THE LAST LINE IS THE PART I WOKE UP THINKING ABOUT

When I first met G______, we went out for a secret rendez-vous, even though we weren’t aiming (or headed) for a romantic relationship. There was undoubtedly an attraction of some sort, and even a certain urgency to tête a tête, either of which would have surely had our respective girlfriends jealous. But perhaps more to the point, there was already an unfettered joy between us, one that was lacking in our very fettered home relationships, neither of which lasted overmuch longer. G_____ and I were both lovers of meetings, secret or otherwise, we both believed in friendships, and we both liked strangers, the stranger the better.

I knew G______’s face from the bookshop, just one of the many regular customers I’d seen over the years. Then suddenly I saw him twice one week: once before--and once after—I’d shorn all but a quarter inch of my very-long dark hair. He stopped short on his way out the door. “Wait, didn’t you used to---?” “Yeah,” I said.

The third time that week was the time we actually met. I was in yet another hairdo—a tall red wig, part of a costume in which I was reading from my first novel. G______ had innocently come into a bookshop to browse (a different bookshop now; Brooklyn, not Manhattan) and felt “caught” upon finding himself at a modestly-attended reading. He stayed, then liked what he heard. But as the reading ended and the Q and A began, he started to take his first chance to bolt. “Wait!” I called. “Don’t you recognize me?” (My costume consisted of details like 4-inch heels, a gold-lame mini-dress, pancake makeup and redrawn eyebrows; in my normal life I tended to wear Levi’s and soccer shoes.) “Yeeee…not exactly,” G_____ replied. “I work at _________, I’m the girl who just cut all her hair off.” “Oh!” he said very convincingly, though months later he would admit that he'd had no idea what I was talking about.

G_______ was a recovering alcoholic at least a decade older than me; he was a poet who’d been writing a few decades longer than me. For our rendez-vous he took me to a bar he knew in Brooklyn and we walked straight through to the backyard, one of those unexpected urban spaces with quiet, flowers, pebbles, and privacy. We sat on wrought iron benches and were prepared to order seltzer waters should a waitress come around; none did. We talked and talked, about writing mostly, and life, and the city; we laughed easily; we forgot our home troubles.

After a few undisturbed hours, we left the backyard sanctuary and G_________ walked me most of the way home, one neighborhood over.

When we parted on a corner near my house, G________ told me definitively, “You should keep writing.” Then as he started to walk down Manhattan Avenue the way we'd just come, he paused and turned around again; added, “If I don’t write every day, I just feel bad.”

I GUESS YOU'D SAY HE WASN'T MY CANDIDATE

A friend asked me Do I ever dance with my cat? Of course, I answered without hesitation. But then I had to think. The only time I could recall concretely was New Year's Eve 2001. I had succumbed to the flu that was going around New York that depressed-psyche, depressed-immunity winter, and I was home alone in flannel pajamas. When midnight struck I celebrated by singing about the happiest thing I could think of: waltzing with the cat on her hind paws, I danced around the living room chanting, "No more Giuliani! No more Giuliani!"

DARK MONDAYS

On this white Friday in Pittsburgh, I’m thinking about the dark Mondays I spent working at a certain New York playhouse, attending its phones on the box office manager’s one day off. I’m remembering how unbelievable it was that this space, on Mondays so dim, so silent and empty, had—just 12 hours before—housed such noise, such laughter, such crowds, such egos, such antics, such conflicts, such commerce, such fanfare, such dazzling lights.

GENTRIFICATION POEM
This is not a poetry blog. But this poem is a story.

Greenpoint

Jason and I like to
argue who found that
apartment first—no, not like you
think, he always gives me the credit.
I remember it was him because
when he told me: You take the L train
to ________ and then walk fifteen or
twenty minutes out, across a four lane
road until you hit a little park and luncheonette,
I told him: Jason! Walking fifteen minutes away
from the subway is code for Dangerous Place to Be
and don’t you know?: Parks are where muggers hide
and contemplate their prey. It was 1996 when we
moved to Sutton Street, at $825 for seven rooms
shared by two people who were never a couple.
The neighbors would have keeled over at what
we were paying: Polish and Dominican immigrants
and the American family across the street with a nine
year old named Elvis.

After us, Patrick and Anne moved in around
the corner, across from the laundromat and
above the hardware store; then Chantal below them.
There was one conspicuous hipster in our part
of the neighborhood, a fellow we didn’t know; and some artists
who’d lived closer to the River for a long time, but I’d find out about
them much later.

Now it’s 2007, I’m in Pittsburgh a year. I’m further from a subway
than I’ve been in over a decade, and paying what I paid
to rent a room in Fort Greene in 1992. I get reports from afar
that Williamsburg is buying and selling in the million$, that Busta
Rhymes calls it home, and according to Christina on Java Street,
the rooftops of Greenpoint are crowded with a skyline of drummers
and latchkey trustfunders paying $1800 for their railroad floor-throughs.

From seven stories above the Pittsburgh pavement, I wonder
about the infamous pyramid of urban renewal: first the artists
move in to the depressed area, then the students, then
the gay couples, and finally the wider breed of yuppy. I wonder
how much responsibility is whose to take, and what kind of damage
I did to myself and my neighbors when I paid 70%
of my income in rent, subsisting on canned beans
with chopped onions, and $1.25 slices, mostly in the name
of outgrowing my parents' wishes for me.

Jason would come home from a long day
at school and play some Bobby Dylan in a fury
on his acoustic guitar. I wrote a novel while
sitting in bed under piles of wool the winter
before the landlord changed the windows from glass
to vinyl; Jason felt lonely on the living room couch
we’d jointly purchased from Sidney the junk dealer
on Driggs Avenue. When we left the house together,
our street framed the Citibank skyscraper in L.I.C.
and he’d always say, “Tallest building in Queens!,”
after which I’d launch into the theme of “All in the Family.”

I didn’t get mugged until ’98,
and it wasn’t quite in Greenpoint but
a little ways East. By then the streets
around Graham Avenue and Frost were looking towards
a quiet war of Midwestern library students vs. Italian
home-owners and diaspora-Africa in Section Eight.
Sitting in the precinct on Meserole, I waited
through a Brooklyn brown-out before I identified
the guy in the 800th digital photograph in the database.
One officer offered me Chinese takeout, and
eventually my case would get thrown out of court,
while my mugger went to prison anyhow, for second
degree arson, recent and local.

These days I’m betrothed to someone I knew before I ever knew New
York City, and Jason, who’s since married and divorced, stops for
visits from Flint, on his way through to see his mother
in Reston, Virginia.

GREEK TRAGEDY IN ASTORIA
A letter found on the staircase of the 30th Ave. station (ca. March 2005)

Page One: “You are everywhere and nowhere. I constantly see you in front of me and I can’t touch you. That kills me. I’m tired of accidentally calling your siblings E____ and having to give excuses why. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you enter my thoughts. You don’t know how much and how long I just want to hold you, kiss you on the dimple your cheek makes when you smile, and fall asleep in your arms. Imagine what my pillow must go through every night.”

Page One (Back): “My friends can’t understand why when we go out and drink, I’m out of it. They ask me where is my kefi they know and love. But I have to lie about the truth.”

Page Two: “I see myself, and I can’t believe how much I’ve changed. I can’t understand how a woman can have that much power over me. (But you are worth it.) I feel so weak that I don’t have the strength to tell you I Love You in person or on the phone. You might laugh at what I am writing in this letter or believe that I am pitiful. I DON’T CARE. At least I’ll know that I tried. Every night I pray to Panagiatsa and Christouli to bring us together. I am afraid that my Love for you will be too much for your”

Page Three: “heart to bear, because mine is ready to burst. But one piece of my heart I know I can never give. That piece belongs to your Matakia, Trifera heilakia, kai to lakakisto magoulaki pou me treleni. I am sorry honey, I met them first. My whole body is shaking, just like that night we exchanged that passionate kiss. An innocent kiss as the song says. I wake up every day with a picture of you in my eyes, the sound of your laughter in my ears, and the vision of us together in my future. My lips form a smile and I”

Page Four: “feel like a young child that has been left to run and play at the park. Suddenly, my smile morphs into a frown and I feel a tear form at the corner of my eye, slowly coming to the realization that this is only a vision, and not reality.”

THE BUSY BEE IS A GROCERY STORE IN GREENPOINT

What is “busy”? Is it anything more than trying to avoid feelings, or people, or the quiet inside?

What isn’t busy? When was the last time you had a job where you weren’t “too busy”? Busy used to be a negative adjective. Then it became “multi-tasking,” a positive attribute, a supposed skill.

Thomas says that people with money no longer have time. That somehow, money never buys time, and the illusion that it does eats time when you’re not looking. When you’re too busy to pay attention, there is no longer time. Time expands with the attention you pay to life, life is in the attention-given moments. I’m not saying it right, it’s like a zen paradox that can’t be written, only meditated upon.

My mother has just called me at the office, and I have gotten her off the phone because I’m at work, and I’m “busy.” She thinks that because I now have my own office, and am the only one who picks up the phone, that I should be able to talk to her here, as if I am now a Lady of Leisure. My Mother Guilt Paradox: I can never seem to get enough time away from my mother, or with her.

Outside there is a furious snow shower (huge flakes) and the sun is shining. I’m feeling a little sheepish because I know the snow gets a good laugh when it hears me say “I’m busy.”