history of love, page 72

(i found this old conversation with myself scribbled across torn pages, coasters, napkins and magazine ads. dated april 23, 2004)

Going out for a drink alone on friday night. Delay my departure from work. Delay deciding whether to spend the night alone, or alone. Have scrolled through names in phone book. Don’t tell. Have left similar message on two or three answering machines. Don’t tell. 7.30. 7.45. Nothing to do at work. Lots to do at home. Nothing I want to do at home. Lots I can pretend to do at work. 8 p.m. Reapply deodorant, perfume. Touch up blush, make these pale cheeks rosy.

Out the door, into the elevator, out the door, and then the last door. Mist of rain, maybe drops. Back into three doors, elevator, get umbrella, bathroom, don’t stop at mirror, leave work for the final time this week. 8.20.

Walk down 9th avenue. Would get a cab if I knew where to tell him to go. Walk. Raining. Still haven’t opened umbrella. Cab stops at red light in front of me. “Head to the east village please.” Get out on 2nd Avenue and 5th street. Nothing there. Walk. Walk.

Open umbrella now. Think: you said you would publish. Think: you said you would transcribe dedushka’s interviews. Think: you said you wouldn’t think about him, about going back. You said it would be different. You said.

Going for a drink alone on friday night. Think: is this really independence? Or is this defiance? Or is this creating the sensation of hope, giving gaping masturbating inner-demons something else to suckle on other than loneliness or fear of it never ending.

Drink alone on friday night. Maybe you’ll meet someone, and he will be it, the reason for it all, and knowing that will change everything. Will change everything.

Walk over to First. In Standard now. Four couples, three gay guys and me, and the pen I borrowed, and my drink, and this song I don’t know, and the tunes in my head, and the pictures of us, and the memory of “no,” and the answerless void, and the defiance of defensive strength, and my phone placed before me, dark. No one will call. Couples never call.

How many more like me? Like me, right now. Next door? A block away? Should I look for them? Will they look for me? Who is fooled? Who is fooled?

I am fooled. Sometimes. Sometimes.

Bar-gazing now. Corona, Stella, something I can’t read, Amstel Light, Guiness, something else I can’t read. Have ordered many of these for others before. What’s touching their lips now while I remember bringing something to their lips? But not even. They have no faces. I don’t know who they were.

Dewars, J&B, Johnny Black, Johnny Red, Glenfiddich. Same, same.

Too intense to be out alone. Not for me, I am fine. But for the others. It’s a small bar. I am distracting. They’re living life-light. For this minute anyway. I remind them of the pen writing furiously inside them. Of their eyes intensely focused, of other days, when there was nowhere else for thoughts to go.

Don’t want to start writing about you.

Don’t want to start writing about you.

Need to pee.

Have peed.

Sensation. Is that hunger?

I think I’m having a good time, actually. It’s the writing, feel very centered and honest. Truth has its victory and I get to feel connected and unneedy of more than my own words. Have texted Vinnie. He is single and broken hearted. Is that why?

Third Chivas. Why the hell not. Is that hunger?

The difference between up and down is a single thought. More important than anything else is understanding why that is. Nancy. She’ll tell me it’s all nothing. My own figments taking over. She’ll try to set me back on a truer path. A truer path. A truer path. Funny how I want that path and don’t. Funny how I associate it with nothingness, but also the everything that will eventually come.

The bartender is called Robert. Musician. Masseur. Been searching for ten years. Still doesn’t know. Still doesn’t know.

Bar phone rings. Robert says, “Hello Desmond.” You pick up your phone too when you’re working. You do too. Did your phone ring tonight, baby?

Is everything I write actually to you? Bombay Sapphire. Tanqueray. Yeah. Think I might be hungry. Bus boy doing pull-ups on the bathroom doorframe. “Next one’s on me,” says Robert. May be a long night. Maybe Pier 63 afterwards.

Things getting more distant now. Does it really matter what has transpired?

Here I am. Guess so.

Bathroom again.

Hanif Kuerishi. The soulfulness I cannot reach.

230 Park Avenue South. Is it mine? Is it mine?

Will you come there, baby? Will you come, there? Will we understand each other on their 20 year old couch? Will their 20 year old speakers play our song?

Vinnie hasn’t written back. Maybe he’s happy now.

I wonder if I would make a good movie moment. I wonder if I would be the comedy, or the tragedy.

Better drink up. Better drink up. Bus boy lighting candles. Four jars, match burning too fast, two jars done, third - just, fourth candle now, but he’s not going to make it. There’s always another match. So why do we let ourselves burn, to make the first one feel like it lasted?

Don’t want to strike again. Don’t want to strike again.

And if you walked in now? Well, nevermind.

Knob Creek. What the hells is that? Maker’s Mark. Jack Daniels.

And I’m wondering, I have the hiccups now, are you behind every effort? Are you the impurity that makes no thought clear?

I have the hiccups now. Desmond (who’s arrived) says, “should I scare you?”

Yes, please scare me. Scare me more.