I put away the notebook and look up. Something’s doing on the next block. Take out the book, look at it, put it away. Car commotion, people in the street, but what was I looking for second time I opened the book? Did it so quick I forgot to look for what I started out to and now I forget what that was. Memo to someone—myself? An anagor—somewhere, whatever the word is? Realization, reclamation, recognition of my own situation, nature and character—something like that? I take out the book, look at what I wrote. Last stanza, include whatever you do, even to concluding with, etcet etcet, snow and rain, dinner at five tomor, pop in hosp, what the heck’s hart smarting? and I cross it out with my pen till I can’t read it. Here and now feelings, meeting Helene, just to be with someone tonight, etcet etcet—makes sense but’s nothing new. I cross out all those too, worried someone one day might see what I wrote and wonder what was with him. I write “Anorisis or anagisis or some other an-isis or -asis—look it up. Word’s in Web’s 3rd.” First stumbled on it when? Was looking up anagoge not long back, fourth time it seemed in as many weeks. Some words are like that with me. Heuristic’s another—why can’t I remember what it means? “Anagoge & heuristic,” I write. “Lk em up & how to pronounc anagog again.” Pen runs dry on “n”. I unscrew it, squeeze the bladder, nothing inside. Ink’s one of the only things one can’t borrow from a passerby. Plenty of things, but I know what I mean. I put the pen away. Strapy wrapy legs—oh so po. My eyes already ache. Ruty souns aboun is abysmal, abominable—quick, which, if forced to make an instant deadline printing decision between those two, would read better and would I choose? I close the nobook—abandonable—and put it in my coat. Of course. What I wanted to do and was in that book was that love buzwax, marag, tot. Maybe then, with an adjective adjective woman, one who makes trenchant observations about me I’ve been unable to hit upon on my own, things would change for me somewhat. Woman who unscrews me, presses my bladder, I don’t know if the latter act works, till I run dry. Who holds me and let me hold her while I sleep. No lets, we just do: hold each other going into and in sleep and when we wake up. To know when I’ve awakened that I’ve held her and am holding her. Of course I’d know I’m holding her because I’d have waked up. But that’s what I want or something like: woman and bed simultaneously. Right now. This sec. I want to snap my fingers and open my eyes to it. I believe in miracles? Will if this one now comes true. I snap my fingers, close my eyes, say to myself, but maybe I should have first closed my eyes, snapped my fingers, said to myself, anyway I close my eyes again, snap my fingers, say to myself “Me with Helene in Helene’s bed what I want right now, please.” Forget the please. Too much like when I used to pray to God out of fear every night before I fell asleep. God please this, please that, God please keep my mommy well, sister unsick, daddy making money and alive, God no awful war, enemy soldiers landing ashore, please God I beg, wish, swear I’ll be a good boy from now on and pray to you as much as you like, and please if there’s anything I’m doing or not doing you’re not pleased with, please let me know. Close my eyes, snap my fingers, say to myself “Me with Helene in really any nice clean bed right now,” open them. I liked it when she used the word scoot. And way she moved. As well as what she didn’t say and do. What do I mean “way she moved”? She moved normally, naturally, unaffectedly, but athletically, though not muscleboundly, as if as a girl she used to seriously tap dance or take some after-school classical or modern dance or early-on had exceptionally agile legs as if she’d run and won or second-placed in dashes and long-distance races in grade school and beat when they let her compete most boys her age, and also how she flew downstairs at Diana’s so sure she didn’t even think that flying down so fast she could have fallen on her face. Or just fallen, forget the face. Tripped but not gotten hurt. And “as well as what she didn’t say and do”? So subdued. That’s not the word. But something I liked. Not edgy, testy, overpeppy, sloppy, noisy, coarse, raucous, smoky, talky, scowly, mousy, so on. That she whacked the umbrella open: in notebook too. “Okay, Mr. Krin, now I must scoot.” “I’ve got to.” “Now I got to.” Or “have to.” But definitely “scoot.” This one I truly mustn’t ruin. Meaning she: I shouldn’t. Though with those phone calls? No, lots of apologies as I said. “Um, just joking, I was, but not the best jest-joking, no?” No, no more jesting in joking. “I didn’t think my call would wreak so much harm.” Or truth: “I was a little high. Not a little. Let me tell the truth: a lot. But you also should know that’s unusual for me to get so high. No it’s not. Truth is, if I’m gonna tell it, or going to, cause that’s, I mean because that’s or those are just another language affectation or digression I use to direct attention to what I say and away from what I do: I get high. Don’t want to but I do. No, truth, I do want to, because lots of times I’ve nothing else to do or think I don’t or just don’t want to think about doing anything else, so about once every three weeks I get high, but not as high as I got that night, is the truth. Usually by myself high. A solitary tippler mostly. I don’t like it though do when I’m doing it or planning to. If things changed for me in ways I’ve gone over with myself, I’d probably change that drinking habit as well as stop drinking a little too much almost every night of the week while I read and often just to get to sleep, and that’s also the truth. Doesn’t interfere with my work though. Wake up, regular time, no alarm clock, exercise, coffee, newspaper, maybe a shower and in an hour I’m ready to go, or almost, though ten to fifteen times a year or so when I get high the previous night, mornings till around noon will be slow. And God knows why I feel compelled to tell all this in my first call to you when you certainly didn’t want to hear it, right? Look: right, wrong, truth or not, and maybe half of that was, since I tend to distort as well as affect and digress—well, maybe not as well as, though I am a pretty effective distorter too—just see me, okay? You’ve no reason to even speak to me I guess, but what but an hour or less do you have to lose? Meet me I mean, not see, for coffee, tea or even a drink, because what I didn’t want you to think before, and I swear I’m not trying now to affect, digress or distort, is that drink’s any kind of problem with me. Those ten to fifteen mornings-after a year perhaps, but usually when I start work late I work later into the day than I usually do, and because I’m so tired from having worked late and maybe also from the evening before, that late day is usually one of the ten to fifteen days a year I don’t drink or hardly at all. And meet not tonight if you don’t like. Now that I think of it we can’t, since tonight, and what I’m going to say isn’t going to be said so you’ll think something like how nice that he’s such a good son, I’m going to visit my mother, but maybe in the coming week, so what do you say? Even a couple of drinks or dinner or both for two on me. You can’t? You won’t? You never will? You’ll meet? Great. Time and date and see you at yours or you at mine or just at the meeting place.” I want to hold her face in my hands and bring it toward mine and lean over the two to three inches I think it’d take if what I’m remembering now is right about her height and if she doesn’t raise herself on her toes to kiss. I want to. Yes. Very much. To open my eyes and find hers closed. Then open them again and find them open. Hers. Her to smile when I find her eyes open when I open mine. Her to take my face in her hands and bring it down to hers and kiss my lips. Want to. I. Lie my head on a pillow beside hers on a pillow or both ours on the same pillow and our lips almost touching but not speaking and then touching and our eyes closing, though I don’t know why not speaking. Sure we can be speaking. Softly, moderately, I suppose any way but loudly, crudely, though even there too. So we’re kissing and holding and possibly speaking and possibly crudely but not loudly and doing the rest. Doing the best. To have done the rest. To shut the light and her to turn over and face away from me or the light’s already off and we’ve done the rest and her to turn over and I press up from behind while my nose is in her hair or lips are on her shoulder or neck and penis against her behind or between her thighs. I’m sure I can get out of that window scene and calls to her service some way. L
ots of apologies. But not to act oafish on the phone. She’s a bright woman. She’ll probably respect the work I do. She looks like she likes poetry. Courses she gives. Plenty of poetry in there and that she’ll respect what I do I didn’t mean makes her bright. But all could be so nice. Live at her place if it’s big enough if first we worked out. Two bedrooms, one for her to work in, I’d set up and tear down the living room table every day or some other unused day space. I’d mind but adapt. All I need’s one drawer and a long shelf. Two incomes, not rents, how else can a representative couple like us afford to live in this city without a struggle, and 600 block of West Hundred-tenth could be along Riverside Drive or close. Maybe she overlooks the Hudson. Tugs would pass. Summertime Circle Line trippers. Columbia area may be near as she can safely live to City College did Diana say? If so my alma I’ll tell her next time we speak. Pre-med, then predent, but I’d frequently feel queasy when I entered the bio and chem buildings because of the formaldehyde and rotten eggs smells and couldn’t learn the formulas and laws or dissect the baby pig or earthworms. Wasn’t a smart student—I can get part of this into the phone call some way, maybe just to say I thought she taught at City but then remembered it was a college upstate. Now makes me wonder why she lives around Columbia: went there or to City for her postgraduate work and got a cheap flat and stayed? Someone cut them up and labeled the parts for me and in exchange I took the requisite swimming test for him in gym under his name. Never got a post-B. A. I’ll say. Not boasting of course. They wouldn’t believe him when he said he sinks when he jumps in. Got interested in Japanese language and lit through a deeply moving Japanese movie about Japanese prisoners of war when I was nearly thirty and waiting tables at a beach resort. But more from the book it was based on that I later read and took a quick Berlitz thinking that would be it and then private lessons from an elderly Japanese businessman I taught English to and cooked dinner for in return. He also taught me the sake and tea ceremonies and how to disembowel myself and make paper insects and birds. Started translating poetry on my own and for a while brought my literal translations to this man. “Hasenai,” he once said, pushing my other poets aside. “I buried his grandfather’s sister. He be the one you should assist and do. What if I say without saying why or when of then, if you’ll allow me, that I owe his grandaunt a grave favor,” and by heart he recited in Japanese the end of one of Jun’s earliest poems and first I ever heard: “Juvenile, goose-fed, young junk, halfcocked bloom. Pardon me, exceedable fathers, but I’ve got to make rot and humor and doom.” She might appreciate some of that. An ill-mannered autodidact. Hardworking, a bit self-deprecating, humble origins, funny-boned. Had enough of her stuffed pedants, pedagogues and preppies and might be drawn to a literary roughneck. But I’m not that ill-mannered or much of a roughneck and her men friends probably aren’t pedantic or stuffy and I’d love to get a pedagogical job. I want to say goodnight to her from behind while she lies on her side and she to turn her face toward mine and barely be able to reach my lips and turn away from me again and my face in one of those places I mentioned and hand on her breast, hip or thigh and other arm under a pillow or holding her shoulder or hand and to fall asleep like that, penis pressed, legs and chest. Sure there’d be problems but. Two bedrooms, not two beds. Two of us working in the same apartment. Two typewriters going at the same time but a door or two closed between them to shut out the noise. Two pens or minds or pairs of eyes going at the same time and the doors to shut out the quietness. Only one living room and bedroom and when she passes me on her way to the kitchen for coffee or tea, what? To brush her hand across my shoulder or head or back of my chair. For the phone to ring and both of us to go for it. Door or doors to her bedroom suddenly opened to get the phone in the living room. Or if it’s in the bedroom her phone, for her to say “It’s for you, Dan” or “Sweetie, it sounds like Dick or Jane—the phone,” and for me to go to the bedroom and touch or brush up against her or her chair and smile at her when she hands me the receiver if she didn’t leave it on the bed. Or she might have a long extension cord and bring the phone to me from the bedroom or even past the living room to the kitchen where I could be boiling water for coffee or tea. Or it could ring and I could answer it and it’s for her, her mother or last lover, her colleague or student or friend, and I’d bring the phone into the bedroom where she’s working. Or just for her to be in the kitchen around noon and say “I’m toasting a roll, want me to toast one for you too?” Or come in crunching a carrot and say “Want me to peel you one too?” Or hold a carrot or roll up and say “You want one too?” Or hold both up and say “You want these two too?” Or to hear her chewing or crunching a carrot or radish or celery stick in the kitchen. She’s in the kitchen, I’m in the living room. I want it to disturb my work enough for me to say “You make a hell of a racket with your crunching” or “chewing,” and she could say “Why, does it bother you?” or “Why does it bother you?” but she’d say “I’m sorry, does it bother you?” and I’d say yes and take the carrot or what’s left of the radish or celery out of her hand and even out of her mouth if the carrot or celery’s sticking out of it and bite into it loudly or take all three if she’s holding them and bite into each loudly and chew more loudly than she and she could take back the carrot, radish or celery stick, though I doubt anything would be left of the radish by then, or even the toasted roll or a toasted or three-day-old bagel and bite into it or two of those three and we could chew loudly simultaneously. I’ve done things like that. Or I want to have egg salad on my lips after taking a forkful from a bowl of egg salad she just made and to look at her and suddenly want to kiss her and she could say “This is a childhood fear I once had—to have a boy with egg salad on his lips try to kiss me.” Something like that happened to May with chicken salad I think, but I want something like that to happen to Helene with me. That’s silly but true but I want much much more to. To go to France with her for a month to drink, eat, serious sightseeing and sleep and especially for a week the prehistoric caves. To go back to my roots—wrong. To return, at least in my mind—skip it. Or to spend, if we didn’t have the loot for France, a couple of summer months in a remote bay area of Gaspé let’s say. Way up. Northern lights and deep in woods. Fireplace going every night. Fog, some days I want plenty of fog and most nights sky swarming with stars clear as whatever simile and for a while during that time not only northern lights but meteorites clear as that same simile too. And even if I heard and saw them all before I want her to tell me which star is which and when combined their constellations or parts and yarns. She looks a lot like a woman I knew who knew a lot about stars and sailed. Also with a cheery bright face, long full frame, long white neck, straight bright teeth, long light hair, but wavy and blond, not red and I think straight, long strong legs and little feet, which with Helene’s long skirt I couldn’t see, little to no makeup around the eyes and on the lips and cheeks, and who nuzzled and made love only when it was most expedient to and it seemed had little to do with me and wrote poem after poem on beach after beach, but shortly after I last saw her on one wrote she’s turning me loose and giving up writing poetry and living off her family to just write critically for the time being and study, read and teach. But this time with Helene or someone much like, meaning with a bright full mind, hard worker, no snob, someone I’m sexually drawn to and who’s similarly drawn to me, and with substantially a cheerful disposition and strong sense of fairness and constancy, I want it to be much different than the rest and to start happening soon. I want to love and be loved and be called my love and beloved and make love with my beloved and call out love love love while we do. To take long beach walks and bike rides and go berry-picking along country roads. All that and then some I want unabashedly. Berries. Together. To pick. Rasp-, straw-, black-, blue-and even cran-and goose-in a mutual quart-basket or two, one for me, with the black-, straw-, rasp-and blue-, two for it, gibt here ein kiss, fourth for you, something I once did too. Was when? Eight or so years ago with a woman where? Coastal Maine and so
meone other than May or that star-and-sail woman whose name I can’t recall and did that for a week and fell ears over heels for her for several days and she a little with me she said, though we both later said it could only have been because of the sea, fog, stars, fresh vegs and berry pickings and knew beforehand I was only bussing up to escape the hot city and make lots of love with someone and she at the time was the one woman I knew who, just as she’d said on the phone she’d been alone too long with her foxgloves and Muscovy ducks and wanted someone to bike, beach, pick and make love with too, “So come come come, it’s a long trip but not much fare and I’ll go in half on it and if this is any inducement, I’m as sticky as your city and as needy to be relieved.” I want to rowboat out with her or canoe which I did with that Maine woman too. Her name was Lale, star-and-sail woman Sue. Want her to catch a fish from the boat’s aft with last night’s fish as bait while I paddle or row. Want her to troll. Want to get blisters on my hands first time I row and for her to say next day “You’ve blisters, I’ll row, you troll,” or “I’ll paddle, you fish,” but this is too ridic. Even if it is. What I want. To sit facing her in the boat and look at her tightened thighs spread apart in her swim bottoms or jeans and that bulge where’s the vulv as she struggles against wind, current or tide. Want her to wear a sun hat out there and her hair to hang salty and loose. Want to make afternoon love. On a sunny porch or on top of a sleeping bag beside the fired-up fireplace with all our clothes but her socks and watch off if there’s rain or cold fog. Want to make love before breakfast on a quilted bedspread just after we get up and start to dress. Want it to come to us like that. Slap-bang, I want to, you do, down again. Want to take the hook out of a fish’s mouth first time for me and maybe gut the fish with her instructions and fry my fish whole with its eye looking up at me adverbially first time for that too. I don’t know why I want all those but I do. Watch because it’s racy. Want to lie there after with my ear unwittingly near her wrist and listen to its tick. Want to nudge those socks off with my big toes. Want the crazy colors and cushiness of the quilt. Sleeping bag so we can be sloppy. Fishing line out of stick and string because it’s simple. Want us to drift in the boat or canoe and catch another half hour of sunset. Want us to suddenly get fogged or rained on but close to shore and dripping wet. Want us to dry off in the house, cottage or bungalow and start to make love by that fired-up fireplace again while, just as we were, or something, about to put our clothes or robes on. Want us one dusk to plan out our lives together in that drifting boat with the sun half-past setting and mackerel or some other fish jumping and things in the air buzzing and loons crooning or wooing or whatever they’re doing in the water and maybe a lobsterman’s boat from far off motoring and a buoy from not so far off bonging, but other than those and some other unimposing sea and sky things I can’t think of right now like cormorants diving, nothing. Want the water to be clear, don’t want any biting bugs out there. No water skiers, moving or moored speedboats or low-flying planes. No planes. No beer cans, oil slicks, human feces, toilet paper, cigarette butts or filters from filtertips floating past. Want perfection in a setting other than in one with just clouds and sun or as close to one as I can get. Then I want to row or be rowed back and beach the boat and tie the line to a shore rope with a lobsterman’s knot and walk up to the house, cottage or bungalow though no tent, don’t want no matter how roomy, protective and complex a tent, and the house, cottage or bungalow not to be more than a few hundred feet from the beach and the path to it if it’s uphill not too steep and this structure should be wooded outside and in and shielded by tall shading undiseased trees and in the bedroom a little breeze and I want us to make love on top of or underneath a bedspread or quilt or just to throw the covers off and do it on a clean bottom sheet. Want her to later say she wants to have my baby. “I know you do or at least want to have one too,” and I can then say, could, could, and I would “Very much so, and maybe this’ll sound silly when I say it, though in some other way how could it? only with you.” First time it’d be for me too if something like that happened, other than with—but with her I was never sure it was true. Believed she conceived for sure but not for sure from me. Some woman other than May, Lale or Sue who said she was having and then had had mine but who was living with her husband and year-old child at the time and said he knew but because he’d become involved with two other people and one she intimated a man, even encouraged her to, but of course not to have another man’s child. So both he and I wanted it aborted but she’d always wanted two and close enough in age where they’d play together almost like twins which she said would take some of the drudgery of motherhood off her hands, and after she gave birth to the first her husband couldn’t get erect whenever he did join her in bed. In fact, saw them all together, and only time I met him, at a party when she was visibly pregnant supposedly from me and I was still seeing her once a week, something I regret now and would never do again with any man’s lover or wife no matter what the circumstances between them, unless let’s say they got married just so he could get U.S. citizenship or a work permit and weren’t living together as husband and wife, simply because, well, life’s tough enough, that sort of stuff, don’t want to hurt the other guy when he for certain doesn’t deserve it and I can so easily avoid it, and having no cohabitational sex for weeks or even months doesn’t mean as much to me as it once did. But he said after he’d said “I think we should have a little chat about the burps and beats,” and taken my arm and clapping me hard on the back though by his face to anyone else it must have seemed good naturedly escorted me into an empty room, that I mustn’t think unhighly of him despite anything Penny might have said, that he’s always had a very high opinion of me from everything she’s said including some of the things she said she dislikes about me, though she was only twenty-six he urged her to have this pioneer amniotic fluid test but only to see if anything was amiss with my genes, and he’s pleased as probably I should be to report I’m a hundred percent clean, that finally they’ve decided they never want the child to know its genetic father was anyone but him and hoped I wouldn’t do anything in my life, or help anything from happening after it like putting my paternity into possibly publishable poetry or fiction or journals I might keep, to crimp their plans. “I wouldn’t, why would I?” I said and that I think he’s a fine fellow and Penny’s never said anything but the nicest things about him and I’ve never written nor do I ever intend to write poetry, fiction, journals, plays or an autobiography of any kind so along those lines he has nothing to fear too. Then we shook hands, I think he asked what had been in my glass and got me another drink, called it a night for both of them though Penny wasn’t in the room, and I never saw her again though she did call a few months later to say she’d had a healthy baby in the last five days and that Marc, that’s right, Marc, as much as he liked me didn’t want her to see me again or at least for the next ten years if they stayed married that long. When I asked what sex the baby was she said “If you have to know, it rhymes with whirl,” and when I asked what name they gave her she said something like, well, it’s all something like, “I’m sure you’ll hate it and mock us for such a floricultural name so I’m not saying, goodbye.” For a few years after that I’d write and this except when forced to in grade school was the only time in my life and only when I was lonely and drunk some nights, long lonely drunken nighttime paragraphs I then called poems and later threw away in one trash bag because they were so stilted, formless, derivative, just bad, and I don’t write poetry, about my weanling I’d never hold nor see and who’d never know nor unknowingly pee on me…my year-old, two-year-old, three-year-old child who could resemble but would never tremble at my paternity…my little no-good nudnick kid whose folks should know my folks are prone to neurofibromatosis and diabetes…my young alloy, whose gender rhymes with ploy, whose name might be Troy or Roy, whom I’ll never live to enjoy or destroy, noy woy I knoy whether it ever reseeds my soy…my mine me moans thy mind I phones thine line chimes drones…all starts o
r parts of some of my “Me my poems.” Penny had the girl around eleven years ago, they emigrated to New Zealand the next year, one of their friends I bumped into a couple-years back said he’d heard Marc had drowned in the Pacific but wasn’t sure where or when and didn’t know anyone who was and even forgot where he got the information from or what when I asked were the children’s names. And Penny? I said and he said for all he or anyone else she knew knows she was still living somewhere in the South Seas with her girls, but she cut everyone off when they left and no one if anyone was going to the Pacific and wanted to look her up remembers where in Canada Marc was born and her parents were long dead. Some nights, when the drink’s gone to my head and I’m feeling sentimental and a bit self-pitying, I think this girl’s going to ring my doorbell one day and say something like “I just wanted to see how your nose and earlobes stacked up against mine.” Also thought if I ever wrote another poetical paragraph or paragraphless poem it’d be about a man who falls in love with this daughter without knowing who the genetic father is and maybe even gets her pregnant, even if the theme’s been done and done and for millenniums before. But Helene or whoever it might be though for now she seems my best remote hope. Want her to get pregnant on the bedspread, quilt or sheet or if we do it in front of the fired-up fireplace then on the floor. To teach school while she’s pregnant if it is Helene with me that summer and whatever summer that’ll be though I hope some summer soon. This one, at least the next one. Want my mother to visit us for a week that summer wherever it’ll be though I hope someplace uncrowded and Northeast and near but not on a secluded but unhumid shore. Her parents or mother or sibling to come for a week if she wants or friend or student if it’s Helene and she has favorite students and if it isn’t then if this woman’s also a college teacher, and to have the time for all this she’d almost have to be or a self-supporting artist of some sort, to come for a night or two. Want to move in with whoever this woman will be when we return. To vacate my place the previous June and go to France with her for a month and then Maine for the rest of the summer or just Maine or someplace secluded and cool for two months since we probably couldn’t afford, I know I couldn’t by this summer, a trip abroad. Want my name on her mailbox if it’s her place I do move in to. Not taped onto it but stamped if her name’s also stamped into the nameplate. And maybe not for her to be pregnant this summer in Maine or wherever it’ll be but reasonably soon. I can also see where some to a lot of this could happen or something comparable to. No, ridiculous, all of it, I don’t know what it is, sure it is, maybe it’s not, because I think she gave me a look and said some expression that suggested some of this could start happening and not unreasonably soon. Something like: not tonight, give it time, I’m talking about us, don’t rush, you seemed a bit interested in me, I seemed a bit interested in you, so? no harm there, just don’t ruin. I don’t think I’m fooling myself. Ask yourself if you are. Are I? Am I? I don’t think so. So no. Because I really do think I saw and heard things from her that suggested he’s a bit odd, that guy, or maybe spontaneous is the word or extemporaneous to be truly fair, but I think I could get to like him if it got that far, so I hope he calls but if he doesn’t then he didn’t and it wouldn’t be I don’t think because of anything I did or didn’t do. But I won’t call him if he doesn’t me, since that’s not what I do. Least not with a man I just met and am not bowled over by. But if—This how I think she speaks? Not quite but go on. But if he calls I’ll see him I guess unless he acts drunk or moronic, vulgar or worse, for that sort of behavior’s another story, one I quickly put down with a vow never to pick up again, no matter how short. But if he does call and we get together and I’m right about him, it might turn out to be a good thing. For I like a man who’s straightforward and just a bit aggressive but who still stays at the beginning and maybe for all time somewhat ungainly and shy. I think that was him. I liked it that he pursued me, continued to eye me, getting up close and just as he was about to say something, backing off, then catching me at the door. He could have let me leave, got my phone number from Diana or got Diana to phone me to say she has this friend who’d like to meet me, or just forgotten it. Party fantasies usually end when the party fantasized goes out the door. Wish I had a little more of that go-after-what-you-want stuff. But men are men—that’s what they do, are good for, trained to from puppyhood—the hare is loose: release the hounds—no matter how shy and ungainly or up to a point. Eyed me a bit too desirously sometimes but I liked it in a way for it said “I’m interested and if you are you can say so by looking at me from time to time in a certain though certainly less interested way,” or I at least didn’t mind his occasional desirous look or not that much. He didn’t at least goo-goo his eyes and lick his teeth for all to see and say absolutely the wrong things and too loudly, embarrassing me. Ah, but that balcony scene—he couldn’t have spared me? But he wasn’t that physically attractive to me, which isn’t to say I didn’t like his face. It was all right, nothing great, nothing to lob my eyes back to him and think “Hmm, quite the striker that guy,” but that’s okay. Better the looks most times, worse the insecurities and ego, or that’s been my experience, not that I wouldn’t see a man just because he was extremely handsome as long as he had many of the other qualities I like. And he seemed to have an adequate physique—adequately slim and straight, for his age, no pot or blobbiness or weightlifter’s stuffed muscles and sun-stiffened skin or with no ass which, unkind, limiting and even shallow as that might make me, I’m afraid I do mind, but I guess I could live with the big biceps and that kind of skin and behind. He was also at least two inches taller than I when I don’t wear shoes. I like that difference and to be taller than the man when I want to too. His hair was okay, not entirely gray, not a mop or blown-dry, which makes even the most gifted Latinist look like the most nitwitted TV sportscaster, and sufficiently trim and seemingly clean. But the way he spoke. It at least wasn’t a dull and dumb voice and one where I had to tug out my ear to hear. Smart but not arched is the best way I’d put it now. None of that “Now that’s good for a laugh, haw haw haw.” I think I’m remembering this right, but the history of my considerations and positions, though much less in literary things, tells me I can be quite wrong. But there had to be something I liked about him to propose when he said he’d like to speak to me again that he call me and I think it might have been a couple of things but particularly his voice. I didn’t do it just to later shake him off. Diana did seem chummy with him and she’s said she never becomes friends with any man who isn’t interesting, talented, lively and bright. She sends the others packing, she’s said, to forestall boredom, and not just lovers, unless they can do something immediate for her career and books, and even if he looked the helpful type, it seemed he was having a tough enough time keeping afloat on his own. But if he was up there at that colony of theirs he must be doing something fairly interesting in whatever field his is. Did he say? Don’t think so or didn’t hear, but then our talk was so short. What did he speak about? Nothing to give much of a clue what he does when he isn’t shooting down drinks and food and scrutinizing the calves and backsides of girls. We talked about the wedding reception I was off to. The kind of work I don’t do. How long I’ve been at the party. That I don’t like going to weddings or their receptions and he does. Mostly because he likes the accompanying food and booze? That we both thought it’d be nice to speak to the other again, but me a bit less than he and he since he first saw me, which could have been when I came in. At least I noticed him then, but not looking at me. What was he doing? I forget. But we first looked at the other when? Near the food table and bar again, when I was talking with a friend and he was with some people but seemed infinitely more interested in me. Each of us had a wineglass in hand. He stared at me I don’t know how long, seconds, then looked away. Why didn’t I look away first? Well, someone has to look away first, but why didn’t I? Wanted I believe to give him the incentive or excuse to walk over and speak to me or meet me at the food table or some place if he w
as too bashful or reserved to say “How do you do?” or “Do I know you?” or “Rooty-Kazoo says kerchoo to you too” while I was with someone else. Caught him staring at me the next time I looked. He smiled, I smiled, or maybe we smiled at the same time, but now I remember I smiled first. Why? Well, why not? No, wanted to let him know the first time wasn’t a mistake. Then it was my turn to look away but hoped I’d made my point and one I wouldn’t make again, which was to speak to me before I leave even if I’m with someone to the end. I also couldn’t just continue to smile and what expression do you make after you stop? So I had to look away, but while I was smiling. Why didn’t he first? I suppose because I smiled first and he didn’t want to be impolite. Besides, I was still talking to someone, while he was alone, so it was easier for him to hold his smile on me than it was for me on him. We also talked about marriage: that he’d never been and that I’d gone to my friend’s wedding under false pretenses. Did I get in my pitch for the institution? Maybe my face said it, for it’s how I feel. So he’s been single for all of his around forty years. If he’s over forty or even right on it, and he didn’t seem to be doing anything not to look it, that would put him in the oh point five percentile of his sex. He’s either lived a number of times with women, would be my guess, or for a while was strictly gay, but everything I quickly took in about him makes me doubt that. But just by the way he so eagerly and almost desperately followed me to the door makes me believe he’s the type who gets involved with a woman too fast when it’s clear to nearly everyone including the woman that he shouldn’t, and suffers a great deal when it doesn’t go the way he wants, which usually turns out to be the case. Therapy? Why’d I bring up that? Why even go into why, for I don’t want to once more go so far off the track. But I’m sure he scorns it but seriously feels he needs it and has been told so by most of his old girlfriends the last ten years, which could be the main reason he scorns it so much. Why do I think I know? Oh, some theory I have about men his age who do relatively little to enhance their appearance and in fact do what they can, short of drawing even more attention to themselves, to detract from it, as he seemed to, that makes me think they’ve not only never been in therapy, which if anything would increase their self-esteem, but also repudiate therapy, because they fear the changes it would bring or are just too lazy to begin or can only think of the long-term financial cost of it, which is justifiable within means, and of course several other things. Now that’s a psychological headful but what I’ve come to believe after knowing a number of men pretty deeply over the years, though my own therapist disagrees with my theory. What does she say? She says her male patients come in all sizes, colors, faces, ages and shapes and some wear five-hundred-dollar suits and go to beauticians twice a week for their hair and nails, and others cut their own hair with nailclippers they never think to use on their nails and bathe every third week and have never bought a sports jacket in their lives. Mothers, she’s said. Some men dress like slobs because their mothers always dressed them like princes and others dress like princes because their mothers dressed them like slobs. Or some dress like slobs because their mothers always dressed them like slobs and they haven’t much changed their ways and others dress like princes because when they were young their mothers dressed them like princes or they want their mothers to be drawn to them in some other than normal mother-son way or because, unprincelike and self-reliant as these men might be in every other way, their mothers still buy them their princely clothes. And women? I said. What makes them dress like princesses and slobs? and she said For all the same reasons, though substitute fathers for mothers for them, and in some in stances you can also substitute fathers for mothers for the way men dress and also mothers for fathers for the women. Anyway, I like a man better dressed than Mr. Krin and a tie would have been right for Diana’s party what with he should have known would be a preponderance of properly dressed people there, and what the heck, being suitably dressed for the occasion does more for you than not I’d guess. But I’m sure he has good reasons for dressing the way he did and I suspect the overriding one is his lack of means. Still, there was something I found sensual about him too. In the eyes, and I haven’t yet gone on about his smile, in that he didn’t footsy around and try to reach me by phone through Diana, in that he committed himself somewhat by pursuing me into the hall and saying right out his wish to speak to me again, but I don’t know or am not quite sure if sensuality and perseverance necessarily correlate. My experience, not vast but I think comprehensive with men, tells me they do, but that can’t always be the case. Of course it isn’t always or even very often and in fact they don’t, that’s all, so what am I talking about?—but that shout out the window of his, now that needs some thinking into. Really, if there was any one thing anyone I’d just met could do to make me immediately recoil from him, that shout was it. What was on his mind? I don’t know. Give it a try. Impulsion, self-destruction, sudden liking, perhaps desire. Perhaps deep desire. Or he needed attention, from me on the street and perhaps the people at the party, but I don’t think that was it. Then what? I give up. It probably wasn’t that embarrassing to me only because I was in too much of a rush to get to the reception to think about it, but he couldn’t have known that. Rush he knew but not that I couldn’t think that much about his shout. Anyway, looking at it in a different light, that shout could also mean that here is a man who will suddenly, and this I usually wouldn’t mind with someone I really liked, grab you on the street when you’re walking with him and hug you till you almost can’t breathe. Or kiss you squarely on the lips because he also suddenly feels like it—on the street or in a movie theater or even at a party filled with familiar people and that he’s also a person who screams when he squirts. Who twice a year or so despite his age will lift you off the bed with him in you and walk you around the room making these crazy carnal sounds, all of which I might like, that’s not the problem, but bounce you up and down in that standing-up position till you have to shout Put me down, you idiot, you’ll get a heart attack or trip and we’ll both be seriously hurt. Who doesn’t turn away from you after—I felt that. Who in fact turns in to you after. Who wipes the sweat off your face and chest after. Who keeps a handkerchief by his bedside for each of you to wipe his own pubic area with after, though the woman first. Well, I don’t see how I can say that. Who falls asleep with his arms around you after. Who when he does turn over loves it when you turn over too and press your body into his back and backside and squeeze his penis briefly and cover your toes with his and stroke and hold his thigh. Who you can talk to before and after and he’ll listen and his comments about most things about you will be reasonable too. Who jokes. Who always carries a pad and pen with him which I bet he also keeps by his bedside for sudden knocked-out-of-sleep thoughts about his work but not about his life. Someone who can quote a thousand poems. Who probably has a few interesting interests and friends. Who brings his interests and problems to his best woman friend and lets her share the interests and help solve his problems too. Forget the last, but someone I can have some fun with. Even be kind of dippy with—la la. The window incident showed that. Nuts as it was, to me it did. Let’s face it, he’s probably a bit lonely too. How do I know? Well, he just seemed to be. By what he said and did there and after, but I can’t be expected to remember everything or so early go beyond much more than how I felt. But he came with no one, didn’t seem to know anyone there but Diana, didn’t seem to have the greatest success meeting anyone there but me, and even there he nearly flubbed it when he had a much better chance of meeting me than I think he knew, and I bet he also had no one to go home to in anyone’s home so I bet he also wants to ultimately have a long-lasting something with someone and in the long run share an apartment and get married and have a child some day with that long-lasting someone or even sooner than that and when he does, well, this is pushing it of course, but when he does, well, by that time if things have gone as well as they can sometimes when both people are ready and available for it and what have you—wh
en the timing’s right, that old standby—I think I’d want one too. All that too. Yes, I’d really like that: living with someone, a second marriage and first child. I don’t want to wait much longer. I’m at an age where I’ve got to begin thinking I can’t afford to. That the baby can’t afford to wait much longer too. No, things happen like this. This is how they really happen. You go to a party you don’t especially want to and certainly don’t have the time to, but you go and maybe you do actually want to but you most definitely don’t have the time to, or you do have the time, maybe an hour, not much but enough to have a good time at the party or get a feel of it and what you’ll miss by leaving early or what you’re glad you’ll miss, but you meet someone you at first don’t want to, though that isn’t what happened to me, and even if he does act a bit odd at first—when you first speak to him, not when you first see him—well, that can show shyness and reserve, but you’re often a bit shy, reserved and nervous yourself, though you weren’t when you met him, so, well so what, you meet someone briefly, you’re somewhat attracted to him in a strange way you can’t quite explain and you give him your phone number or let him know how to get it, all of which is normal, and you see him again for a drink or coffee and if it still feels good and goes well between you you see him again and again and then what do you know but you’re in bed with him, which shouldn’t come as a surprise with a man you’ve seen three times since you first met him and whom you’ve been continually and maybe even increasingly attracted to, and all that’s very nice, you like to sleep with a man you like to sleep with but not one you think might just want to sleep with you once or twice, so all that’s quite normal too. In fact all that is great, just great, what you want and said for a long time you’ve wanted. Or you even, or rather he even kisses you as he leaves the apartment the second time you see him since the party, and your apartment of course, he couldn’t be leaving you in his. But he could if he was going out for something he or you or you both thought one or the other of you or you both needed—a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread, a bar of soap or roll of toilet paper—but this happens as he’s leaving your apartment for the night, so your apartment that second time you see him since the party, which probably was for dinner at a neighborhood restaurant—your neighborhood, his, no real difference—he picked you up at your apartment or you met him at his or some outside place like one of those neighborhood restaurants, but he escorted you home—and then he’s gone, you’ve kissed and he’s gone and you know something’s happened between you but you don’t know what or you do, you know what’s happened but you can’t quite explain what or you can and you look forward to the next time you see him which just a few minutes ago you arranged, and then almost before you know anything else the next time and which you sort of expected or knew would happen he’s in bed with you and it’s quick, the two of you getting into your bed or his is quick, for you invited him to your apartment for dinner or he invited you for dinner to his, so maybe you didn’t finish dinner or you did and getting into bed wasn’t that quick, and you drank wine with it, maybe too much wine, but you didn’t have the dessert you or he bought or made or got from either of your mothers or you did, you ate everything, appetizer if you had one and main course and side dish or dishes and salad and dessert and even these little cheese or quiche things with your pre-dinner drinks, and you drank nearly everything also, hard liquor drinks before and wine with dinner and brandy after or just a bottle of wine or two before, during and after dinner if neither of you that night wanted hard drinks, and then you’re kissing for the first time since the last time at your door, and holding hands and squeezing and rubbing fingers and he runs his free hand up your back or whatever he does and you run your free hand along his side or whatever you do and he says “Is it all right if we go to bed?” or you say “Why don’t we just go to bed?” or “take off our clothes and go to bed?” or just “go to bed?” for it’s much more exciting the first time taking off the other’s clothes in bed and you do, or neither of you says anything, you just take his hand if you don’t already hold it or he does that with you or you or he points a free hand or a head and you both go to your or his bed and you’re in bed that third time you meet since the party and next time you see each other or even the next morning if one or the other of you stayed overnight and no reason why you or he shouldn’t, since I don’t like, and not many times have I been in bed with someone for any other reason, when I’m in bed with someone I really like and have to leave it early the next morning and especially after the first night or he feels he has to leave mine, but anyway—without even a brief breakfast or just toast and coffee I mean—but anyway, next time you’re with him, either the next time you meet or the very next morning after you wake up together or when you’re having that first breakfast, you know there are going to be some problems with the relationship, there always are, so that’s no real problem, but that it’s going to be a long-lasting one—how long? well, maybe, no, it’s impossible to say—and a good one too. No, these things happen, they have happened, with me with my ex-husband and later with several men including my ex-husband who I thought might be my second, and I wonder if it hasn’t started to happen with this man too. I suppose I should just wait and find out and if it does, of course just wait and find out, but if it does prove to have happened or just happens, simple as that, well, all to the good. So far it seems okay. I’ll call Diana tomorrow or the next day if she doesn’t call me, but what will I say? First of all, since she has had a number of involvements with men I never knew of till they were over with, “Just how friendly are you with this man?” No, I’ll save that for later if it doesn’t come out in our conversation one way or the other or she doesn’t volunteer. If it comes out she’s seeing him now or had been and is still a little to a lot serious about him or it isn’t quite over with but is getting there and my seeing him would hurt her or compromise our friendship or complicate their breakup further or the situation between them in any way, I won’t see him till that’s completely over with or resolved in her mind and maybe not even after that, depending on how he acted to her if he was the one who broke it up or just in their relationship. But if none of that comes out I’ll say I met a man at her party, “You know who, one at the door just before I left, and he said he’d call, hasn’t yet, not that I’m worried he won’t, he doesn’t he doesn’t and it’s quite possible he had a change of mind, though it didn’t seem he would, but if he does, call I mean, what can you tell me about him, I’m of course talking about Daniel Krin, and if he calls you about me I won’t feel put off in the least if you keep our call just between us, though don’t hesitate to tell me of his if you wish, because for the brief time I said ‘Hello, got to go,’ he seemed okay.” If she says don’t go near him, he’s a flirt, worse, wants to slip it up every third skirt, even worse, mean and periodically very strange and even deranged, and that’s not just hearsay, dear, what will I do? If I ask why she thinks he’s strange and possibly deranged and mean, since being a flirt and so on about skirts could be interpreted several ways and if it’s just that he likes women and sex with them more than most men, that might make him even more recommendable to me, and she gives good reasons for everything else she said, well, Diana’s proven to be no liar and fool, so I’d take her word. But if it’s just that he’s an unreliable or moody person, for example, or occasionally acts half his age but not in an endearing way, or he’s temperamental, weak, cheap, petty, insincere and so on. No backbone—haven’t heard that one for a while, nor “cold as ice.” Solemn, introverted, old-maidish—flip-flops from this project to that. Finishes most of what he starts but has to know beforehand what almost everyone else seems to know afterwards that although all his works or the ones I’ve read or scanned, since I have only known him for a few months, are worthwhile to a degree and done competently, none are that dislodging or completing or advancing to make them important or exciting in even a tiny way. What am I saying? you could say. That he never shoots for anything monumental in the themes and authors he se
lects so he can at least wind up with something relatively original and big. Has brains and good intentions to spare, I’m not saying no, but also considerable self-defeatism. But, to finish up with him, since you did ask, didn’t you? he sometimes lives like an indigent too, which, if you’re a person like me who likes to split a check down the middle rather than feel called upon to pick it up, can put a hitch in your friendship. Not that he isn’t always clean and well fed and neatly dressed, though I suspect most of his clothes, even if I’ve nothing to base this on except their ampleness and style, come from his late father’s closets and drawers and much of his nourishment and even some of his income come from his mother, little as he’s said she has to live on herself. But maybe in this day and age, and excuse me for the cliché but this is only a phone conversation, of haywire mass-consumerism, if that is the right phrase, and imagine not being able to quote a simple cliché correctly or even quasily, and don’t tell me because I know I just did something not unconscionably but nonsensically wrong there neogeologically or what have you—and I honestly forgot that noun ending in ism with a hyphenless neo as its prefix for neo-words—he’s to be, and I hope you’re still able to follow me, congratulated and perhaps even emulated for living such a thrifty, stripped-down unupwardly mobile existence, if that last one, turned around a tad, is what they say. He does though have this awfully polished way of ticking people off who could do useful things for him if he’d only pay them the modicum of respect they think they deserve because of their professional status, pull and accomplished work, which leads me to believe he’s a mite jealous of other people’s success and their adeptness at living rather well off their teaching, reviewing, readings and books. But he says he’s plugging along on the project of his life now, but to me it sounds like another losing calling, so maybe things will improve appreciably for him the next few years. I hope so, because despite everything I might have said about him, I like the guy, so of course wish for him the best. As for your seeing him, and I care much less than you what gets back to him if you two do ever get close enough to confide and confess, he seems the type who has one affair after the next because, and I’ve a good idea what the reasons are but don’t think either of us has the time, he can’t sustain one for very long, and I’m referring to his affairs. Or else, or perhaps in addition to, he’s able to charm the pants off women at first if they don’t happen to be wearing skirts, and everyone should be permitted one poor joke per long phone call, though for all I know I might have succeeded there when while I was making it I thought it was bad, but can’t hold them because after a while they see straight through his delusions and the inadequacies I mentioned and know he doesn’t want a stable or permanent relationship. Having one would mean he’d have to change the kind of life he’s been used to for going on thirty adult years, which would put a damper or hamstring or even a diaper, and I’m sure that joke was bad, on all his excuses for the brevity of his affairs and his lack of professional success and other unhappy things. Now if you only want to go out with him once or twice because you’ve nothing better to do, I can’t see the harm. He can be very pleasant, appealing and entertaining, but don’t drag the evenings out too long. If Diana says some of that and at the end suggests I don’t see him but says nothing about him being mentally ill or socially or emotionally repulsive in any unmistakable way or a devastating combination of those defects, I’ll see him for a coffee or a drink. So far he seems reasonably interesting and okay. Not my ideal man in looks but not that hard to take. Besides, it’d only be for an hour or so one afternoon or night, and I also liked his smile. Maybe that more than anything, open and something else, and also his height, build and once he got over the jitters, his straightforwardness. But it’s way too early to be considering all this and I should do just what? Forget it for now or forever if he doesn’t call and definitely not call Diana unless he calls me and if he doesn’t, well, think about calling him. What would there be to lose? He could say no, I’m busy, engaged, about to be, lied and am actually married with child, have children, we do, two, three, she does but I’m her faithful live-in, I’m afraid I can’t see you because I’m this, I’m that, I’m the other thing, some new element recently arose in my life or just today or yes, I’m sorry I didn’t call, I was going to, this very moment in fact, you won’t believe this but I had my hand on the receiver just now and your number on my lips, receiver to my ear and had dialed the first five digits but forgot the sixth, phonebook open to Winburn, Windbreaker, Winermiss, was just running my finger down your phonebook page, so you could say that in a minute or so, but really now since that’s about how long we’ve been on the phone since you called, you would have heard my rings, now what do you say to that concatenation of events? I dialed you just before you rang but your line was busy, possibly because you were dialing me, now how about that for some kind of simultaneity of minds? I dialed you but hung up just before my call got through, if it would have which is to say if your line or even your exchange wasn’t tied up or momentarily on the fritz, because I thought you’d be out—I don’t know why, just something that popped to mind and seemed right at the time—and I can’t stand talking to anyone’s answering service, something I seem to have in common with half my acquaintances and friends including half the ones with that kind of service. Look, I couldn’t get myself to even fetch the phonebook to look up your name, though let me say straight off before you say anything more, if I haven’t already said it a dozen times, and of course I haven’t since this is the first time we’ve spoken since we met, first time unless you’ve kept since then a rigorous speechlessness, how much I wanted to open my phonebook and look up your number, wanted to dial you and have you answer, speak to you and ask if you’d like to go out with me and soon, and I’m not putting or trying to one over on you, but just thought that well, after my yelling out Diana’s window at you I felt, well, after my messages to your answering service that night I felt, well, even after we finished speaking on Diana’s landing and you went down the stairs I felt, well, but I had to be wrong, right? in what I thought you thought about me because here you are calling me unless it’s to tell me, and I don’t see how this can be so but you never know for if anything hasn’t happened to me once it doesn’t mean it won’t the next moment, not to call you, so what would you say—what I mean is you certainly didn’t call me to tell me not to call you, right?—so what would you say—and what am I now saying?—so what do you say I’m saying to seeing me for coffee or dinner or a drink, and how soon, since I’d love for it to be an hour or two from now or at the most tomorrow around noon. That’s what he could be thinking, she could be thinking. That’s what I at least hope she’s thinking or will. But I’m sure—not sure, but almost sure she hasn’t thought of me once, and if once then I’m sure or almost sure or just sort of sure she just thought of me briefly, and if briefly, then very briefly, almost subliminally if what I think is subliminal thinking is right: she saw the D in the Don’t Walk sign for instance and for a subliminal instance the D in the Don’t stood for Dan—since about a minute or so after she turned away from my waving at the window and went up the street to that wedding reception she said she was going or wherever she was going to—possibly to a friend’s apartment, perhaps to a lover’s, maybe directly home to be with a friend or lover or sick pet or just alone, not that anything I’ve done or find out about her is going to stop me from calling her at least once and probably in the next few days, not that I’m going to do anything more such as trying to find out anything more about her from now on till that call, simply because I’ve done more than enough already to snuff out what I suppose could be called a potential relationship, though she didn’t at all seem like the kind of person who feels she has to lie in any way to get out of an uncomfortable situation, if my stopping her on the stairs and talking to her was one, of that I’m, well, almost sure.
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