by AnonYMous
I could dream, couldn’t I?
I watched the asshole across the street make so much money I wanted to cry. In fact one day, when I was feeling particularly vulnerable, I did cry. It was the day the girl in culottes shouted back at him, “Yes, but that isn’t art.”
He had obviously referred to himself as something other than a vandal since she looked far too cultured to volunteer an opinion without provocation.
His amateurish silhouettes of hip-hop characters Sharpied onto splayed-out New York City subway maps sold consistently well from the moment he arrived until he reluctantly began to pack up. Theatrically bending and stretching over his trestle table he produced his art while tourists and even some locals shuffled reverently past. Here was a real New York street artist in his natural habitat. You might be looking at the next Keith Haring or Basquiat. In summer he stripped to his emaciated waist, revealing badly rendered tattoos that only served to authenticate his claim on street cred. Twenty dollars bought you Essence of New York Street Artist available in travel-friendly cardboard tubes.
Families took selfies with him as Dad’s first and last fist-bump was immortalized. Girls secreted for him and young men all but genuflected. Jabbing the air with splayed fingers he punctuated his pitch. Meanwhile something so serpentine lurked inside his visible-above-the-jeans boxer shorts it required constant and delicate adjustment. The result was that he simply could not keep up with demand. Or at least not on his own. He oversaw an empire of three, sometimes four tables placed end-to-end by his casually employed acquaintances.
The law allowed one six-foot-long table per vendor but there was nothing to say you couldn’t display the same art on multiple tables as long as each was manned by a different person. And since his franchise occupied so much more surface area than the rest of us, his commercial presence was more forcibly felt.
His response to the girl in culottes was to wave a fat sheaf of cash high in the air after her. There had to be at least $2,000 in twenties. He was too clever to shout anything at her, that would end in handcuffs. He knew that and so, on some level, did she. He just wanted her to understand that he was making thousands out there.
That was when I dry-cried.
* * *
You’re good company but I have no other motives. It was a clarifying text from Catherine in case I thought there was any chance of fucking her. But I’d love to pick your brains about publishing and writing.
She was being responsible. Making her position clear. Probably following the suggestion of her sponsor. A disclaimer removing my right to object when she refused me sex.
But try explaining all that to a half-hard cock.
I would soon find out that what she was really looking for was far from literary.
She was interested in her ex turkey-stuffer. In getting back at him and or getting him back or maybe both. Having recognized some of his behavior in my book she felt sure I’d be able to help her navigate him. Okay, so there was no chance of fucking her but she could still give me access to her Pulitzer Prize–winning employer. A quote from him would be better than sex with her. She said she’d be my pretend therapist. As if it was so obvious I needed one. What a cunt. And yet as I thought about it, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. With the possibility of sex out of the way I could at least be more honest with her than I had been with Courtney. And it occurred to me that from the protected sanctity of a therapist/patient arrangement I could freely insult her by inferring that I didn’t find her attractive and that I had only feigned a desire to fuck her because of her literary connection. A lot of effort just to get a few jabs in. Much more efficient to just walk away. But that’s not what happened.
I had been asked to speak at the Rehab Center in Williamsburg and I decided to let her know since she mentioned she was a regular at the meetings there. My intention was to lay the groundwork for a weekly therapy session, maybe in her place, which would at least provide me with continued access to her. If I couldn’t fuck her maybe I could fuck with her and in the meantime get my books seen by her boss.
I was surprised to receive such an enthusiastic reply.
“Yes I’d love to, let’s grab a coffee before the meeting so we can go there together.”
I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to be seen around Williamsburg with such a strikingly beautiful girl and even better to be seen at an AA meeting with her. It would send out a strong message to the newcomer: sober guys get hot chicks.
When she texted to say she was having “wardrobe problems” my ego jumped to the conclusion that she was dressing to impress me but later I would realize she was agonizing over precisely what to wear to evoke the maximum amount of regret in her ex who was also a regular at that same meeting. She even arranged to meet me in a coffee shop whose interior was plainly visible from the sidewalk just around the corner from the meeting. This would provide the guy with a tableau vivant of the two of us together seemingly engrossed in a tête-à-tête. And even though I’d been told she wasn’t interested in me sexually there was sunshine in my chest when I looked at her. So when she arrived at the café it was impossible not to make much about her oh-so-cool spent-bullet pendant or the turn-of-the-century graphics tattooed on her newly exposed forearms.
She wore a pale blue expensive-looking short-sleeved sweater and faded and torn ultraskintight jeans. No coat on a night that was reputed to be one of the coldest on record. I felt it would be rude not to compliment her on how cool she looked because after all she might have put this outfit together for me. She looked like a rock star who had somehow been separated from her entourage. The impression you got was that you had about five minutes to impress her before they burst in the door and reclaimed her.
She had obviously overcome the wardrobe problem.
On our way to the meeting she saw someone approach in the distance.
“We should make out under that streetlight so he’ll be jealous.”
As soon as she said this I began to see what was happening. And all the more insulting now because she didn’t even care how I took it. I was as functional to her as a shovel. Let’s make out so he’ll be jealous was already manipulative enough but under the streetlight inferred a clinical Germanic efficiency. It was as if we’d already discussed the plan at length and I was fine with it.
I suppose she thought I’d be up for this sort of manipulation because of the books I’d written but she can’t have known how shocked I was by the suggestion coming as it was from an AA member with three sponsees and a respectable sponsor.
But mostly I was pissed about being used as a decoy to get the guy she really wanted. Not the best situation to unfold around you before speaking at an AA meeting.
Once inside, she sat in the front row, looking straight at me, which I found unnerving.
I felt kind of dirty about the whole thing because she was using my talk at an AA meeting to make her ex jealous.
So there I was, sitting at the lead table watching people take their seats when she leaned forward and handed me her phone. I was painfully aware of her ex’s eyes on me as he selected a chair and sat down. He couldn’t really look anywhere else but at me since I was the speaker. She smiled widely and nodded at her phone indicating that something on it needed to be acknowledged.
(It looked like an unsent text.) Lots of people here tonight.
She looked so happy. She really was very beautiful.
It didn’t make sense. Was she being supportive? Maybe she was just happy to be at a meeting. I was too distracted with what I was going to say to realize that the phone had been a genius move because it inferred to an onlooker that we were undeniably close. That she was comfortable enough to show me the contents of her phone. If not the contents of her panties. Maybe he had even sent her a text and now it would appear as if she and I were laughing at it.
At him in fact.
I nodded. Yes, there were a lot of people here. She laughed far too knowingly and shoved the phone into her tight jean pocket as the chairperson a
nnounced me.
“Tonight to share his experience, strength, and hope with us is …”
Her ex would probably already assume we had shagged and if he didn’t he would after she put up her hand and shared during the actual meeting itself.
“Great to hear your message and it’s been really wonderful getting to know you …”
Her breasts were aimed not at me but at the long-haired guy to her left and my right. She held her shoulders back and blushed and played with her hair. I blushed involuntarily. One of my sponsees had come in late and I saw her nod hello to him too. Christ almighty this had the potential for disaster. It was the first time my solid center of AA had become vulnerable to attack from my own actions.
It was just too close to home.
Her ex also shared and to my chagrin he sounded like a pretty decent guy. She had to be very much in love with him. He was lucky. Tall of course and humble looking. Not handsome in any conventional way, more like a hangdog type. Having initially agreed to a casual relationship he ended it when she began to want more. I was disgusted. I had just been used by a girl in AA. This was the first time it had happened to me (that I knew of) and if I was honest, the reason it had happened was due to my own ego and lust. I shouldn’t have told her I was speaking there in the first place. But I couldn’t help but admire the skill with which she had performed her part. I wondered how many times I’d fallen for classic traps like this. I was reminded of all the times Marian had “bumped” into me as we walked so that I might get a head full of her scent and be back under her spell. And of how willing I was to be subsumed.
After the meeting as I was being congratulated for my talk, I caught a glimpse, between the handshakes and shoulders, of her elegant frame leaving with the hangdog guy.
MAN’S GREATEST OBSTACLE TO SEX—WOMAN
#TheOxygenThiefDiaries
I’m in a PMS-related abyss of loneliness.
I was insulted. Why tell me how lonely she was but exclude the possibility of my absence being the cause of it? Because she only wanted me as a friend, that’s why. A confidant.
So be it.
Marian was confiding in me. Showing me her vulnerability. I should be flattered. She needed a friend and she had chosen me. I had managed to raise her spirits in the past and I could do it again. At least I’d be of service. Of some use. I vowed as I pressed call that whatever happened I would avoid being needy, cloying, or self-pitying.
Five long, sneering ringtones later she answered.
“Hah … so you were debating whether to answer,” I said, and it went to shit from there.
“Well, Deidre doesn’t think you’re a good influence.”
Her roommate had become my competition. Had I been blind to this all along and not seen that she and Marian were basically a couple living together? She freely admitted to having been a lesbian when she was younger but that just seemed to me to be something girls from Williamsburg said to appear cool. And yet her overgrown bush had been quite a shock. No straight girl would ever let that happen. Plus she drew attention to that girl’s ass on the beach.
Like I was her wingman.
I knew I should walk away. There was no winning this. But I couldn’t. I was actually enjoying the sensation of spiraling. It was in itself a mild form of high. And she was too much a part of me to just eject. I wasn’t even looking for sex anymore. Sex would have seemed too much at this point. Confusing of course because that body and those tits contradicted all of the above. I was not myself and I was about to prove it.
“I don’t just miss you,” I said, “I miss us.”
Silence.
It was the sound of secondary embarrassment.
Instead of getting over her I was merely finding new ways to self-immolate. She knew better than to laugh but it must have been satisfying to witness my decline. She knew that a line like that coming from me was a betrayal of everything I claimed to stand for. A tactic perhaps, but a desperate one. If I was feigning defeat then she wasn’t falling for it.
This was how the English lost the Battle of Hastings to the French. The English defense was strong and would have held had they stood their ground and maintained their shield-wall. The attacking French had to find a way to break through or they’d be starved into submission on foreign soil. They had developed a strategy that succeeded best against enemies lacking discipline. The idea was to attack with as much force as possible once, twice, maybe even three times and then basically behave like they had collectively lost their nerve and decided to run away. The commanding officers feigned panic and shouted orders to retreat while the foot soldiers threw away their swords and ran for their lives. The English, confident of their reading of the situation, gave chase.
But pursuing the French meant breaking their ranks and this was what the French needed to penetrate and massacre the entire English army. Those who “ran away” were rearmed at the bottom of the hill to wait for the English to run into their swords. Meanwhile a murder squad was assigned by the Duke of Normandy to find King Harold and basically fillet him so that there could be no question of competition for the throne. The Bayeux Tapestry has him receiving a neat elegant arrow into the eye but it was much more Tarantino than that.
All’s fair in love and war.
Anyway I wasn’t faking it, I actually meant it. When we first met I could clearly remember thinking she’d never let me fuck her. I was sure she’d just string me along until she built up enough contacts in the city to ease me out of her life. I was just someone to hang out with while she looked for someone more worthy.
Now that we were broken up the same fear repositioned itself. She would dangle the distant possibility of sex in front of me while she looked for someone new. The difference being that this time I’d be denied sex I’d already sampled as opposed to some abstract future possibility.
At one point, back when we were together, she was deeply in love with me. I remembered feeling the tickle of girlish kisses on my shoulder as we walked. Somehow I could feel the love even through the fabric of my jacket. Kisses that, even as I received them, I knew I didn’t deserve. And now there was something sweetly twisted about the idea that she should watch me suffer the spasms of pain I inflicted on myself by pushing her away.
More crying followed.
Primal guttural keening. Unbelievable sounds emanating from unknown nooks. Like cockroaches scurrying from broken furniture. An AA meeting cooled the smoldering embers in my chest but an hour later it began all over again. That car-sick feeling. I decided that all it wanted to do was pass through me and I was blocking it.
I sat still and tried to let it do exactly that. But I was too terrified to let go in case I’d lose all trace of her. Surely the cavernous depths of my pain was just the inverse measure of how dizzyingly high we had soared. And with her gone I had total control over my memories of her. I rewound them, edited them, played them with the sound down, watched only the dirty bits.
I repeated a mantra I’d learned in the meetings. “Let go or be dragged … let go or be dragged.” And slowly I felt something begin to budge. It was like exhaling an enormous rain cloud. The memories, the treasured keepsakes began to crumble and dislodge. How pitiless that I should be expected to let go of these valuables. They were of no use to anyone else. But maybe that was the point: God is the ultimate jealous lover.
* * *
“Dude, did you write this?”
“Oh hi … so yes, thanks for stopping … I—”
“I loved this.”
“Oh, you read it?”
“Yeah, I got it at St. Bernard’s Bookshop.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!! But wait … you wrote it?”
“Yes.”
“I loved it. I thought it was really good.”
“Thanks.”
“You know I write too?”
“Oh yeah?”
Here we go, now I’d have to listen to him pitch his book to me.
“Yes I’m … Junot …”
“No Junot.”
“I know, you just said that.”
“Haha, no seriously dude I loved this, and you can say that. I mean you can say I said that.”
“Thanks man,” I said, unimpressed.
As far as I was concerned he’d already given my money to St. Bernard’s Books and they never paid me. The only reason I supplied them with books at all was because it was a good endorsement to be seen on their shelves. “Saint Bernard” himself had actually stopped and attacked me one day for selling a book that was being featured in his window. He assumed I’d stolen my copies and was brazenly selling them a block away from his shop.
Apparently it was something junkies did all the time.
Bellowing at me in front of everyone he became even more agitated when he found out I was selling signed copies. How could I sell signed copies? Of an anonymously written book?
“On whose authority?” he roared.
“On my authority,” I said.
This was too much for him. He actually made a motion to upturn my table but seemed to think better of it when a passerby stopped to take a photo. This seemed to bring him back to his senses. When I contacted his assistant to see if they needed more books she told me he had stormed back into the store after his lunch break that same day and personally removed all my books from the window and shelves. She also told me it was Junot Díaz who had stopped at my table and I should be very proud that a Pulitzer Prize–winning author had praised my book. She even remembered him buying it. I had never heard “Junot” pronounced out loud before and even if I had I would have thought he was joking.
Meanwhile I watched the Latino “artist” roll up another one of his subway maps and hand it to a delighted customer. He had this habit of pretend-drumming after he made a sale. A sort of shave-and-a-haircut rhythm that culminated with him mimicking a cymbal crash. I trained myself not to look in his direction but it was useless because someone would saunter past with his cardboard tube protruding from a tote bag and it’d sting all the more for being unexpected.