymous. It was unnerving to find out just how tenuous my aura was, how dependent on my own decisions. But also kind of reassuring in that way.

I think any woman can be sexy as long as she knows how to find and act on something in her soul. A kind of shameless honesty. Integrity.

I didn’t sleep much that whole weekend because of the early call times, so I was like otherworldly tired, but after the filming wrapped I said fuck it and went out to a party with my friend.

The party was odd, and was hosted by an evil gay man with one of the darkest auras I’ve ever encountered. I was obsolete in this world full of other gays and attractive straightish men, so maybe that was informing my opinion, but still.

Most everyone there was insulting each other half-jokingly and being crass, and there was a lot of shock value being traded.

Lots of dick jokes.

A guy from Connecticut was trying his best to be racist by using the n word a lot, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He’d be better off calling poor people fat or something, I thought.

The whole vibe of the thing felt indicative of the general vibe among New York intellectuals, writers, internet people, cultural commentators, whatever. And it kind of depressed me, because at the end of the day it was just a lot of calling bluffs and bluffing. But the stakes weren’t that high, or even that interesting.

But anyway, there was a lot of smoking inside, and a good mix of young and old and rich and poor, and normie and sceney, etc. So it was a good party really.

I slept well that night, and when I woke up, the weather was beautiful. I went on a long walk around a neighborhood I never walk around, and felt good.

I have a lot to do this weekend. Firstly, go to IFC to watch the killing of a Chinese Bookie with my friend. It’s one of my favorite movies. I like the close, familiar camera. Puts me in the mood to lounge around half clothed. To have a cute scumbag boss and my girl friends around to rib him with. My last job was kind of like that. I want to make something like that. Warm and sexy and disarming, with a patina on it all, the filth of elegance.

Anyway, we went to a diner across the street afterwards and discussed all this over some Stellas and stuffed grape leaves, and then my other friend came and we went to a party in FiDi which was on a very high floor that smelled like cigarettes. We follow the smell to what I hope will be a big and elaborate apartment but is really just a stale stark studio. The drinks available are mostly bottles of fancy French wine, which I find funny considering the host and the whole vibe of the apartment but I accept many glasses anyway.

I share a vape with my friend and we talk about being water signs and how easy it is to fall in love. And how we shouldn’t worry. And she shouldn’t, because she is young and charming and smart and kind. Then, because I am greedy, I go directly to the window to smoke a cigarette. A French man says he is only interested in the extremes of emotion, and I say that that is a very French thing to say. French people will say things like this with an expression that seems bored and a vague eye roll, and I appreciate that about them.

He says Paris is boring and feels like the past, and I say isn’t that the nice part about it? Like, if it aint broke dont fix it? He says he would rather die than not feel anything. And later, declares that God is a Beautiful Woman.

When I was in Paris I learned that the French have figured out at least one thing and that is how to hang out. Drinking, eating, smoking, sitting, judging. That seems important.

This was a few years ago. I stayed in a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarter where the man I was with couldn’t really stand up all the way because the ceilings were so low. It had lots of windows though, and was on the top floor behind a cafe, and it was very perfect. It was easy to do nothing. Walk around. Sit by the Seine with a bottle of wine and some bread for 2 or 3 euros. Men would piss in the corners and laugh. It smelled bad. It felt right. Sit at a cafe for hours. Cheap tobacco. We tried to speak French and were mildly successful. There was a theater across the street from the apartment and we saw Sartre’s La Chute because the door man invited us in. It was a one man play and I’m not really sure what it was about because I don’t really speak French at all. But after like an hour in the theater I think I started to understand something. It goes a long way. Tone and everything. The actor was great and had this remarkable face.

We met a college friend of mine who was living in Montmartre and we sat in the upstairs of a bar where you could smoke inside. She said she wanted to live in Paris and die in New York.

I had been in the process of moving back to America after spending a few years in New Zealand. Why you ask? For love. And I don’t regret it, but I will say that when the plane from Auckland landed in LA I felt like crying. Mostly because I knew if I needed to, I could get in a car and drive my ass back home to Tennessee. I want to live in New York and die in Tennessee.

I decided I should go back home while I was at a blueberry farm somewhere in the South Island. It was New Years Eve and my boyfriend and I were staying with my friend and her family in a caravan off grid. We washed our clothes in the creek and lay around a lot and talked about aliens and old things with her mom and brother and picked blueberries for some cash and spent it on hummus and cheap wine and it was so simple and lovely.

We got in a debacle with her other brother because we said we were going to a new years party at Tim’s— the blueberry farmer. Her brother had shot a deer on his property or something. I don’t know, but there was no coming back for him. But Tim was gonna let us crash and had some beers and other things. In the end he forgave us.

When we got to the party it was around 9pm and the sun was still setting and everyone on the farm was coming down from acid and Tim was asleep. Tim is like 70 years old. Our friends were there, and some European Woofers who loved Janis Joplin and were very enthusiastic. A Scot with a heavy accent was there too with his girlfriend who was mad at him, and he kept trying to tell her she look particularly lovely this evening.

We drank a lot of beer and ate berries and Tim woke up and then we took some uppers and danced and toasted the new year in a field where I had a good new years kiss and then peed in the bushes with my friend and talked about being friends forever.

We didn’t really sleep but lay in a warm haze until the New Year sun started blazing and then swam in the creek and drank champagne. While our hair was drying I cut my boyfriend’s hair because he’d decided he was done with having long hair, and someone took a photo. We drove to Farewell Spit and watched families fishing and then I got a call from my dad saying his cancer was in remission. And it all felt golden. So golden I knew it was time to go back. I was so happy I was homesick. I wanted to spend New Years with my Dad. I wanted the important things to be where I came from.

I don’t really want to write. I don’t want to do anything. I want to vibe. I’m tired. I’m drinking coffee with a drop of butter in it because I’m out of milk and because my grandma used to do drink coffee with a drop of butter in it when she was out of milk. I’m also out of coffee. Bustelo. So I’m borrowing some of my roommate’s, which is nice too, but not as good.

I got a weird message from someone too early in the morning. And also late last night. Do they sleep? I didn’t sleep well. My hair was wet all night from the shower and from the cold wet air. Whoever thinks hell is hot is kidding themselves. I think hell is about 40 degrees and windy. The sun keeps its distance. I go to sleep with wet hair anyway.

I have to move apartments tomorrow because my subletter is coming back. I don’t want to leave, but also I don’t really mind I guess. Trying to come to terms with things. It’s nice to keep moving.

Regarding the text—

I don’t care what anyone says. I love him.

So.

What else.

I went to a bar and got a free glass of wine and read Faulkner and almost cried because of how simple and true it all was. Meandering. And because of how I could almost smell the fields and trees he was writing about. I cut my knees in those fields too once.

I came home and packed more bags and felt optimistic and forlorn at the same time.

I wrote something in my notes the other day about aristocracy. I’m not sure what I was on about. But it’s nice to have manners. I also wrote that ghosts have no purpose. I’m not sure if that’s true. But at least for the scary ones it is.

——

That night I went to my friend’s party and wore my black backless dress and little black stilettos. I drank two martinis from an open bar and had a lot of fun until I saw someone that I didn’t really want to see and it killed my vibe so much I had to leave. Another friend got me a car to the wine bar they were at and we sat around the table drinking very good, cold white wine and getting very drunk and chatting a little too loudly over some beautiful mournful piano music that someone was playing in the corner. Respectfully.

We left to get tacos from a truck and my little shoe broke making me even more unsteady than I already was, but in the mix it made sense, and I didn’t really notice or care.

The next day the weather was gorgeous, but I had to move out of my apartment, which was a bummer not only because of the nice day but mostly because I will miss dearly. A real ladies house. With the best roommates and the most beautiful afternoon light. Not too clean, not too dirty. In a real ladies house you can wipe your eye makeup all over the towels and no one minds. Leave half eaten apples and oats in a bowl for just a few days, just long enough. And the air smells sweet and good and you play nice music videos on youtube on the tv in the late afternoon, and I will miss it.

Now I’m in my new place. Well— an old one. I lived here last summer, so it feels like summer again. Like vacation. But also a little sad. Last time I was here I was with someone who isn’t around anymore. And even though it wasn’t a sad thing overall, it still makes me feel a little forlorn, the weight of time, good and bad memories, etc.

The apartment is a cheap studio on a high floor in Lower Manhattan and I can see both bridges from my window and it’s clean and bright and instead of watching vibey youtube videos on tv with the girls, I set up a chair in front of the big window and just kind of zone out and watch the city. Which is nice too, in a different way.

It’s another sublet — from a cool older gentleman who last week told me he had a strange dream about the keys. He’s working as a Steve Buscemi stand in. He thinks his neighbor’s crazy. He’s sick of unions in the film industry because they’re cliquey but the cliques are made up of people who love the rules. He’s more of a rebel, he says. Always has been. Me too, I say. Always have been. One day I’ll have a daughter and tell her this and she’ll smile I think.

The subletter is learning Italian and used to be a DJ in the 90s and said I could play his CDs if I wanted to.

So now I’m juicing limes and making ceviche and limeade from the leftover lime juice and wearing my pink Mexican dress and listening to 90s reggae CDs and feeling calm.

It’s nice when things are easy.

—-

I went to an art modeling job over the weekend and the weather was so nice the class decided to draw in the park instead of the studio. I sat on a blanket holding an umbrella and they set up around me and drew and did water colors. The park people watched pleasantly and some took photos of the whole scene ,which was sweet.

The sunlight was shifting lazy around a big tree and it was deeply pleasant even though it turned out to be Workers’ Day and so a bunch of labor union members descended on the park in droves to chant and chill. There was a hype man on a very loud speaker leading a chant that I think will be lodged in my memory forever :

Everyday is workers day! Everyday? everyday! Is workers day! On a Monday! on a tuesday! on a Wednesday! on a thursday! He charged on. on a friday? On a Saturday! On a Sunday! —— on a holiday? On a rainy day! on a sunny day! on a Snowy day! Everyday! Everyday! On a Monday!—-

And he kept on like this for some time in a kind of atonal fashion while I sat there with my umbrella. The art students started laughing and questioning if it was all real or if this was some kind of hallucination. And I was hungover and very zen from all the silent sitting and wondered too.

We went back to the studio and talked about everyone’s drawing in a deep and esoteric and meandering fashion. The teacher was observing the way the umbrella came off differently in each drawing. Some like a shield, some like a halo, some like a light source. How the surroundings seemed like a place you would or wouldn’t want to walk around in. I didn’t look at my phone for hours. It was the last class of the semester and was kind of bittersweet because I’ve kind of gotten to know and like the students and the teacher over time. They invited me to have pizza and beer with them to celebrate but I had to go to another job.

——

My friend and I biked up to Hudson Yards to bartend a wedding party at a penthouse lounge. The couple was very sweet and happy and we drank tequila and lime and mixed a lot of drinks poorly, but no one minded and the guests liked us. A British man wanted dating advice. He said he thought people in New York had Peter Pan syndrome and acted about 5 years younger than their British peers on the whole. Time moves different here I guess, I told him. Don’t doubt yourself.

I was wearing my broken stilettos again because they’re very sexy, and we walked forever after leaving, but were still so far away from downtown. But don’t worry. I had my trusty superglue in my little red bag. I patched the shoes enough to last a few more long blocks and then we took a cab to another party where my friend almost got in a fight and caused just enough of a scene for a good time before we left in good grace and laughed all the way down Essex.

Anyway. Now I need to rest and plan my next moves.

I’ve been thinking a lot about LA lately. My vision of LA comes almost exclusively from 70s noir. I’d like to lay around a pool and go to house parties and squint in the hazy sun and drive around and wear a bikini. I’m feeling so buffeted by New York lately. Like every time I cross the street I almost get hit by a car or bike or another person type of thing. It’s exhausting.

And I’m in another annoying situation financially. My bank automatically paid my entire credit card bill instead of just the minimum like usual and overdrew my account by quite a bit so I can’t use my card. The payment keeps cancelling and attempting again so I guess I’ll be stuck in this loop forever, or at least until I Win Big.

When I went to the bank to fix it they told me I had to call a number. When I called the number, the lady on the other end said she couldn’t help me. I didn’t say anything for a while. Letting it sink in, etc. And then all she said was Chase will decide.

That gave me some faith. Chase will decide.

Sad the other night. So I went to see a movie alone. It was nice. I had red wine and junior mints. I laughed out loud. It felt good. I saw Dig! this documentary about the Brian Jonestown Massacre. I love that band. Used to play bass in a band that was kind of a knock off. It’s the second time I’ve seen a movie alone, and the second time I’ve seen that documentary. It felt different this time. Now that I’ve known people like that, the people the movie followed. Like Anton. A type—impossible. Delightful, but scary, destructive, completely untrustworthy, but—idk if brilliant is the right word, but it describes that type of energy— like the sun. Which requires something like human sacrifice to keep it churning.

After that I went to Jean’s with my friend. I talked with her younger friend— a girl who is both special and just like everybody else. A nice way to be I suppose. She’s from New York and you can tell. Oversocialized is maybe the best word for it. Everything is ‘about’ something. Hard to explain. Every interaction meticulously analyzed, categorized, judged. She looks like royalty. Very beautiful.

We talked about art and dreams and how it’s sort of shameful to admit to wanting to be an artist bc it’s such a selfish unproductive thing if it doesn’t work out and it working out is such a vague concept, and anyway we’re getting too old for that kind of thing.

Later I went to hang out with some other people and one of them had been hopping trains for the summer. He had face tattoos and seemed very homey and familiar to me because that’s the kind of thing that people my age— Millennials —used to be drawn to. Train hopping and furniture building and vinyl records and bicycle mechanic-ry, bread baking. Real labor. Real transit. Idealism. Authenticity. And real transgression to prove you knew where the line was, what the line was. A face tattoo meant you still understood the heart of a tattoo.

This guy used to live on a commune, back in the early 2010s. That was also something we used to do. Join a commune. Join a cult. Go to California or Costa Rica and dare our parents to be confused. Pretend like it was the 60s. Pretend like children and old people didn’t exist. Learn to grow beans, do manual labor, drive a manual car. Like it was something we already knew. Inherited. The dream of the 60s and 70s gone to seed.

The train hopper says he doesn’t think people are alive enough to die anymore. I laugh a little and say So True! I know what you mean. Because I do. I’m in the habit of believing dramatic things like this. And I can be kind of sentimental. And there’s nothing wrong with taking things with some salt for the hell of it. But also, it’s always tricky talking about what it means to be alive, and also what it means to die.

I remember being like 20 years old, with long bleached hair and lots of rings and short short cut off jeans, living by the beach with my friends and listening to Sky Ferreira and Phantogram and The Strokes and using light leak filters to post digital camera selfies and thinking that we were on the brink of something good. We were optimistic and emotional, fatalistic, messy, and weird. The boys were funny in a non-clever way, stupid and crass and jokey in a way that would later be deemed sinister by the girls, now women, who were also raised on Borat and Ron Burgundy and Cartoon Network. Us girls we were anorexic and dirty and down for whatever. Drugs were like, sacred. Getting blackout was important. Legal weed was a hill worth dying on.

It was nice. Warm. Real. But I also remember feeling kind of forlorn after a while. Like how I used to feel at summer camp towards the kids who really loved the group songs and organized activities.

Towards the kids who really believed in all fun and games: suspicious.

Like we’re missing some point.

Whatever point connecting transgression with obligation. Whatever point connecting the heart of a tattoo with your own heart. Something you discover on the way from young rebel to adult daughters and sons, young wives, husbands, young mothers, old friends. Some peace with some mystery.

This unease also feels specifically millennial in a way. Kind of lame, kind of impotent, and kind of naive. Like, of course every generation experiences a feeling of having to change its adolescent worldview to become mature, integrated, etc. But I think Millennials were and are troubled in a peculiar way, caught between two dreams, the thing itself and pictures of it. The real world and the internet. Confused about what either thing meant because neither felt true. And so we became maniacally obsessed with defining what was real or not. (thinking of early Lana del Rey lately).

Younger generations accept the reality of being online and can laugh off or appreciate whatever existential problems arise from it. The internet now feels organic and complex and like some kind of psychotic brain and weirdly warm blooded in this way. Not a symbol. MySpace, AIM, etc. These were simple. Literal. Mechanical. Obvious shadows. Their problems were simple and literal. And now? We have to look at something that’s kind of more than a shadow everyday and deal.

The train man and the rest of us sit in the park and laugh and forget about these things because we have beer and cigarettes and a party. He’s got a car now and is moving on after he gets the battery replaced.

My friend is a paid companion for an elderly lady. Paid by the government, which seems right. He tells me a lot about her. She has a lot of stories and a little dog and a lot of trouble, and also reads palms. I ask him if she’ll read mine. She asked to see my picture first. In the picture my hand is out, and she says she can already tell that I’m melancholic and also that I am always late.

There’s a French film director, Robert Bresson, who believed that the soul of his actors— his models, his mannequins as he referred to them— was not revealed in their eyes but in their hands. His films are cool and nervy and observant. Pickpocket, A Man Escaped. He looks at the hands of criminals— thieves and escapees— even though their faces are so striking.

I believe him. That the way our bodies move reveal things—habits of mind. I’m a dancer and so I think a lot about this. I’ve trained to make a habit of certain ways of movement. For a hand, arm, back, to create a smooth efficient line. Everything to its purpose. You get the face you deserve. That kind of thing. If you have a habit of dignity, your face, your posture, will concede and look that way. Same with fear. Same with jealousy.

When I watch videos of myself dancing I’m proud and ashamed of certain things. A lack of resistance, petulance, lack of commitment, but also fluidity, femininity. I see my mother too. I had this instructor once who was some kind of savant and could tell your psychic hangups just by looking at you stretching. And instead of telling you what these were, she’d give you obscure exercises that do things like open the upper back, lengthen the hamstrings, whatever.

She encouraged daily practice. Devotion facilitates release. Like a prayer. You’re not thinking about what you’re doing or why, but instead about some vague mystery of habit, about nothing. Then your prayers are no longer pleas but acts of confidence. Real faith. Not something you achieve but something given to you. A gift of technique. Everything to its purpose. All the sudden a miracle happens. Triple turn. 3 pointer. Whatever.

I hear that kids, well youngish adults, in New York are going to church again. I wonder if they come from religious families. I’m talking to my friend about it and we’re drinking a lot of Georgian wine and feeling brainy. Going to church is like a lot like being a dancer or an athlete, I say. It’s a habit, a discipline, that allows you to be part of something beautiful. Devotion. A communal thing. Communion with God and man.

The wine is getting to my head.

I think the choice to go to church, be religious—as an adult—seems a little odd and very difficult to me for this reason. Like it takes a child’s clarity to inhere this kind of thing. When imitation is a kind of purity. Not thinking about it too hard. Just hard enough. I grew up Southern Baptist so am troubled about religion in my own way. Religious sentimentality.

But I’m still kind of heartened by it all.

Last time I was home my mother told me that my sister and I had forgotten how to pray. I told her she was right, and I was a little ashamed. She said you have to let go of the things you thought would help you. Agency and ego. And the hope that the quality of your heart and strength of your desire is the important thing.

Pride is the opposite of shame. But so is humility.

We missed church on Sunday. Sat in the park for hours getting cold in the sun. Waiting for Spring. The flowers are all out and the birds are chirping. Went to the Commodore II and ate fried chicken and I drank 2 mojitos and we talked about family traditions. Fried chicken after church on Easter Sunday. Pancakes in the morning.

I have Eve’s Hollywood with me and Eve says she’ll be damned before she believes in God just because of earthquakes. I’ve seen where that can lead. But she’ll do it for the Pacific Ocean and sunsets.

I’m writing again. Since the boss left. Since the boss left i don’t talk enough and so i have to write it down or forget how. Since it works like that and since i don’t want to forget that. I’ve been there before. I was a baby, a small child, and I had forgotten, or something, and life was harder. And easier too in some ways. But painful. Now I am grown, a grown woman.

I don’t really know how long I’ve been here. Or how I got here. But I know that I am here, and I know how to do my job.

Even though it’s very quiet here, and sometimes very lonely, I find ways to fill my time. There are many things to organize. The files are always getting mixed up, and alphabetization is key. We don’t use Dewey here. We use a complex alpha-numeric code which has yet to be adopted by other qualified institutions, but which I can highly recommend. It is not my invention, no, but I make sure to uphold it properly.

I never read the files because they’re all very boring. There’s a very old elevator with a rusty, cagelike metal door which is always in need of repair. I do not know how to repair it at all, but there are many forms I can fill out to log the job, and I know where to find all the right ones.

There are lots of keys. I use them and replace them onto their appropriate hooks. Sometimes, I get to use the very very old keys, to unlock the great wooden vaults. I spin a big brass handle which is stiff, and heavy. Inside the vaults are……more secret files and some other things that I don’t want to discuss.

Sometimes I get so bored I hum a quiet song and startle myself. On rare occasions, someone will come up and ask if I can help them use the printer. I always smile shyly and they smile back and I shake my head and say “No, I am so sorry.” I am afraid of machines.

I wear well-made high heels. Real leather. The boss told me that it wouldn’t be necessary, but I like to dress professionally. I wear a modest but well fitting gray wool skirt and a white chiffon blouse. Each morning I pin a mother of pearl brooch to it, and then I put on my wire rimmed glasses, which are oval shaped, and which I have been told are very sexy. I wouldn’t know. There are no mirrors here, because, as they say, mirrors can be dangerous.

Suddenly a ticket prints out of my machine and breaks the huge silence. I grab it quickly, adjusting my glasses to read it. I take the pencil from my hair and write down the code on a small square of scrap paper before twisting my hair up again with the pencil.

This time feels different.

A man approaches my desk. He has the number 13 tattooed on his neck and is dark and grave. Number 13 has black hair, and 3 dogs, and 3 cars and is a drug dealer, just like his father, and his father’s father before that. I hand him the scrap of paper and he asks me to come up with him to find it. I shake my head and say “No I am so sorry” and smile. He looks down and I say, “Hey, I can’t just abandon my post ok?” I direct him up the curving wooden stairs, 12 floors up. Unfortunately the elevator is broken.

When he comes back down his hands are empty. I ask if he found what he was looking for. He doesn’t answer but asks if I want to get out of here. I tell him there’s nothing else here. He tells me not to worry, because he is lucky, and he has a car, and anyway, it’s snowing. I’ve never seen a car and I’ve never seen the snow, so I get up and follow him to the door. The car is a strange machine and the snow is beautiful like big white blankets. I shiver a little, and the man offers me his leather jacket, and I take it and close the library for the first time in many, many years.

He takes me to a diner where we drink cup after cup of decaf coffee. Though the waiter is very nice, he’s not very attentive. The man 13 asks me why I stay here, and I say mostly I just do what I’m told, and also I don’t have a very good CV. The waiter eventually brings us a slice of pie. The man tells me not to worry about the library. That it will get on fine without me. And that where he comes from, there are 3 dogs, and 3 cars, and that even though he is a drug dealer, just like his father, and his father’s father before that, it’s a nice life.

I start to cry a little into my pie. Because I know it’s true. I tell him I know that he took the file from the library and he asks if I will notify the authorities. I look down and shrug and say “I don’t care.”

He asks if I know what’s in the file, and I tell him that the files generally bore me. He’s still looking, and I know what’s in File 13. He scoots out and moves to my booth and sits next to me, lays it on the table. The waiter’s eyes slide over from his solitaire game towards us.

I tell him I have to go now, we have to go now. And the man who calls himself lucky stares at me for a long time and I stare back because I’m not afraid of people, only machines. Finally he drops a bag of coins on the table and helps me back into the leather jacket. I take the file from the table and go back to the car and we sit there for a long time with the engine running. I ask for a cigarette and he gives it to me, and he takes one for himself. Then I ask for a lighter and we smoke in silence until I cough a little bit. I ask him if he really knows how to get home, and he tells me don’t worry, I’m lucky.

.

.

I’ve been working hard for not much money. Well, maybe not. But I have been working for not much money. There’s a type of job where the main requirement is mostly to just be present for something—to perform or serve or whatever, for someone else. And at the end of it all, that someone else has a product and the girl— it’s always a girl— is back at square one with something like $20 per hour tucked away. I seek out these jobs. I like them. And I’m good at them. I’m bad with money, so I shouldn’t make much, or I’ll squander it and end up in the same amount of debt I am now.

So, I need assets. Jewels. An apartment.

Unfortunately I haven’t gotten to that part in my career just yet. But I’m at $22 an hour now, which feels good. Art modeling. It’s kinda my main source of income right now. I went to a studio in Red Hook last week to sit for one of the painters from my regular spot.

When I arrive he’s playing old timey blues. Son House. Screamin Jay Hawkins. I show him Abner Jay. He says he doesn’t mind if I read while he paints. We talk for a while. He’s teaching a 6 week class on the Renaissance with 6 topics, which I write down because I think they sound nice together: abduction, seduction, inner struggle and sacrifice, violence, pieta, mother and child.

I take out Faulkner. It’s a bit much with the blues in the background to be honest. On the nose. So he gives me a copy of Fleurs du mal. He tells me there are a lot of portraits of Baudelaire from some of his favorite painters so he figured he should read him. He shows me the paintings in big books on Courbet and Renoir.

I like Baudelaire. He’s saying things like how he loves the vegetal and floral scents of women’s perfume but only when mixed with a strong animal scent, an ambergris. He says something about the eyes and hearts of women being softened to the cult of the wound and the love of rags. He says stuff like That’s the only way!

He’s a fantastic drunk that is anyway very sane. The introduction of the book says that a good translation of the book’s title would be Cemetery Flowers. An animal scent— grease, decay, sweetness. A sense of nature which is all energy, and promises nothing, and towards which a sane drunken poet would be relentlessly drawn. Cursed and enchanted. The introduction is getting a little carried away.

It’s been like an hour. The painter asks me what I think, and I say that I’ve only read the introduction but that I like Baudelaire. I like how dramatic he is.

The portrait comes out ok and I spend some of my $20s on a tiny key lime pie and then white wine at the bowling alley. I sweep the game because I come from a family of Maverick Bowlers.

The next day I spend the rest of it on a Chinatown massage, and then meet my friend for tea and the cheapest dim sum they got. She asks me how I’m doing, if I’m getting enough stimulation, if I’m reading a lot, and then helps me out big time with a Secret Project. I ask her about her mom and about the date last night and she cracks me up like not many other people can.

That night I have a dream that makes me feel like I need to reckon with something but I don’t know what.

————-

I meet a friend in Central Park to discuss Business. Secret Project. I want it to be warm and sexy and disarming, the project. But also devastating. I want a single tear shed for the beauty. I’m being a little dramatic. I think that beauty is the only form of morality I understand. But to be beautiful there has to be a little ugly. A little warmth, a patina. A Japanese writer I read once called this the filth of elegance. He was talking about old wood.

The friend asks me who I think are the ugliest celebrities. I can only think of sexy-ugly ones. Striking ones.

Whenever I was being bratty as a child my grandma would tell me yer actin ugly.

You mean like a punchable face? It’s a fun game.

—————-

I go to another job for another couple $20s. Last month I invested in a Backstage account and I’ve almost earned my money back. I lied about my height and qualifications because I figure what matters with these things is something you can’t really lie about. It wants me to add skills, so I start typing and it suggests voice style: shy. Well.

Anyway now I’m an extra in a ‘vertical.’ I’ve never heard of these. They tell me to dress in all black, but when I show up they decide to put me in a slutty pleather number and then tie me up for the scene. It’s nothing uncouth, don’t worry.

I’m a hostage. Should I be scared or..? I ask. You’re a hostage, they tell me. So I just sort of stand there like Tiger Lily in Peter Pan.

I take my fresh $20s and meet my friend at a diner, who also, incidentally, has been working as an extra. A dangerous prisoner. We drink a lot of coffee and eat bad pierogis and laugh a lot and make bold declarations. I’m feeling kind of cooped up and bratty because of the whole hostage thing.

All you’ve got is your pride and your family. And your beauty! At the end of the day.

But beauty is a little ugly. But beauty is morality. Morality is a little ugly? No! The truth is abstract. Anna Karenina can’t catch a break. The truth is she doesn’t want to. Like every woman. Like me. The truth is obvious. Tennessee Williams male characters are a gay man’s fantasy. Vacant and unattainable. Though, I make an exception for Stanley Kowalski. The truth is somewhere in between. The truth is that sometimes there are no do-overs. The truth is there’s important difference between a rehearsal and a performance. The truth is people die. The truth is people live. The truth is people should believe something instead of just agreeing and disagreeing. That’s why they’re so sick of themselves. The truth is standing astonished before a mystery. The truth is this is all so funny. We’re laughing. The truth is let’s get out of here because the sun is coming out, it’s Spring

.

.

Here—

climb up onto the platform and

let’s divine an answer for

how we’re meant to unfurl

the gridlock of a sunset over a sandy beach.

Look at the world

and say: iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou

at the thing and—but

look at it,

with its sad long hair and bad breath.

What I mean to say is:

you make me feel like clouds hanging with jets

and knowing love is pure I know

we take a lot from signs from grand gestures, and

today, I’ll drape myself with heirloom lily

and all sorts of

old wooden things—You know

I have a habit of wearing things

around my neck. Not

as albatross but as jewelry

*

The drugs aren’t working

i’ve been looking at the charts and figures

blood saliva ekg

they can tell you everything

that’s what they tell me

I read them like a star map

Not because I believe them but because I want to see a miracle

Because

I want to be a miracle

you know,

the body isn’t ideological

not really

symbolic, maybe, out of context

but still

practical

And here we are

laying down with all the naturalness of filling and emptying

you’re warm against me

we took a train to brighton beach and

drank beer all night til 4 in the morning

and we laughed

and yelled atnd screamed

and we fought

we fought to the death

we had a death wish

we represented nothing

but a beating heart and blood

all over your jeans

and everyone loved it

they loved the blood

and took photos of it

and showed each other and marvelled

at the color at the miraculous thing

of that year—

And then they start to droop and

How quickly one thing

becomes another.

Heavens to betsy honey,

I’m serious!

I’m your serious

little baby

water baby pisces sun

I’m hot with shadows from

riverbeds and another stupid

mystery in my bed—

I always got flagged, my sister and me, and we would meet in the lobby giggling and wait for our dad to come pick us up. We weren’t dirty kids. Well, not really. In fact I was a little princess. I would scream and run when the boys would chase me around with weird bugs they had found. I wore little high heels to school. But a little feral anyway. We were outside all year round, barefoot and with tangled hair. At one point my dad had this back surgery and had to take off work for a month. For most of this month, when my mom left for work, we would wave to her at the door with our backpacks and then turn around looking at him expectantly. Hooky?

We’d sit in the treehouse (piece of plywood nailed between the branches of a tree) while he watched NASCAR, or ride around with him while he mowed the lawn, and if it was raining we’d turn the hose on and leave it flowing in the rut the dog had made in the backyard and slip around in the red mud it turned into. Or swim in the homemade above ground pool that had long since turned into its own little eco system. My dad had this big old gray chevy van with curtains in the back and a ladder to the roof, and if we were feeling lazy we’d lay in the back while he listened to 105.9 The Rock or climb up the ladder and hang out on the roof eating pizza rolls.

He’d had vans like this since the 70s. It was his thing. When he and my mom met he was living in one of these in the driveway of a big farmhouse that was the home of my Aunt Nancy, Uncle Roddy, a dog named Roxy, and like 6 session musicians for outlaw country bands that bought coke off my dad and Roddy. And a horse they named Surprise that belonged to nobody but would show up to hang out and eat the scraps Nancy collected for it. My mom came from a Nice Family, and she ran away and lived there until it burnt down eventually. I recently inherited this big old wooden chopping board with these burnt marks on it that my mom is convinced are from that fateful day. Makes sense Nancy would go out of her way to save the kitchen supplies.

But the lice, the lice. They didn’t even come from our backyard ok! It wasn’t even our fault. It was Lena and Isabelle Johnson, the only other sisters more notorious for head lice than us. They lived in this awesome house that was messy with all kinds of piles of weird shit and you could do whatever you wanted there. They had a bunch of old cars and animals like guinea pigs and semi feral cats and old mangy dogs and hamsters.

So we would all have lice together, and this would be my favorite day. My mom would come home from work and sit down in the sun by the door and comb through my hair forever while I sort of dozed off. Then she’d slather my hair in mayonnaise and put a shower cap on me, and it would be my sister’s turn and I’d lay in my sister’s lap or paint her toes or whatever while she got slathered up too.

It’s hard to describe the feeling, and maybe it’s a girl thing, but there’s something so perfect about lazing around together messing with each other’s hair. While all those other suckers had to learn about math.

My mom was used to it, and enjoyed it too. We all did. She knew how to hang out, and knew all about headlice from when she was a little feral kid in Honea Path. South Carolina.

Last summer I went to the land she grew up on. It’s 25 acres of gorgeous loblolly pine and eastern redbud and pink azalea and sandy dirt in the middle of nowhere South Carolina, and when you drive into the town it’s like you’ve for real gone back in time. It’s like an hour off the interstate, and the roads are mostly just dirt, ground down from the last time they paved them, and there’s an old shirtless man standing in the middle of it holding onto an old stroller with a little shirtless baby in it. They’re not going anywhere, they’re just standing. They both lift their hands as we drive by in the truck.

It’s July and it’s hot as hell, and there’s a beautiful big lake with a rope swing that we dip into before buying a canteloupe and some fried chicken and setting up some lawn chairs in the space next to the old condemned house and the crumbling barn. When I was a kid we used to stay here for a few weeks of the summer with my grandparents, and the lady in the yellow house next door was weird and had goat skulls in her front yard and would always give us dirty toys that we would thank her for when my grandmother made us go over there and visit.

Not much has changed. Except for now it’s mostly squatters who live in the three little houses my great-grandfather built. Squatters, and Mike Bell, who’s been there as long as I can remember and is a nice alcoholic whose mom sends my mom a check for $150 most months for rent. Next to Mike Bell is Amber, and her boyfriend Ron, who’s as mean as a snake, and her adult sister Cassandra, who’s retarded and carries around tattered stuffed animals and always offers strange words of greeting and consolation, and is extremely gentle and sweet. After that is this guy Travis who’s like 20 years old, and his girlfriend. They like to shoot off shotguns and stare at you.

The Pizza Paradise is still out of business and empty, and Ithamer’s (Ay-Thay-mer, he’s a real guy, or was) grocery is now a carwash but the same old men still hang out there with the eternally stray cats. And the trailer with the nativity scene ceramics business is still going.

We sit under the shade of the big tree, and I’m in my bikini top and cut offs and getting eaten alive by mosquitos, but don’t really notice. We pop some Millers and walk around in the woods to the old pond where my grandma used to have a field of lilacs, allegedly. Travis is looking at us funny but waves anyway. People have been fishing here, it seems, and it’s quiet and nice and cool, and I talk about building an airy house and a grove of peach trees. It’s my dowry. I’m drunk. We’re laughing. It’s nice here.

The land’s on the market to settle some debts. The real estate agent wants to turn it into a development and her family has a lumber yard and she wants to set up a little operation across the street where the old school buses are. I’m cagey, and a little mean to her but I don’t regret it. What does she know about things like peaches. What do I know.

We drive the truck back to Nashville through the Chattahoochee National Forest and then I get on a plane for New York, and it’s nice here too, even though I’m sad, even though I’m happy. It’s July and sticky and the streets are kinda quiet and we sit in the park and talk all about it and you make me laugh a real laugh.

Now I’m trying to apply for unemployment, but the website keeps saying ‘error.’ I feel like I’m allergic to money sometimes. Maybe I’m afraid of success. That’s what Hugo the dishwasher at work is always saying to me: “sin miedo del exito.” But it’s been good for me lately, not working, bleeding out. Makes you feel like you can be lucky.

I had a job interview the other day for a bartending job. I’ve never bartended really but I said I did and that I had a license for it. It was 4:30pm and I was hungover, so I bought a Celsius thinking the chemicals would sweep me up somewhere. I had one for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I was on a film set where they were abounding and free. Now I can’t stop. It’s a fantastic product. I love the Vibe flavors. I really think they’re on the cutting edge of something here. I love that they’re not supposed to taste like anything at all in this world but like an idea.

Fantasy Vibe is my favorite, but they didn’t have it at the bodega I went to. They didn’t have any Vibes at all, but the guy at the counter said Happy Monday! when my friend and I went up to buy the drinks. I said you too! He was cracking up and he’s really charming me so I’m laughing too. ‘She knows,’ and he points to me. It’s Friday. I didn’t know. The week has become sort of vague and foreign since the unemployment, etc. ‘He’s been telling people Merry Christmas too.’ There’s another guy sitting on a stool behind the counter with him. ‘You gotta entertain yourself somehow.’

The interview went well, I think. The guy was easy to talk to and surprisingly sincere. He was asking my opinions on things, talking about his life with me, slightly anxious about something I won’t discuss here. I usually don’t offer my opinion to people ‘in the workplace’— I don’t really like to be part of the team or be responsible for making decisions there. I’m not good at accepting power from people who are trying to give it to me. But I felt at home here, and we had a nice long chat.

Later I went to my best friend’s birthday party. We’ve been friends since we were nine years old and she’s the best person I know, and I love her, even though I don’t really understand her friends. They are different types. But I always have fun. And I did this time too. We went to a dark underground fancy bar with an open tab and danced and drank mezcal margaritas. I was trying to convince a guy that I think is in love with her to make a move. “She’s the most perfect person I know,” I say to him at the bar, where he is looking at her from across the room. “I know,” he says. He gave her a birthday card that said “You’re a good friend.”

The next day I met a friend at a bar, early. He was helping me run lines for a play I’m going to be in and we had two Modelos each and then talked about past loves and then shared a Guinness and then another.

The play is about polyamory, and we both agree that there are much more respectable ways to be in a complicated relationship. To recognize conflicting desires, and parse your responsibility to them. An affair, for example, would be much more respectable. Or at least more sexy. We laugh, but I’m serious. Sexiness, to me, is real honesty. Something as cruel, and as sweet.

There are people who have successful secret affairs. Whatever success means. I think it’s mostly because it’s hard to find out that someone respects you more for it. Or a vague relief. Not the kind that follows passion, but the kind that follows failure. On one of my last days of work at the bankrupt restaurant, a man came up to me and told me I looked like Belle du Jour, like Catherine Deneuve, and later, like a big strawberry.

Confront him? Leave a note? Well it’s not that easy ok. I’m trapped reader, by BILL—the guy I’m subletting from who encourages me to keep my existence in his creepy old studio apartment a secret. It’s not, strictly speaking, legal, he says, eyebrows up, but you know what to do, you’re discreet. He’s excited by conspiracy, and well, so am I. So I’m trapped, Roman Polanski style, silently crawling around the room, ear to the wall, the floor, investigating.

If I could just—give him a good look in the eye in the hallway, but who, but who is he? This morning I heard his voice. He was on a call discussing word processing formats and how Steven was on their side and that they’ll figure this all out. Ok? But that’s all besides the point. Reader, I’ve been blue, I told you. Pining, restless, hot, flippant. There’s too much to do, and not enough, and my mind, my body is adjusting. A hangover I’ve been waiting for. My friend tells me to avoid red wine. Another says I should wake up at the same time everyday. Maybe, in this way, our man downstairs is a blessing.

the possibility of failure and natural disaster

you lay down in the old wooden House

and shut your eyes.

It made sense to look at it

this way—without hope or fear—

It makes sense to ask practical questions

like these—

what time?

and how much?

So you can

take the offer or

take a long look in the mirror

keep the change

keep moving.

It could be that

you leave home

buy new clothes, leather boots, jewelry

find a man

find God

swim in the sea.

It’s been too cold for all that lately

but we’ve learned to cope

learned to travel north or south when it matters

learned to cut our hair

and keep the peace

just like anybody.

What I mean to say is it’s enough to

pray for something less than luck.

Pray for rain, pray for morning

Pray for someone who can

who can—well

if anyone could it would be you

In a movie I saw recently, a woman goes to the psychic instead of the church on her wedding day. I forget the name. I forget the rest of the movie. The psychic just like offers her cookies or something. We like to cry and then laugh. Like there’s this religious respect and also condescension for mystics, mysticism—like for a very old person. Like relief. Me, I’m obviously a real sucker for this kind of thing.

Incidentally I had an encounter with a psychic in the street, this very day last year. A real psychic, my dear reader, and if you don’t believe me then, well, whatever, but listen to this—

She stops me crossing 6th ave on 10th. She asks me what I do. I say “nothing, I need a job.” She says she’s a house cleaner and that the angel gabriel told her to speak to me. We sit down on a stoop and I hold her hands. She’s like 100 years old and needs some help getting up and down. People are walking by and looking concerned and I scowl at them. She tells me she’s a Pisces and I say so am I. She says she knows. She tells me I’m at a crossroads in life and I say ok, and she asks what a certain set of initials means, and I tell her. She asks what the dates October 29th and June 26th mean. And I tell her. She asks a few other things holding my hands and tells me that a man with a certain, different set of initials will come into my life, making it difficult. And I rack my brains because it actually could be one of two men I’ve just met but then decide not to worry about it. She tells me not to throw my pearls to swine and some other things and then she tells me some bad news. But she gives me a spell involving roses and a bath and then cleanses my aura. I go to the atm and I give her $100. She grabs a bottle of water and I get that for her too. I’m dazed and nervous. I dont care. I do the spell. I wait. I wait. I try to remember the difference between the pearl and the swine. I walk around and do my laundry and call my friend and get groceries and never tell. I try not to think too much. And I never tell.

Today is a hard, cold morning. Freezing. Blue. Reminds me of something I’ve never had. I’m playing Gal Costa and sitting by the window. The smell of coffee and bacon. The light in my apartment is thin and perfect and my hair is curlier than usual and very big and I feel calm and like I should be a mother or something. I’m wearing a white cotton dress under a hoodie and I want things to be warm and happy, welcome. I want a cat. I want to dance. To feel strong and flexible and in contact with things. I want to write a book about it. I want to paint. But I’m not talking about things I don’t have or could have, right now. I had a dream last night. About my dad. I had him once, and now it is different. And it would have been different.

I don’t like feeling desperate, reader. And I don’t like people who are desperate so I don’t want to be one. To me, being raw and open is a short cut and a cop out. You make others tell you who you are. I like to be able to look myself in the eye. Like believe in something? Act that way? What do i believe in? God. Art. Good faith. Health. Clarity, mystery. Family. Being beautiful. Beauty. Instincts. Leveling with one another. A good story. My body. Talent. A good time. What’s right.

That’s the problem I guess. What’s right. False urgency. We’re losing daylight. I’m forgetting things. Which is ok I guess, the forgetting. But trying to change it is not, is impossible. And it’s good to be on the side of good and possible things, for the most part.

A couple weeks ago I posed as an art model for these painters. I love the studio. it’s messy, dirty, chaotic and calm. There’s a whole setup with drapes and furniture that are there for no reason other than they are beautiful and receive light in compelling ways. At least that’s what the instructor is saying. He’s teaching the students how to see the light with the paint. Props with no purpose. Mysterious props like a broken wooden broom and big fake red flowers. A brass teapot on the floor. A traffic cone? Yep. I like the mess. The way things are.

I walk around barefoot and the bottoms of my feet get all dirty and black from the charcoal and dust and soot all over the ground, and I get it all over the set. No one notices, or cares, and they stay dirty all day. Like sand from the beach. I love that feeling.

While I walk around the instructor is holding a pear with all these little pieces of tape around it, drawing eccentric lines with a sharpie between two or three at a time. Very smooth. He says this is the way the eye experiences something, and we have to find this experience as we draw and paint, instead of trying to copy a figure, trying to outline.

One of the artists has a pencil taped to a long stick and I ask why. She says it’s easier to see the whole arc of something this way, by which I mean, like, experience it. Everything’s coming from the center. Less force and more momentum, eventually more ease. I had a dance teacher once who told me to move as if my arms and legs were as long as tree limbs, as big as the room. Less force, more ease. The instructor draws lines through a self portrait of Rembrandt, symmetrical lines that move off the painting, off the page. Everything’s pointing outward from the center.

He drags out some more fabrics from the back and arranges them. He’s telling the students not to paint my body but to paint the negative space it’s enclosing. the whole enclosure. Dimensional. Like all the possibilities of my arm in this moment. Very heady. He says to paint the shadows. He speaks of ‘volumes.’ He points his brush beneath my arm. There’s not a whole lot to do or focus on while I’m up there, so everything he says seems very important. It’s nice. Meditative.

I like the feeling of being a prop. Is that so crazy? Like, anonymous and expressive. Radiating something. There’s a heater next to me in the studio. It’s very easy, very natural. I imagine really great actors feel like this. Nothing in between. Something the painters want to find and keep but cant really. Like the pear. The brass teapot. The fake flowers. The drapery. After class nothing gets cleaned up, just added onto.

Later the instructor sends me an email and we talk about Martha Graham and Pompeii and mythology. He’s doing a class on Classical Italian something. We’re pen pals, which feels kind of weird, but also not. We’re very professional. Next time I’m walking to the class I find two golden spitoons on the street and carry them around with me all day thinking I’ll leave them with the instructor, with the other props, but when I get there I decide that they’re beautiful and are mine, and then I give one of them to my friend. He puts it on his windowsill and we ash into it when we smoke cigarettes in his room.

delusional is fine. desperate, no

I like rain in the morning, sun in the evening. Though

I think it’s going to be rainy all day, all week.

*

secret weathervane

I could have been a great question

curving into might

or ought

or don’t you don’t you baby

please

but

instead I have been

the secret weathervane

of some vague and unremarkable system

*

hangover

I know I know

a big part of my responsibility was

to be mistaken for a lily

from a pitchless priestess

who sings and sings but

The sun

never taught me to sing

so prettily

The sun

is big and dumb

The sun the sun

socks me in the eye

like a big ruby

the sky

suddenly not heavy—

Driving from your house in the early morning, cold and pink

That’s how it was—pale, with music

and sunny—

Rolling a grocery cart into

the house of self-undoing

and then—

tallying the hard won stuff—

Texas hold em and 27 lit candles

at this party

where we’re sitting in a bedroom,

talking

I hope you were right, or

something

You know how hung up I am

with things I’ve never seen

vacant phrases that mean nothing

like houses in fact

mysterious and calm

We couldn’t even put our clothes on