The next morning, I could not get this man out of my head. So, I thought to do something that I have never done or even considered doing, I decided I was going to post a missed connection. As I am cruising the listings to see what other people write and I see that this man posted one looking for me! My stomach drops in that pleasant way. I draft a quick message and send it off.

He writes back lamenting that he didn’t talk to me that evening and a little about himself and that I looked familiar to him. I write back and as I am drafting my reply, he probably furiously Googled my name, and there is another message in my inbox that he put it together. He saw me perform and talked to me after a show. Which elated me, no one has seen my band really. I shot back that it was in fact me. And that was it.

End of story. Best experience of 2009, though.

Before I left to go home, before I had to face the depression that has settled over my family, I had profuse and troubling dreams. Nights on night, I woke in a sweat. My shirt so wet I had to change it. My anxiety trying to bleed out through my pores.

One of these dreams had me in a dirty, monastic chamber with no decorations save the condensation rivulets carved into the caked dust on the walls. I was dying of AIDS, so weak I could not even turn myself from that filthy wall. So thirsty, but without the strength to drink and I was completely alone. There was only the dim hum of the oxygen machine, the only medical equipment in the room.

I woke up, shaking, wet, warm and so thankful that I could get up out of bed and quench my thirst.

It’s World AIDS Day today. I could barely think about this dream or articulate it last week, but today I want to have those who are suffering, waiting for the vaccine, for access to drugs and just hoping for some comfort in my heart and thoughts.

What could possibly be troubling my cat? Is the shock of the new? The odor of the neighboring feline? Or something more sinister?

I’ve been troubled by dreams this week. Some full of familiar faces in strange situations. But the most troubling was a lucid dream I had about the presence Viktor. I knew that I was dreaming because I was sleeping on my back. I never sleep on my back. Ever. I could feel the cold descend on my arms and the goose hairs rise up, as Viktor settled down to “communicate” with me. Of course he wanted me to accomplish a task for him that he could not complete in life and even less so in death.

Then he moved down the bed and put pressure on my legs. The bed covers went taut and I could not move my legs. I knew I was dreaming. I knew it, despite how realistic everything in my room was down to the exact daylight.

“Look Viktor, if you want me to do anything for you, you are going to have to leave me the fuck alone while I am asleep or even just at home. I don’t want any of this ‘ghostly’ bullshit.”

The pressure released from my legs. I got up, put on my bathrobe and calmly walked out of my room.

So, could Viktor be bothering my cat in lieu of troubling me directly? I doubt the reality of that situation, but it makes more sense than the constant pain my cat seems to be in now that we are living in a veritable lap of luxury from our small Chinatown studio.

on the train to work, it was a slow and quiet commute. i think i left earlier than usual. the train was swaying and it was seemingly in time with the soft music i was listening to. i was still groggy and sleep was still hovering over me. i watched from the very front of the car as the few standing commuters ebbed and swayed with the motion of the car. in dream states we all were. i let my eyes drop a little and when i looked, i swear there was you, though, an impossibility, i swore it was you. but it was not you. it was no one but the lingering dreams, residual desires and the slight coincidence of NYC playing tricks on my eyes.

it doesn’t matter any more. it shouldn’t but. there’s the but. i read things, i see things. i remember the code. now i start to feel that there is a code there. a code no longer meant for me. it never was, a language built on guile. playing tricks on the house of secrets. the dance of the subway in the quiet of the early morning commute. playing tricks on the eyes, hearts, knees and nose.

I get the call finally. I am with some one I like. I am enjoying the company. I am enjoying the bliss of not knowing. I enjoying the getting to knowing. In one early morning phone call, with the simple words, it all shifts to not meaning a thing.

May never walk again.

It is those four words you don’t ever really think about except in the context of the nightly news horror show and tragic car accidents. In bite size news snippets that bear no relevance to your life at all. But the anxiety, the dread, the sheer terror of losing mobility, you don’t quite think about it?

But now, I do. Every damn day.

I think about what it means to be hobbled, to be maimed and the powerlessness that must come from the loss of autonomy, of freedom. The buzz of the hospital tubes, the steady hum of nurses chatter are now the background sounds to the conversations I have with my father and form the distracting hum of low level anxiety to my every day. The flow of thoughts of how my mother must be feeling. I am sure caretaker was not high on her list of retirement dreams. My brother, stoic and leaking tears at once, resigned to learning how to help my father take care of his every day tasks, now rendered laborious. It’s hard to brush your teeth with your wrong hand when your right one is still numb and immobile. Try it. I did. I can’t brush my teeth with my wrong hand. Then I feel guilty because I have the choice.

The arbitrariness of tragedy and personal loss is really arresting. It comes in no ways and in all ways at once. It exacerbates the insecurities we already have, heightens the loneliness we feel and exaggerates our alienation. In a simple phrase to match those words, it sucks. All i can do is trudge on knowing that the shock and grief will pass, that my love hasn’t changed and I will re-find my purpose. My compass feels slightly off true north right now, but in time, given time, I know it will reset. The test is patients. So say it lightly, let me down easy, make way and take care. I am not asking for much and yet, so very much.

On violation

When you live in a city like New York, you certainly don’t expect that much in the way of real privacy. You expect city privacy. When you are upset on the subway, most people will leave you be. When you are changing in your window, people will look but never call out to you. In general, people leave you alone. They watch you from the periphery of your life with the respect to leave you alone in your little part of New York. But sometimes, they let it out and they get their crazy all over you in a big sloppy mess.

Finally moving out of my Chinatown apartment, after years of struggle with the heat, the hot water, the noise, the smells, the spitting, the elbows, the alienation, I could go on, I finally had enough. I had my fill of never leaving the city. Of stepping out the door directly into the noise and filth and constant stream of people, a tide that never ebbs inthis city.

Moving out of my place, though a small space, was no small feat. I have accumulated 4 and half years worth of books, furniture, comics and clothes that all needed to be moved. I put a bunch of old things on Craig’s List to get rid of them. Lucky for me, I ran into my upstairs neighbor Jim. Jim is the apartment managers younger brother who lives upstairs with his parents, a not uncommon situation in Chinatown. He has helped me in the past bring up groceries or other large parcels to my my 4th floor walk up. It’s always a help.

He offers to help me with the shelves and the mattress. I am so grateful for his help as it’s a hot day and I am just one.

As we are waiting for the first set of people to come for the shelves, Jim and I get to talking. He starts out by telling me that we should pinky swear because he has something to tell me about a visitor. Ok…

The conversation quickly devolves into details that are more personal than I want to know. Jim feels like he can say what ever to me now that I am leaving. He proceeds to tell me that he is a virgin. He wants to learn from me. I start getting a little uncomfortable and I let him know that I really don’t have anything to contribute. He says, “I know that you do.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Jim, “You know, I can hear everything upstairs. Everything.”

“…..”

“In late 2008 and early this year, you were crying a lot. I wanted to come down and hug you or talk to you, but I didn’t think that you would answer the door. Why were you crying?”

“I was crying?”

“Yes, loudly.”

“I was breaking up with my boyfriend.”

“Oh. The one you had for a long time?”

“Yes, that one.”

“He was good though right?”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Good. I can hear it all.”

“So, no boyfriend now? What are those guys then? Just one night stands?”

He goes on to tell me that he knew when I was masturbating or if I was watching porn. When I had men over, when I was upset. Could he see me too?

Not only is he listening, turns out he is keeping tabs on me as I come and go. At this point my internal monologue turns into, “OMG! FREAK FREAK FREAK.” It quickly turns to, how can he hear everything. The cielings in this place are over 13 feet high. The floors are solid. I sleep on the floor and I can barely hear my neighbors when I know that they are blasting the TV. Then I remember the heating pole. How the plaster around it fell down and I had them replace only to have it fall down again a week later. I just thought that it was the old building settling or the heat from the pipe expanding. Now, I think, he pushed it down. I am also thinking, Shit. Shit. Shit. I haven’t got my deposit back! I can’t tell him what for because his sister has control of my money. I feel trapped. How am I going to get out of this.

The first Craig’s lister comes. We move the stuff out.

“When you first moved in, I thought that you were a model or something like that. What size is your waiste?” he asks me on the stairs.

“I have no idea, Jim.”

We get back inside. He sits on the couch. I pretend to check my voice mail. Pretend to have a lunch date. I need him to get gone. He tells me that he is really turned on right now and aren’t I?

“Not at all.”
“By turned on, I just meant the heat.”
“…”
“Well, I am not going to see you again, am I? Maybe could you kiss me?”
“No, just no.”
“What about a hug? I just want some one to hold me. Some physical connection.”
“Jim, no. That is really creepy. You have to leave right now. I am going to lunch.”

Here, I hope to never see him again. But the next day, I have to go back to meet the movers. As I am getting into the cab to go to my new place in Brooklyn, he runs up to me and grabs my arm, “Here is your paper. Will you be my friend on Facebook?”

“Sure. Just send me a request.” Hits the mental block button.

You think that I should have just let this go, but this is the worst violation of my privacy, personal space and mind, even worse than the mugging that took place in that very same building. I have had a hard time with it. I am just starting to feel back to normal in intimate terms. Even in the new space. It was easier not to know, not to have his crazy dumped all over me like filthy sticky honey. If he had just kept his knowledge of me, his obsession to himself. But that’s not their nature. But now, I am away. He has no way to find me. The check has been cashed. I can safely call him the fuck up that he is and move on.

• I sat in a quiet hush, thinking about the softness of what had transpired, despite its brevity, it was ever lasting.
• I wore a green dress.
• We danced like fools to the sound of our own music.
• I walked across 2 bridges
• Almost slept with a married man in a fit of rage and despair
• Kept the candle burning until it was down so low that it cracked the heavy glass of the holder that was containing the molten wax and it dripped down the table legs like bright, hot veins.
• I finished an entire bottle of rose wine at a bar.
• I did not write any correspondence asking for any explicit explanations, the tacitly implied ones seemed to suffice despite my desire for the definitive.
• I picked up a hitchhiker who had just broken it off with his girlfriend of 5 years. He had found her with another man. His hands were bloody from punching a wall that was not the man’s face.
• Thursday night, I broke down in tears in front of my computer from the weight of nothing at all.
• I broke into a dark library after hours only to just smell the books in the absence of other human smells; to listen to the bindings creak without the sound of human voices.
• One day, the sky was foreboding rain; I left my umbrella behind on purpose expressly to get wet in the warm thunder showers.
• I stayed in the steam room until I thought I was going to start hallucinating, but I didn’t and I wish I had. I need a spark of wonder in my eyes.

I will be back with arbitrary data and not very insightful lookings into things after July 2nd.

You can find me if you care on Twitter as houseofshss.

I will miss my curated secrets but by then I will have surely accumulated more.

a thousand times, yes.

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.” — James Joyce

The streets were slick as I worked my way down the bumpy side walk of Christie Street. Late for me, but not for the neighborhood, it was still on the empty side for a Wednesday night. I caught myself wondering if maybe it was the weather or the money that was keeping people in. Most likely, a little of both.

Past the ragged end of Sarah D Roosevlet Park, turning at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge and Christie ends and I round the corner along the side of the bridge on Forsyth St. The odors that come from this block are notorious. I pick my way through piles of half rotting produce and tied up bunches of boxes. During the day, the block is a bustling mash of fruit and vegetable vendors, shoe repair men, a grilled meat cart and a smash of people of all stripes coming to get 10 cucumbers for $1. No, you can not get less than 10.

Half way down the block, I notice that it doesn’t stink. In fact, the odor is remarkably pleasant. The smell is such an unexpected oddity that it takes me a moment to place it. It is the fresh, clean, bright smell of watermelon. There were several, must have been recently, smashed watermelons on the side walk. For a brief moment, I was transported to summer and green and waves of southern beaches. All that from just the smell of smashed watermelon on a New York City sidewalk.