Break Me Off

6.13.05

3:08am

There are people living the life you, JB, long for in places like Napa and Spain. They eat mangos and Banana Sour Cream pancakes, sip on margaritas, chocolate-almond coffee and fine red fucking wines.

People living where quiet can be heard. I go there sometimes, in my mind, and it hurts. That life not meant for me – I’m ephemeral; I don’t even exist.

Governed by my emotions because I don’t trust my intellect – it’s manipulative, where the narcissist resides, while in my heart is where God Itself lives. As such, Buddhist country is what I really need – a spiritual land offering space and privacy that might help calm this ridiculous chaos inside. This ridiculous chaos inside.

Yes, I am hungry. Starved for business unattainable. Brotherhood, Social Justice, Honesty. Simplicity. Purity.

A Home (I’ve seen photos of Hitler’s bunker and am envious – something to strive for).

And Sex. It’s been a while, but here it is again, that stirring in my belly, the familiar want and need – my forlorn libido often voracious, gluttonous even, it’s a wonder sometimes how I get anything done.

I know you know what the fuck I’m talking about. Your back arched, making an immense misty racket, whimpering, then hyperventilating, before shaking like an epileptic, pins and needles starting from deep inside your Gorgeous and crawling out to your extremities.

I need it slow and rhythmic and from the sweltering basement-bottom of your soul. Cuz I am old-fashioned when it comes to romantic relationships, but not old-fashioned enough that I won’t tie you to the bed or let myself be blindfolded.

I know it can be good again, hot and sensual and flowing.

I know it can be good again, the way it did before I knew what to expect.

But what makes me a passionate lover is also what makes it difficult to be a human being.

I fear, doubt, weep, inside I kick and scream. Every day breathe in and out, now and then lunge forward, very often stumble back. Occasionally inspire a friend, triumph over a vice, comfort a stranger, produce and emanate infallible love (somethings I love: the sound of Claire and I clicking; these extremely rare and precious moments of quiet; the intimate light from my candles; chocolate; honesty; lips – I love lips).

Try to buy the possibility that there is still hope for me.

Me: pink icy-stained white t-shirt and baggy boxers, baby-blue-beaded rosary round my neck, its silver cross embedding itself into my chest. On this cold concrete floor I lie, listening to Robert Downey, Jr. croon (closest to my own singing voice I’ve yet heard) cuz it’s what healed the last scar, six months ago. I let it work me, allowing for the cut to dry and flake off and blood to flow back into both my heads.

In self-imposed solitary confinement that nevertheless feels like freedom right now, in this moment.

On the ceiling, a panoramic view of Rio that is almost, but not quite as spectacular as the one of my tethered Soul.

To be aware of oneself and others at all times is a tall order and I know perfection is unattainable but OH HOW I WOULD LOVE TO BE WONDERFUL.

We’ve all got obscene amounts of latent power – us ghetto bastards, in particular – and here is my best attempt to clear those slums, untie them knots, manifest my muh fuckin individuality.

Mind jumbled, I’m forcing it all out, thoughts and emotions swirling about my head; I grab many as I can and slap them down on paper, mixing and matching my mad rants to form some kind of ghetto gothic aesthete.

Summer looming before me like a large looming thing and I’m ready this time. For frilly flower dresses and halter tops, flip flops, ankle bracelets and shimmery legs, smell of shampooed hair, perfumes and lotions and sweat, sweetness emanating from pulse points, movements, gestures, advances. Dear Lord – You know the rest. Lemme catch my breath, take a swig of my reality.

Like those sirens outside howling, red and blue lights slicing through this twenty-five year-old curtain, pieces of scotch tape almost as old holding it together – broken soul’d brothers expressing grief by assaulting each other (1001 pitfalls for boyz n tha hood), just outside my cracked, caged window. Their shouts interrupting my flow, reminding me why my malaise from twelve to twenty-nine – we, mi gente, still catching hell (years ago, elders sat on benches while little-uns played wiffle ball and tag till the sun went down, after which ghetto thugs took over; I am the only one left and those summer days are over – overcrowded inner-cities leave no room left for innocence).

And now I’ve switched back to Bach by way of Yo-Yo Ma and Thomas Newman’s Shawshank Redemption cuz I can’t deal with lyrics – words like swords, voices like screeching tires; would that we could express ourselves without them – our bodies can’t lie (like in Seattle with MW, March of 2000, squeezing each other till juices flowed out, sucking, savouring it all, deep wet kisses, the smell, the texture, the taste of her, Sarah McLachlan’s Ice Cream on repeat, over and over, till we drifted and I dreamt I was falling again).

Bringing me back to my cravings – an embrace and a damp, slippery kiss.

And I want to say, “Be earnest with me,” but that’s a sure way to repel most ordinary city dwellers. I want to say, “Remember who I am and hold me close to your heart.”

I want to say, “Stay.” Are there still reliable people in existence? Were there ever? Tell me.

Oh, I know my net worth and it is steep. My Love, when governed by Truth, is wide, e x p a n s i v e and my shoulders are strong as my tongue. It would behoove you to move beyond shallow waters and dive into my deep – there’re magnificent, mystical creatures down here in the midst of evolving (experience that rarely seen playful side, soft like fleece and softer still, something like the fuzzy texture of a daffodil only sillier like the giggle of an infant; or the equally evanescent hoodrat, laid back at house parties, where it can freestyle and cuss like a gangsta rapper – there’s an art to it, folks).

Who’ll be brave enough?

I’m not holding my breath.

Gluttons for punishment. Not me – I’ve my problems, but not learning from my mistakes is not one of them – I’m too old.

Eventually there’ll be another You – whether out of love or immediate necessity, I don’t know.

Meantime, here I am, sinking into Billie Holiday’s voice – pure and unadorned, dense with heartbreak, sounding something like Heaven to me in this moment. It makes me sort of happy and, hunched over, poised on a breakthrough, I pray to my guardian angel (I suspect a brother named Rob twelve-years dead): Stay with me, stay with me.

S t a y w i t h m e .

A Blues For New York

A bit of a rant.

3/9/04

for those who have tried to take them from me

I feel these blues deep and hard. Always on time, never to waiver. The meanness of these rain-slicked streets, mad broiling. I cannot refuse. My life is thick as molasses and transparent as blood.

I suffered long for betrayal, the arrogance which kept me away for so many years. I had words but so what? The streets don’t give, they are not impressed, they care not for noble.

It’s taken me awhile to claim them again. But this IS my city. That garbage on the curb belongs to me. The piss in the elevators and all that blackened gum on the sidewalks is mine. At the wave of my hand, those rats in the hallway, on train tracks, and inside every shadow multiply – because I say so. I’ve been privy to the conversations of nefarious transit workers constantly come up with labyrinthine ways to fuck with your commutes. And I broke all those payphones because I couldn’t stand that broad’s voice interrupting my conversations with her incessant demands for money in that smart-assed, detached way of hers. Understand? No, you wouldn’t. You couldn’t, these blues like a muh fucka.

Rob knew these blues and reached out to me under the impression I had for him some yellows and greens. But my own blues had me reaching out for Jessica’s. Rob couldn't handle all that weight on his own and so he died, leaving them for me. Motherfucker.

Tupac knew but didn't understand these blues and Kurt’s were not mine.

Dese blues. Not those fancy ones of Broadway, but these fierce ones of Spanish Harlem, Da South Bronx and Queensbridge. These blues of A, B, C, D and every other letter of the alphabet, each standing for the first initial of a woman long gone but still with me. These lonely only-child blues. These fatherless blues. These no money-havin-ass blues. These gentrification blues. These Alan-Onic blues. These childhood sexual abuse blues. These light-skinned-blue-eyed-intellectual-Latino-from-the-ghetto blues. These NYPRBLUES. These mad sad fools’ blues. These lowdown, filthy blues of war and famine. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

I never knew this city as a playground. I’ve known it only as a towering force that’s broken my heart more times than even I have. A place that has never been kind to me and mine – since us Ricans arrived in the 40s, it has been a constant struggle for breath that hasn’t let up to this day.

Walking Lower East Side to Upper West hands in pockets after Alan-On fellowship, I could hear the sax intro to that Glen Frey song play in my head – except that the city belongs to ME. Invited to go out dancing with the girls, I chose to dance with myself – a midnite stroll through hard-won streets that once held me hostage but are now loosening grip, in deference to my newfound confidence and complexion – all they respect and understand. Yet still in my worst moments I feel their massive grimy weathered calloused hands around my throat. These same streets my mother walked as a child – all these years, all this painful history and neither one of us has moved an inch.

Me, a street soldier without the garb – undercover, a spy for both sides. Me, an archivist, chronicler of time and emotion. I’ve forgotten more than you'll ever know, Bobby D. wrote. I remember these streets when they roared. And they remember me when I did the same. These memories flow like freestyle rhymes:

Two years-old at a house-party in The Bronx and my father teaching me to roll a joint – my quick-learning infant-child mind thinking, Hmm, do-it-yourself cigarettes, and picking up the lesson.

Being on the roof of the WTC as a child, not thinking much of the view and wishing it were greener.

Stopping a rape in progress only to have the victim spit in my face; remember never being shocked after that.

Long nights in my late teens and early twenties spent walking from The Village to Harlem and back.

Never leaving apartment without walkman and box of Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Marvin Gaye cassettes, as well as taped calls I’d made to WBAI in the wee hours – revolutionary cries to set the White House on fire.

Chatting with junkies who shot up as we relieved ourselves, made out, smoked up in the Bond Street alleyway before it got gated. Shooting a short film there once, guy steps in to take a leak and finds a discarded gun, something about young urban male rage; cops interrupting our shoot with pistols raised and my lead actor was nearly arrested. I remember smiling the whole time and getting it all on Hi-8 tape.

Being slipped angel dust in a drink and subsequently having a nervous breakdown on the sticky floor underneath the stairs at Wetlands, me flat on my back, my crew surrounding, look of puzzlement on their faces – their fearless leader, voice of mad reason, showing vulnerability for the first time ever.

Summer of ‘89 – Koch’s last, death of Yusef Hawkins, release of Do the Right Thing, PE’s Fight the Power everywhere, air thick and wet and edgy.

Jessica, best friend back then, one of the first women I loved, the first Libra and the first I called when I found out Rob died – “I don’t know what to say,” said between puffs on her cig, “I’m so sorry”. Was with Rob when I lost my virginity, some place in Jackson Heights he frequented, twenty bucks a pop; it rained that day and I felt emptier than the first time I was molested by a man at six years-old.

Seeing Bad Lieutenant four times at The Angelika – twice alone, once with Jessica, the other I’ve blocked.

Visiting my favourite Hopper painting at MOMA once a week for six months, it reminding me of the historic RKO theatre in Queens, with its art deco interiors and sweeping staircases leading to the big house, in which I spent much of my childhood. Saw my first movie inside that theatre – Saturday Night Fever. I was three and my mother and I stayed for two viewings, leaving just before Bobby C. jumps off the bridge.

Sundays at that and other moviehouses with my alcoholic grandfather who’d sleep, snore, fart during the show and trip home – but he adored me, I know. Remember, as the only other male in the family, feeling I was old enough to be able to protect its women and fighting back at him with words – “You’re gonna be a writer,” he said to me with a vicious grin and for years I denied that was what I was.

2:10 am show of Pulp Fiction night it was released at an all-nite theatre on 42nd and 8th – thugged-out audience and I throwing food, spitting at the screen and afterwards sneaking into Jason’s Lyric, which wasn’t any better but had Jada (my Jada, Tupac's Jada) before she married Will.

The old Times Square, videostores and peep shows wherein I spent much of my eighteenth and nineteenth years, continuing with what those malevolent men had started over ten years prior and further polluting my sexuality.

Leaving during Dinkins’ last days as da mayo (his autographed picture still in my wallet, addressed to “Moneybags Jayce”), streets full of strung-out junkies from Wisconsin and the word Onyx spray-painted on buildings uptown and down.

Seven foggy years spent in Boston, MA, yearning for these streets, the mournful sound of a jazz trumpet always bringing me back to springtime in New York City.

These are my blues. These are my blues like hell you cannot touch.

Here, in this city, is where my restless spirit will linger after I’m gone: on the benches of The Promenade, listening to The Spinners’ Ghetto Child, Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s T.R.O.Y., watching the sun ease behind the skyline.

Dear Streets, if I give you props, if I acknowledge what you’ve taught me and who/what/where/why I am, if I treat you as everyone else does – with reverence or blind adoration – will you leave me be, let me go?

Didn’t think so.

To prevent raising my kids here I will abstain, because these streets are not to be trusted and these buildings fall down – anything man-made is faulty and will eventually crumble; to demand permanence from any of it is arrogance, stupidity, madness.

Do you feel me? CAN you feel me? Are you listening? CAN you listen?

WAKE THA FUCK UP, YOU UNCONSCIOUS MOTHEREFFERS! You are being lied to. Even by me.

Yank Sleepyhead back to the living. Kill that part of you chooses to rationalize the myriad lies thrown at you. Bludgeon her/him with the pure, unblemished, honest Truth. Beat its face with a bat, DeNiro-style. Or clean and simple-like with just one bullet to the forehead. But DO NOT SUBMIT. If not for you, then for your children, for the next generation. Get it together. Check the date, RISE UP, STAND. Because sooner or later, it will affect you, too.

We are the children of the children of Watergate, raised up in the Reagan/Bush era and so it’s no surprise we are hopeless, but please, stick with me here, now, in this very moment. Let that willfulness go. What helped you as a child will kill you as an adult. Look, clear-eyed and sober out the window. The way we're living is wrong. Step out of illusion and into the bright overheads of LA-HYFE. Do not accept anything less than all of it.

You are alive and in your prime. Like The Dramatics said, Get Up and Get Down. Pave the way. Grab those you Love and s e t i t o f f . The time is nigh, sink or swim, do or die, pay or play, shit or get off the pot. DO NOT LEAVE THIS LEGACY. Your sons and daughters are dying.

God is on our side. He recognizes that we are supreme beings. He is a fan. He is not wrathful. Our parents lied because they were lied to. The church lies like a ho in a hip-hop song.

What’s that? What is this about and where is this going? you ask. Focus, you say. I say fuck you, I’ve been listening to your spoiled, arrogant ass yap my whole life, sitting quietly in the sidelines, acquiescing to your decisions and listening to my language being butchered in your schools (it’s pronounced Vlaunko, not Blank-Oh), my history non-existant.

It’s my turn. So sit down, shut the fuck up and pay attention – you might just learn something. Checkit: I am on your side. Your derision, your judgment I do not understand.

I’ve been a victim of transference all my life and my words have been misquoted, taken out of context and used to mock, scorn, condemn me. Why is it so easy for you to believe I am wicked?

I am sick to fuckeeng death of your irony. That smirk. Stand up and Be real. Learn to appreciate a smile as I do. And an embrace.

Yet still I am on your side. Praise be, Hallelujah, I love you like a brother. We come from two different worlds but are one and the same and when I reach out to you, I am reaching out to myself.

I know, I know, I’m pompous, pretentious, arrogant, sanctimonious, among other things (you have no idea). But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. And it doesn’t mean I don’t mean it with all my heart and soul. There, I’m done now; I’ve stepped off the podium.

Except for one more shout-out to my Brothers and Sisters in the shadows. Dear brethren, everything I do is for you. I dedicate this, my earthbound life, to you. And to my children. And to the Good Lord – all one and the same.

I know how this ends. It ends with me sitting on my balcony in Spain, sipping café con leche or more likely, te con limon (no carbs or sugar), reading the front page headline of SE MURIO NUEBA YOL! over and over. I fold the paper, toss it onto the table, put left leg over right, lean back, look out to the sunset and smile, thinking There but for the grace of God go I, before beginning to reminisce again on the way it used to be for me.

Or, standing atop a rock overlooking waterfalls in the rain forest of Somewhere Far Away, gray hair on my head and face long and thick and wet, skin taut and tanned, not looking back at all but feeling the tremors of what will happen here. And thinking, again, There but for the grace of God before jumping --

Updated...

...very first blog entry (title: 'Morning/Evening Pages, May-August, 2009') instead of posting here. In the interest of continuity and flow.

Click here for it.

Making Out

6.23.05 (written on napkins)

plugs:

http://www.shaderupe.com

http://fredsoffa.com (aka 'The Mythical')

Standing here, at a dentist convention (Aesthetics in the World of Implants) in the Ritz Carlton, utterly invisible. Men in expensive suits with slicked-back hair drink screwdrivers and fine red fucking wine, while desperate women in very high-priced heels hit on them.

Everybody’s teeth gleam, though their skin is even whiter. A brother serves the food. A Rican woman I am probably related to collects discarded napkins. There are free golf balls on a table, in packages of three. Some hairy fool takes my picture.

A few of the dentists are younger than I and it makes me feel wasteful. On top of that, I’m chewing gum.

Britney Spears is here, too, and who knew? Sometimes I find myself in the strangest fucking places.

Last time I saw Shade was twelve years ago, B.C. (before Cambridge) – I was nineteen, he was twenty-something. Lanky boy with a beard and smiling eyes, we discussed Romero and Cronenberg on the set of The Mythical's A Wavering Heterosexual Confronts the Pleasure Principle Head-On, Forced to Decide (his first words to me, “You’re too intense for this business,” with that hedonistic grin – I proved him wrong at the wrap party). Month before move to Boston, ran into him again at Kinko’s and he handed me a flyer for a screening of Return of the Living Dead 3; was surprised he remembered me.

He’s an adult now and no one sent me the memo; I’d have never recognized him. But there he was, in town between international film festivals, schmoozing.

Dr. Z drones on, occasional pools of laughter wafting over as I write these words. Shade respects him; we respect Shade. Though he doesn’t hand me the camera.

Coltrane blows from somewhere in the kitchen. Softly. Down underneath, my heart is fluttering, my soul is muttering. I breathe. I am not present, mind stuck on three nights ago, four AM – “Don’t leave,” she said and I didn’t; we kissed till I left at noon the next day and when I pray, I pray to be made less sensitive a man cuz I can’t handle the way love treats me. I won’t be some girl’s dirty little secret, crouching in dark corners, making out, otherwise keeping my distance – it’s not who I am. Who I Am. And I can’t afford to get hurt again – I’ve too much to do and can’t spare the love or time. I need support, not confusion.

But, “I want what I cannot have,” she wrote me at the bar and supposedly this meant a soft, wet kiss from my generous lips – the first for me in over a year and a half. We slept for two hours, fully clothed, and she said things to me and I whispered to her how her friend Enrique had propositioned me all night long, staring at my lips in a way that made me recall why I never go out drinking. And we kissed and groped and clung and, since then, nothing from her and so I reciprocate, cuz I’ll keep up, but I won’t step forward. I’ve done it already, putting myself on the line, winking and flirting like some kind of playa when it’s something I never do and she knows this. “You’re holding out for something amazing,” she’d said, then mentioned all those actress’ phone numbers I’d gotten, asking why I haven’t called them and I told her (“I don’t date,” I’d said to them and out came the slips of paper, on which they wrote their phone numbers, saying, “If you ever change your mind...”).

Unavailable men are the most attractive, apparently, and I want no part of it – I take the slips of paper and smile, for the sake of the film and cuz I’m a gentleman, later I roll them into tiny balls, hold my hand open and let them fall in the director’s wastebasket. The director, whom she told of her crush on me and whose reply was, “Stay away.” Since then, has been trying to set her up with others on set and what drama! And what did I do to deserve such derision but show up early and leave late, ingratiate myself in my admittedly quiet way with auditioners and crew, wearing the hats of whomever I’m asked to wear the hats of. Another example of people projecting shit onto me has nothing to do with me and isn’t it silly and unfair?

No matter cuz there it is and so I’ll hold back cuz I am afraid to afford the heart and commitment. I need those for MY work – HERE is where I’m unbridled, HERE is where I take fuckin risks and let you in for it.

It don’t pay to be honest, to be good, to be a man with principles in this city, this industry, this world.

It should all be simpler. They tell me I am complex and frustrating because I want the truth and it makes no sense to me – they make things more complicated with lies and denial. But our city’s not conducive to honesty, not even when it’s in our best interest. Stubborn. Convoluted. Ridiculous. I look around and seethe with something thicker than sadness, more furious than anger. We’ll never change, but it doesn’t mean I can’t.

I’m doing my part. To live and love on the table, not under it. To do right by you. Another woman leaned in to kiss me and I turned away cuz it wasn’t what she needed; she cried instead and I held her and afterwards, I did some impressions and made her laugh. Later, I went home and watched Larry David and laughed myself.

Off on a tangent, I bring it back and notice the small, dark waiter before me, correctly surmising, “Tienes sed, no? Whacan I getchu?” I smile and wipe my brow. “Seltzer,” I say and he smiles warmly, a different one than they get. He is probably a long lost uncle – sometimes I walk by men in these projects who just got out of jail and look just like me; they wink at a brother and give a filthy grin as they saunter on and go ahead and ask me why I have trust issues. Cuz it only occurred to me after I left her place that she put her friend up to hitting on me. This how my mind works. Except I’m usually right. Always something else going on. Always secrets.

It’s time to go, The Mythical decides and we pack it up and he drives me to Queens. During the ride I spit out my strategy, practical and well-formulated, if somewhat combustible: make out with as many different kinds of women as possible cuz if I stick to one, I get attached, but if there are multiples, they will drown each other out.

“Finally!” he cries and I come home and draw up the plans.

Forth

3.2.06
para K - esto es lo que yo soy

(I try not to think of, but FEEL you - US - under blackened skies, huddled. You trembling, I tried to melt you. You kicked and clutched, hanging on, internal warfare. I always knew. I caressed and embraced, combating those harsh voices with Tenderness. Peace came when we just breathed and accepted and I'm not sure It ever came for you - your mind couldn't let go. I pressed my warmth closer to you and squeezed and you moaned and suddenly I had Worth. On my lips and tongue, wetness mixed with your constant flow of blood - your life inside me. 'Neath the dull grey and piercing black of your aura, are shimmering oranges yellows greens blues swirling, translucent white sparks dotting the Gorgeous fray. A life too hard lived, yet not lived at all. You are Intensity Vitality Sadness Hope Courage Brilliance Beauty A Blessing Love. Love. You are the deepest ocean unimaginable. I miss It. Like hell.)

July 4th, 2005

7.5.05

We watched the fireworks from the roof of Aaron’s penthouse apartment on the LES. Her head on my chest and occasionally I’d peek down to see her big browns open wide, voluminous smile on her kisser, glitter on her face sparkling in the explosions of light before us.

Later on, we made our own fireworks, but not before we were arrested for a backrub in Prospect Park and it turns out I’ve a criminal record after all (days before 9/11, me on the roof of projects property, snapping shots of the skyline – always at the right place at the wrong time).

Her – frustrating and beautiful, like pulling teeth (my own). Deep down solid; a geek girl wrapped in gorgeous.

And so much fun to kiss.

She lured me into her apartment with the temptation of three kitty cats and a toilet wherein to empty my bloated bladder. And we kissed.

Boy, did we kissed.

“Do you want me to stay?” I asked and she nodded. Three makeout sessions followed and I said, “OK, I’ll stay,” and she smiled big and couldn’t get rid of it.

We didn’t fuck, content at kissing, licking, embracing, caressing, whispering, hoping. I don’t remember falling asleep but woke with her hand wrapped around my bare heart. My bare, blistered heart.

In her hand.

Floating (Thanksgiving, 2005)

11.19.05-11.21.05

It was Thursday all day and there I was, alone in the dark again, shuffling malice, regret, and Love in my mind. Dissecting defeat, desiccating deliverance. These months, some of the worst of this, my 7th life.

Day meant to be ours, she give it away to devils due to fear.

On the phone for eight hours, she did penance. In the process, Friday rose and I had to go, if only for The Queen’s embrace, well worth the wait of a thousand days without.

7th Ave. – our old stomping grounds. Booze shop stop – Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Nog or South African red? Opted for Dominican Rum – 40 proof.

Rang the bell. It rang back. There on the stairs was one of Them, always the first face I see, soothe my savage with a smile and a “Hey…”

(Note to self: marry a Texan.)

Next was The Queen Herself, followed by Princess Allison, sans tutu.

Three elegant ladies vibe voluminous incandescence.

I shook Jeff’s hand and thought, “I don’t belong here; these are happy people.”

Stay with me was the private incantation to prayer. Stay with me.

I looked at their faces, ferociously beautiful faces of Friends. Comfort. Secretly savoured their scents.

My metal walls melted.

Having neither slept nor moshed, mine eyes dilated after a half glass of ale. Three flutes of fine red followed, on the heels of which flew back some of that fun Rum.

The Queen, she eyed me and I threw her some facts, fending off a felonious urge to purge. It would have sufficed to sit and stare at those ever-simmering eyes, but others might have disapproved.

Jeff carved the turkey.

Yes, there was food. Like fooooooooodd food (Thursday’s Thanksgiving supper consisted of Quicktime chocolate chip cookie crumbs and a call that never came).

Women I’d never witnessed welcomed me warmly, offered to fastidiously fill my plate for free.

After supper, spotting an empty seat, ring of sirens surrounding, I craved in, met their specifications and was granted holy green Grace.

Effortless smiles. No pointless power plays.

Time flew and I floated through mellifluously. No subjugation.

I felt humane and unthugged.

Reviving my fell faith if for a few days.

There were desserts and I can’t even get into it (friends and family called a moratorium on continuous discussions of The Friday Feast at Allison’s).

She showed, eyes shimmering, by 11pm. My Sweetie. I was happy to see her. Verily. Her constant glances said much the same. As did the sporadic hand squeezes.

Without them – those nefarious, ne’er-do-well-by-her acquaintances – we are Transcendent.

Heart filled with effusive Love, we hug our goodbyes and I invite her over.

Getting home something like Jay Cronley satire. No 7 service to Queens. No R, E, N, V or W. Lose my temper briefly before she finds it, picking it up off the floor, dusting it off and handing it back to me with another hand squeeze.

I grant her small, damp kisses on the forehead and she swoons. We kiss in earnest and manage to make the 3:22 train, though not before snarfing some soup.

Three hours to get home but worth it when we get there and slip slowly into syrup, tiny rich kisses give way to what we want, who we are, us two, long time coming after so much struggle.

“I Love You.”

Together, we f l o w and it almost cums, but not quite – her First One Ever, a biggun, downright Wagnerian.

We didn’t stop there, but I will.

We get half-hour sleep before she scuttles off to stage manage and I go to her show that evening wearing Armani.

She beamed. I was proud. As always.

A major coup occurred when we caught a 10:22. We ordered Chinese and smiled a lot. We made out, then made Love, it of the earth-rattling variety (neighbors took brooms to ceilings).

Monday comes and as I’m mic’ing Adrien Brody, a thousand shimmery beads like Seagal on his chest, it occurs to me: something shiny is in order, a diamond perhaps.

She calls as I’m punching out and tells me ten of a hundred, one of which was, “I’m leaving New York.”