for halloween, i dressed up as a sailor. so did kitty cat, though she wanted to go as the “sailor boat.” i told her it wasn’t sexy enough if she wanted to get laid and she showed up to the bar in bushwick with a  knee length navy dress that fit like a glove , one size too small across her d-cup (!!!) chest. niiiiiceee.

i sipped my half a dozen vodka tonics-laced-with-molly, slowly. though jenny urged me to flirt with every horny hipster that passed by, i felt okay just enjoying the scenery and the slow waves of the drug washing over me.  much softer than e. later, when i recounted the tale to my roommate, i realized i had been flirting with him all night and there could have been only one such outcome. but while i was outside, smoking a cigarette, casually asking him if his facial hair (mutton chops, moustache, goatee) was real (it was) and where was his accent from (florida, very south) and “omigod! i’m from somewhere sunny too” giggle giggle giggle that he looked at me. when he took off his wig, to reveal a ponytail, when undone, would go down his back, i also looked at him. my head tilted, my mouth a small O. despite the unfortunate phase he was going through with his hair, he was a very handsome man with large, wet brown eyes that exuded some cold, apollonian authority.

first, and foremost. there was nothing disingenuous about him. especially the way he tapped his sternum lightly and said, “on me,” as he gave me my umpteenth vodka tonic of the night. later, coupling in his bed, he kept his arm around mine and held my hand. what is this, some bygone southern chivalry? whatever it was, i took it, hungrily and thanked him. the tender passings between strangers, makes me desperate.

“i never…”

“really?”

in the morning, which was really 5 pm on sunday afternoon, his two flannel-clad roommates were on the couch watching football when i walked out in my underwear. oops, mildly horrifying. i played with their dog quietly until jenny pulled up in a cab and i ran out as quickly as i could, goodbye! i yelled out to him, who was in the bathroom. he ran after me, just as i was fiddling with the front gate.

“hey…”

i kissed his neck. i’ll see you soon. okay. bye. bye.

it’s fall now in the city and i feel like i am dying. diefische once said that i’d leave new york before i hit 30 and i mean to make that a prophecy. i feel so tired. this city is dirty and my apartment is tiny and all i want is… to watch wheat stalks bend, an ocean of gold out the single window of a cottage at the end of the world. no talking, ever. only the kettle whistling. plainness-ness.

i gotta say, i’ve never had so much no-sex in my life. lust seems to have finally fallen away in me for something else; something i find when i am in pigeon pose and reaching for an alignment that releases the grief caked in my bones. there, an opening. yoga. everyone should do it.

i’ve been saying a lot of goodbyes lately. i’ve turned down the frenchman’s offer to move to london. the doctor is lawfully married. i feel like i walked that one to the altar myself. please for the love of god, go. from time to time i dream of unicorns. oh, goodbye my life which flashes before me. the worst part of breaking up is the end of the story. there’s always suspicion at the start of a new book. although these days my usual reading habits have been supplanted by uh yeah, game of thrones. damn tyrion, damn him. in slivers, i’ll read coetzee or alice notley or anne sexton. suffering, lots of it.

i wonder if i could join a nunnery where i would accept my mortality and the boundaries of my body with daily humiliation. imagine life with just bible.

i write nothing. my insides feel like a tundra. i must be in love. like the way normal people fall in love, like my axis is finally in equilibrium. madrid to barcelona and trains along the coast of spain, an endless number of days. a boat to tunisia and back, pop up in lisbon renewed and made worthy by the day’s glory. keep keep on forgetting, and go alone. at night, dream your favorite dream; the one where you are in your mother’s house that sits up high upon the hills on a narrow plateau. there are rooms and more rooms and you look to make one your own. no one has ever lived in the house though it is old. in one room, a wall is all windows and it is night and all the lights in the valley are on. on the floor is the only father you’ve ever known with his back to you, transfixed by the view. he is cold and poor and soon to be lost.

the next room you reach is the last one and it sits at the end of the house. it is grand and you can see both sides of the valley from here. this is the helm of the ship, this is yours.

well there you go. you got lazy, sunk your youth into a man you couldn’t keep (but kept you he did), fell in love with other men (or did you), worked, bought dresses you couldn’t afford, moved your 600 books across the country and then back and then further and never back, stood extremely still and far away as he married her…it was coming, still, somehow that sleight of hand like the glimmer of the scythe that passes right underneath your chin. oh fuck, what do you care, really.

i read little, i write less. i work half-assedly. i hold his hand or he holds mine as the cab speeds towards university place. i hope i bleed soon. unicorn, bluejay, the frenchman, that dentist from georgia?, john marker, michael so beautiful like prince william before he got ugly but too young, unicorn, he deserves two honorable mentions cause i think this man is going to be like a barrel of oil, let me sink. what’s the difference between falling in love and dying? or dying and anything else.

due in paris in 6 weeks for a wedding. the frenchman’s friend is marrying a bureaucrat in brittany. i am his date. after the wedding, we’re going to drive to deauville and stay at a hotel that proust used to frequent. there i will divine the secrets of how to open a portal of memories from eating yes, a fucking french pastry. we will drop by normandy where i will kiss the ground our troops landed. and back to paris, then rome. six days in the eternal city. i just want one really good lay to make me forget everything. a train to florence, la traviata, tuscany, lots of red wine. i want to see the paintings of the masters and think in wonder how this world contained them.

and then back to la where i will take the stand and have my past turned into facts in the name of justice. a concept as tawdry and ill-used as love. afterwards, after everything is done, i will promptly drop myself into the pacific where my body will sink to the bottom of the ocean and there it will stay until my flesh is stripped from my bones and all that was me will wash up on the beaches of santa monica.

after enough time, a child bent under the noon-day sun will gingerly scoop the flesh-now-sand of me into her pail. she pats it down and turns it over with dexterity; a mound that stands clumsily. look mother, look what i made.

quickly, before i go to dinner:

jbird: white male from connecticut, went to a private school in nyc, attended a small liberal arts college in new england where he majored in philosophy and comp sci. was on the sailing team for all four years (“is that even a sport?” was my response. “kind of,” he said blankly). has a serious case of the wasp blues. whatever the nature of his yearnings, they are repressed and compacted into his 5’9 frame. ladies, he is sinewy and strong and comes equipped with washboard abs and cumgutters.  loves to ski and fucks me perfunctorily and has the most lovely green eyes that get watery clear in the evening and then startlingly blue in the mornings. turning 31 this year, and a mid-level associate at biglaw, he said on our fifth date, “i am a very unhappy person.”

john the baptist: if i were to start a cult, and i needed a male prophet who was charismatic and instantly trustworthy, lovable and fucked every acolyte with tender abandon, he’d be my man. i glow when i think and talk about him because he lacks all pretense and is so goddamn pure. note: magnum condoms. he is also the spitting image of ryan gosling. he has brown eyes, but i still want him. characteristically wburg hipster thin. hebrew script tattooed on his arms. he cradles me after we fuck, and while we fuck his voice drops to a gravely register–”oh baby, oh darlin’ you are so good.” he makes good music and says in his artless, careless way that he “hates money and being poor sucks but being blind is worse.” live forever john.

oppa: haven’t called a man that in years. haven’t dated or fucked a korean guy in forever. the last one, the doctor cauterized my nerve endings and i couldn’t ever look at a man that looked like him without my insides freefalling. and boy does this one really look like him. the same clean features and vaguely boyish face that korean women tend to go gaga for. he’s a pothead and not as broad shouldered as the doctor, but amazingly and i mean amazingly ripped. swims laps everyday. i like them pretty and well formed. he fucked me nonstop for one hour and then asked me shyly if he could choke me. when he came, he bent low and i put my arms around him and please forgive me for this, but just pretended that he was you and that i could have you without having everything else of you.

unicorn: surprise, surprise. when there’s blood in the water, they all come, don’t they. he texted me this weekend, simply, “just had a crazy vivid dream and you were in it. wow. very real. ok back to sleep.” i want this one bad and therefore must play it very, very cool. he is older and better and taller and richer than all of them and so excruciatingly man-vulnerable in bed that i can’t even think about it without going cross-eyed.