San Francisco, Day 1.

I got in late last night. Very late. My flight was scheduled to arrive at 11 pacific time, but due to some sketchy weather on both coasts, I ended up arriving over three hours late. Not my idea of fun, but it was surprisingly heartwarming to cross the security boundary in the middle of the night to find someone who means so much to me, camped out waiting for me. I was happy to get to Kurt's place safely, and settle in. At nearly 4 a.m., which my body treated as 7 a.m., I was sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette looking over at the darkened windows of the building that I called my home for six years. It felt longer than that, and sitting there, it felt like no time has elapsed at all, but time is truly an illusion, a constraint we've created for ourselves. Sometimes I feel like I've been cut loose from its boundaries.

I woke up at 8:30 and quickly got myself out the door to get some caffeine, to Peet's, my old haunt. I wondered if I'd run into anyone who'd noticed me gone, but expected that I wouldn't, and I didn't. Fine. I was able to get back to Kurt's and get some breakfast. Then I returned to Peet's, adopting my traditional role of "fixture in window," and since I've been here I've talked to just one person, and waved at another. To be expected. This is how it was when I lived here, inconsistent, and this is how it was when I used to return to Philadelphia as a visitor after I'd moved away from there.

So far, everything is going according to plan.

I expect I'll wander home (and by home, I mean Kurt's place) soon, after I finish processing some photos, after I finish writing this, and maybe he and I will go for a walk, into the Castro so he can show me everything that's changed, and then I'm going to have lunch with my friend David. While sitting at Peet's I see a few other regulars, have a few pleasant exchanges.

I'm neither as sad nor as excited as I thought I might be to be here.

So far, everything is going according to plan. Easy enough to accomplish when there is no plan.

*

9:30 pm. I'm calling the day a success. Had a really nice lunch with David, and we headed deeper into the Castro and parted company. As I walked back to Kurt's from there I ran into no less than five people that I knew to varying degrees, stopping to chat each time, and it made me feel, as I'd hoped, welcome and missed. I may not need to live here anymore, but I feel like it may always be a place I can return to.

Back at Kurt's I went down for a nap that lasted a lot longer than I'd planned, but given how little sleep I'd had the night before, I can't much complain about that. Now we're going to get dinner. Possibly Taco Bell. Just the good old days, as it were.

Five, Two

At ten thirty or so I'm on the train, heading back to Brooklyn after dinner with Richard. The lighted display lists stops we won't be making; it claims this is a 2 train but it's actually a 5.

For much of the ride there's seven of us in the car. One older black man in one corner, and a matching one in the opposite corner. Both are sleeping. Almost directly across from me a young, attractive-ish couple sit very close to one another. They're well dressed and I guess from their posture that they've been drinking. Probably at a nice dinner. The man keeps leaning in to the woman, to kiss her, but she keeps him at bay, her eyes always darting to me when he does this.

I try not to look at them and my attention turns to the remaining two people in the car, another couple, I presume, at the other end of the train. I have headphones on and not sure I'd be able to hear what they're saying even if I didn't, but they appear to be fighting. He seems to be yelling at her and she looks predictably upset. He catches me looking and I look away. A minute later, she moves away from him and comes to sit closer to me. I wonder. But I'll never know.

The couples are opposing forces, and I sit between them, the fulcrum. Everything is in balance. I think back over the night that I've had, and the past month, and think that it must all be happening as it's supposed to.

We all get off at Bowling Green to wait for the 4 train, and disperse into different cars once it arrives. The moment passes, as they all do, eventually.

Track 3

I'm waiting for the train to New York at 30th Street Station. I've found a dry place to sit and the wind comes hard at my back.

The last time I stood at this platform I was rushing to get back to you after a photoshoot, anxious. Three days later, the meaning of "us" suddenly changed, and three days after that, it changed for good. The second change brought about, I guess, by those same photos I'd taken here in Philadelphia, just hours before I found myself here at track 3, hurrying back to you.

I watch trains come and go, heading to various outposts of suburban Philadelphia. My train will come eventually, but not now.

The previous time I waited at this place it was to say goodbye to you, after your first and only visit here, and my first visit to you from San Francisco, where I'd been living. We had spent two magical weeks together, and it was so hard to say goodbye. Here, where I stand now. Less than an hour earlier, you had told me you loved me for the first time, hugging in the living room of the house where I now live.

I'm waiting for the train to New York but it's not to see you. A Chinese man is eating chicken wings next to me, tossing the remains to other birds, and I'm trying not to cry. Trying.

I don't like what I've become.

It will get better. I know. I just have to wait.

Two Bad Days

MONDAY PART ONE

While I wait for the train at the Beacon station, after telling my mother during our goodbye that I was doing fine, I find myself choking up.

Ninety minutes later I start crying at the urinal in Grand Central but no one notices because the bathroom is already filled with deranged people.

I manage to get to work, my new job which is actually the resuming of an old job, and I'm tense. Thirty minutes later I get a distressing phone call and thirty minutes after that I am exiled outside, asked to clear out for a while while my boss works on another project. I wander through Brooklyn and try to take pictures.

I end up in Brooklyn heights, at a familiar Starbucks, and buy an oatmeal cookie and an iced tea. I intend to head to the Promenade but stop on the steps of abandoned store, with my cookie and my drink.

I put the Starbucks bag in my pocket because I can't bring myself to throw it away. I feel like a piece of trash caught in the wind.

I want to go home and remember I don't have one.

MONDAY PART TWO

I found a deer tick on my side today, already engorged with my blood, fat and flat like a pumpkin seed. I've had lyme disease before and I've said well past the point of it being funny: I don't recommend it. When simple pulling doesn't work, I offer to have it cut out of me.

It will be fine, I suppose, but this discovery makes me think about my mortality, about what should be important.

I'm on the subway, shuttling under the water to the train station, where I'll go to what passes for a home. I'm uneasy. It feels like this train, this tunnel, could be a passage to another world, to the other world. The car we're in is neither overcrowded nor sparse, and I study the faces of strangers. On this train all our lives are rendered meaningless by our anonymity.

I remember.

It's hard having to go to the doctor alone, he said.

I stepped closer, thinking I would be sweet. You don't have to be alone any more, I said.

We're all alone, he said.

I catch myself remembering, aware that my memories feed off me. They grow engorged, eclipsing the future I should be planning.

I wish there was a way to cut them out.

(4.12.10)

TUESDAY PART ONE

I'm just a cliche. I know it, standing and smoking a cigarette in the rain, listening to sad songs and crying.

I remember when you first told me you loved me, where we were standing. I could go stand there now, but you're not here. I'd cried then too, almost, because I'd been thinking the same thing and I'd been afraid to say it.

Maybe I should have been more afraid.

I didn't want to be that person anymore, so afraid of getting hurt that I'd keep myself outside the fray. I still don't, instead continuing to poison myself with fond memories and hope. The sad songs don't help.

Now I think I know why you won't see me.

TUESDAY PART TWO

The pain is different now, familiar. I've been here before. It's not a welcoming place but I know the terrain. That part is comforting.

There's a sadness, mostly for what's gone, but partially for the fact that I think I know how the story will go from here.

(4.13.10)

Writing Contest: "No Chocolate"

I was assigned to heat #17, the genre of Romance with the subject "taste test." This is what I came up with.


NO CHOCOLATE

There’s no chocolate. It doesn’t seem possible that there would be pumpkin cinnamon or hazelnut with blackberry icing, and a dozen other flavors that Jeffrey’s never heard of, but not a single simple chocolate. He scans the display window again, as if he’s made a mistake. No chocolate. Well, this changes things.

The young woman behind the counter, with her shoulder-length hair streaked with purple, streaked with blue, appears to be putting bins of loose tea leaves into alphabetical order. “Excuse me,” he says, and she pretends not to hear him, and so he clears his throat and tries again, a bit louder.

She turns around quickly, flushed, as if he’s caught her doing something naughty. “I’m so sorry, she says. “I didn’t see you there.”

Jeffrey blushes as if he’s the one who’s been busted. “Do you have any chocolate?” he asks, and gestures to where they should be.

“Oh no,” she says. “Sorry, but you have to get here pretty early in the day if you want the basics, this close to Valentine’s Day.” She has a tattoo on the back of hr arm, a heart rendered into tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with three pieces absent near the bottom. On a better day, he might have asked her about it.

It’s only mid-January and he finds it hard to believe that people are stocking up on baked goods this far in advance. “But Valentine’s Day is a month away,” he protests.

“So is my birthday,” she says. “If you want to come back with a present.”

Jeffrey laughs, grateful that she’s reminded him that this was supposed to be something fun. “I just might,” he says, as he leaves.

*

The cupcakes were Danny’s idea. That feels a bit weird, on a number of levels. It’s weird enough to take romantic advice from Danny at all, but Jeffrey knows what it means and appreciates the sentiment. It’s also weird to be recycling someone else’s gesture, or so he thinks, but not so weird that he needed to come up with an idea of his own.

He sits outside the bakery, looking through his purchases, while Danny laughs at him from the cell phone he’s got pressed to his ear. “I still can’t believe you’re already in trouble,” Danny says.

“Shut up,” Jeffrey says. “You know it’s not like that.” Even though that’s exactly what it’s like, Jeffrey isn’t about to let Danny be right on this one.

“I know you and I know exactly what it’s like. You had to cancel something at the last minute and now you’re in the doghouse.” Danny takes a bit too much pleasure delighting in Jeffrey’s romantic foibles. It’s transparent and makes Jeffrey cringe.

“Sure, whatever,” Jeffrey says, remembering again: this whole thing is supposed to be fun.

“Oh, and you’re welcome,” Danny adds.

There’s now three sets of the cupcakes, three pairs. Two are chocolate ones from the grocery store down the block, two more are chocolate from a Starbucks, and the last two are mocha chip with chocolate frosting, from this bakery. The bakery has gotten only great reviews, and everyone says, “You have to try the cupcakes.” Unfortunate that they don’t have the flavor he needs. Jeffrey wishes he’d gotten another coffee, sensing that this isn’t going to go as he hopes.

*

“I don’t really like surprises,” Chase says, pouring each of them a glass of water.

Jeffrey had gone and bought a small gift box after leaving the bakery, lined it with paper and carefully placed each of the six cupcakes in it, before heading here, hoping still for the best but noting that hope was dwindling, and quickly. “You’re still mad at me.”

“Mad? No, I’m not mad,” Chase says, joining Jeffrey at the table, and setting the water glasses on the table. “I don’t believe in anger. I’m disappointed.” He won’t make eye contact. They’ve only known each for two weeks.

Jeffrey pushes the box of cakes towards Chase. “Here,” he says.

The box was from a store that Jeffrey had thought he would never enter, full of useless, overpriced gifts, scented candles and personalized key rings, floral-printed wrapping paper and floral-printed gift bags. He’d happened to find this box, the perfect size, and tried to forget that it cost almost as much as all the cupcakes together.

Chase eyes the box for a moment, while they both sit, silent, and then he removes the bow, methodical, and then the lid, while Jeffrey holds his breath.

*

The cupcakes sit on the table, a different table, still in their expensive box, still untouched, and Jeffrey stares at them as if they might offer advice. He thinks about calling Danny but remembers Danny saying something about being busy. He wants a drink, wants company, and the cupcakes are not sufficiently entertaining.

He remembers when things were going well with Chase, just days earlier, and a conversation he’d had with Danny.

“I do not believe you’re dating someone named Chase,” Danny said.

“We’re not dating yet,” Jeffrey replied. He wasn’t sure what the right word would be, but dating was not it.

“Whatever. What kind of parents would name their kid Chase?” Danny paused a second but when Jeffrey didn’t answer right away, he’d continued with his monologue.

“I’ll name my kids Pursue, Hunt, and Endless Quest.” His voice rose as he got himself excited.

“I didn’t name him,” Jeffrey said, “and we’ve only gone out twice, but I do like him.”

“I’m sure you do. But he can’t be as handsome as me, can he? Not possible.” Danny laughed a bit at his own joke, and Jeffrey didn’t answer.

Now he can’t help himself, can’t stand sitting alone in a room with a box of unwanted cupcakes, and he sends Danny a text message: “Didn’t go well. Want a cupcake?”

The response, his phone ringing, is almost instantaneous.

“The weirdest thing just happened,” Danny says. “I was just going to call you. Come over and yeah, bring the cupcakes.”

Danny only lives a few blocks away, which was very convenient when they were dating, maybe less so during those awkward first few weeks after the breakup, but now quite useful again. It’s a little past midnight and Jeffrey is glad he doesn’t have to drive anywhere. He heads out, clutching that same bag of cupcakes he’s been carting around all day.

*

Danny takes the first cupcake and bites, chews thoughtfully. “This is good but not spectacular. I’ll wager this a Starbucks cupcake.”

“Save the guesses for the end,” Jeffrey says. “You have frosting on your nose.”

Danny ignores him and goes for the second cupcake. He studies it for a few seconds and then manages to shove the entire thing into his mouth. “No,” he says, “this one has to be the Starbucks, first one was grocery store.” He says this with his mouth full of cupcake, still with frosting on his nose, and Jeffrey can’t help but giggle. “I’m a pro at this, you know.”

“I know,” Jeffrey says. “You invented this game, I remember. I was there.”

“I remember,” Danny says. He picks up the last cupcake and studies it, turning it over in his hand and then finishes it with three quick bites. “So this is that fancy bakery.”

“Amazing,” Jeffrey says. “You managed to get them all wrong. And you still have frosting on your nose.” Then, without thinking much about it, he reaches out a finger to wipe the icing from Danny’s nose.

“Did I tell you I entered a writing competition?” Danny says.

Jeffrey shakes his head.

“Yeah. I thought it might help me, especially tonight, dealing with you out on a date with some frat boy. It’s just a short story thing, maybe silly. They assign us a genre and a subject and we have to come up with a story. I got mine about a minute before you called and I was going to text you, it’s so funny.”

“Well, what?”

“First tell me what happened with Mr. Chase.”

“He’s allergic to chocolate, and claims he told me this last week.” Jeffrey cringes even in the retelling, remembering the look on Chase’s face as the surprise was revealed.

“Oops. Sorry.”

“Well, it’s only a little your fault. You suggested the cupcakes, but you never said chocolate. So?”

“My assignment, well, I am supposed to write a romance story. I am supposed to write a romance story about a taste testing.” Danny says, raising his eyebrows for punctuation. “I thought it had to mean something,” he adds.

Jeffrey doesn’t say anything for a moment, or two. Then he picks up one of the uneaten cupcakes, rotating it in his hand, studying it. He remembers a feeling, with Danny, a sketch of something almost lost. He remembers the night, years before, when Danny had surprised him with the original cupcake taste test, and he smiles. He puts his finger into the icing, and puts that same finger to Danny’s face.

“You have frosting on your lips,” he says, and leans in.


http://www.nycmidnight.com/2010/SSC/challenge.htm

Wish me luck.

An Eighth Grade Composition Assignment! Really!

I just found this, a composition that I wrote on Dec 17th, 1985. In case it isn't obvious, this is totally a work of fiction:

When people think of Christmas, they think of a happy, jolly time when everyone is happy and kind. Wrong! Some families, maybe, but definitely not mine.

On this day, five weeks ago, it was two days before Christmas. Well, we were decorating our tree (we always do it late), making cookies, and wrapping presents all at the same time. My mother was screaming and my father was drunk, as usual. When we were finally finished, we put the presents under the tree, and put the cookies on a nearby table. Suddenly, the tree fell, crushed the presents, smashed the cookies, and killed our dog.

So we went on a mad dash to get new presents, a new tree, more cookies, and a new dog. None of which we found.

The next day, Christmas Eve Day, was a mad dash once again. This happened every year. We found a tree, presents, cookies, and a dog. When my mother and I came home, it was night-time.

We soon discovered that my father was missing, and we went hunting for him, as we did every year. Usually we found him laying a gutter and then we went home. This time was different. We found him in a gutter but when we got home, our house was missing.

I looked up in the sky and I thought I saw a tiny sleigh.

"...and I heard him saying, as he drove off, out of sight, 'Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good-night."

Not Smoking, Now

Twenty years ago today I made quite possibly the dumbest single decision of my life. I accepted a cigarette on the ride home from school. I'd been an offbeat, gawky, nerdy teenager and in the second half of my high school career I was willing to do anything to change that image. It seemed at the time that smoking, along with drinking, along with whatever else, might prove that somewhere inside me was a kid who had potential to be cool. This is all my fancy way of admitting that I caved, with little resistance, to peer pressure.

I remember that first cigarette, a Marlboro red in Mike McCollum's car. I remember the taste.

I don't know why I gave myself over to it so quickly, so willingly, but within a month I was a serious smoker, maybe not addicted yet but perversely anxious to get there. Less than a year later, I was smoking a pack a day, inching towards two.

I let it define me. I thought it defined me.

I never really tried to quit, for twenty years. I never went a day without at least one cigarette, and most days I had dozens more than just one. I always said that the day would come, one day, when I'd be ready to quit, but I don't think I ever really believed it. It's hard to imagine stopping an activity when you're doing it every fifteen minutes, every day, for decades. I thought it defined me, and I didn't know who I'd be without it, and I was scared to find out. Maybe I knew the day would come but I couldn't guess when.

December 11th, 2009, I went out for a smoke, unremarkable as I paced around outside Richard's building and listened to "One" by U2 on headphones, unremarkable except when I flicked it away I knew it would be my last. All that time and I was right: when the moment came, I recognized it, and when that moment came, quitting was as easy as starting had been. I had imagined I'd be cranky, crazy, sweating, sick to my stomach, who knows what else, but I wasn't. I was still me, just not smoking. And twenty-five days later, I still am, still just me, not smoking.

It didn't define me.