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.

Now. There’s been some space. My fear has subsided, my guilt is transformed into anger and that anger dissipated into disappointment.

A man followed me into my apartment vestibule early Sunday morning. The front door had been broken and hadn’t been locking properly for months. It works now, but that makes no difference because you can’t change the future. He could have done so much worse than grab me, take my phone and all of my money. Only about $120 dollars. Coming home from a night out, he’s lucky I even had that.

I called the police from an old cell phone. This all sounds so collected now, but at the time, I almost didn’t know what was going on. The 911 operator stayed on the phone with me until I was with the police. They then put me in the back of the squad car, still in my party dress and heels, clutching this busted cell phone with out of date of numbers and my house keys.

A flock of police had descended onto my neighborhood detaining every young looking black man that was out on the street at sometime between 3:30am and 4am. The drove me around and had me look at the men that they had detained. None of them were the man that had robbed me. It was after the second man, that I finally started crying in the back of the car.

They put me in another car, unmarked, and we went around and looked a two or three more men. Still none of them were the man. I felt so guilty that these men had done nothing wrong, other than be the wrong color out on the street at the wrong time. I felt guilty and responsible and horrified and terrified.

At the precinct on Elizabeth street, one of the oldest in the city, I sat in a dingy room with a man filing reports and intermittently falling asleep with loud snores waiting to fill out the police report. I called every number that might be viable in my phone, but no one picked up. I talked to two cops and then a detective. I looked at mug shots until my head was aching, the sun was coming up and the faces all looked the same.

They brought me home and let me stand on the side walk, shivering in that stupid dress while the evidence technician took finger prints. I did not need to be standing there for that. I went upstairs finally to make some eggs with spinach. I fell into an uneasy sleep that only lasted about 3 hours. It was riddled with random dreams, irrationalities and anxieties. I was lucky to have a friend to stay with me that night. A presence that was just so welcome and such a distraction. It was so important.

The next day, Manhattan looked so much better from the outside looking at her from Liberty Island.

ran 5.18 miles, walked 20 blocks and 4 avenues to disappointment, danced until i was too tired to dance anymore

• 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.