endgame. lchristopher.

You're scared to win, scared to lose I've heard the war was over if you really choose The one in and around you You hate the heat, you got the blues You're changing like the weather, oh, that's so lik

~author photo: in the mangroves of south america, feeling very centrally intelligent.

three and one half hours later, i am home. my head is aching like my brain has been stretched. it's nearly half-past midnight and i've got to work tomorrow.

she was wearing a short string of real pearls and ragged plaid canvas shoes without laces. shorts, a halter top, a light summer cardigan the color of sealskin. her hair is up, sort of, exploding in dark waves in the summer heat, refusing to be pinned.

she shines her light on people. the evening was like staring through a crack in the world of both our histories.

the start was like i was being interviewed, almost. socially interviewed, quality tested for assurance. but in a good way, a challenging sort of engagement.

she didn't take her elvis sunglasses off for nearly twenty minutes in. finally i asked and got to see her eyes. then we walked from washington square park to the east village. she teased me about being bigger, more muscular, having more of a man's body. i played shy, which isn't that hard to do, as it took me awhile  to get used to being bigger, faster, stronger, etc: [apologies to daft punk]

she asked me if i had married at one point, or if i had been. which was strange. this reminded me to check her hands for engagement rings, of which there were none [not that she's the sort to wear one anyway]. it's hard to read her sometimes, because so much of what is said is couched in terms that can be taken in a myriad of ways (which is obvs a defense mechanism, but it doesn't make reading her any easier). a lot of our conversation is doublespeak. it is apparent to me that we flirt hard, and i can see how i've since carried said behavior into other relationships i've had since then (some people can't take it, or think it is stressful, or hard teasing, and i can understand why).

e.g. :

so christopher, about this joining the military business. are you in 
the army? you don't look like you're in the army.
not exactly. it's a different sort of army.
did you pussy out?
no. 
really?
look who you're asking. *sideeye; scoffs* 
i'm not going to have to worry about you when you're deployed, then?
would you?
would i what?
worry.
no. not at all.

wash, rinse, repeat. sometimes i pitch them back at her.

she asked me if i was seeing anyone (paraphrased: "of course you are, you're probably seeing everyone") and i told her "i have a social life," because i'm cool like that (and it just so happens to be true). she mentioned a few old boyfriends in passing (including
the schmuck the size of an avalanche, who did not show up, and a boy i read poetry with in long island who died of an unknown overdose in alphabet city with a russian mail-order bride, who was probably haunting the bar we were drinking in, as he had introduced it to us), i mentioned a few old girlfriends to up the ante. i don't believe she's seeing anyone seriously.

having her tell me stories about her motorcycle, the geckos in her room in thailand, the nude beach she just returned from in north jersey, the pot cookies she smuggled through customs. our conversation comes  easily. it always has. it likely always will. walking through saint marks place through japanese restaurants to get to the penny
arcades at the back, then not buying anything at all. our families. people we know, old friends long gone. how things have changed. the hipster scene, and how our own social collective had no real driving force, was unidentifiable (and not necessarily in a way preferable). 

her trips in monterey, california, visiting steinbeck's worlds (i am obsessed with steinbeck right now), setting foot in cannery row (!!), telling me of the jellyfish out there. vietnam. paris. politics. music. she's lit on two potent margaritas and i am unhinged by her smile, which is her default setting. jane kept taking her light heather grey sweater off and putting it back on again repeatedly. she must have done this fourteen or fifteen times in the course of our sitting.

her hands genuflecting rhythm and time. she moves them a great deal to footnote her stories. here's where we were, here's where they parked, here's how we did this, that and the other thing. she's still not a ridiculous little girl, and i love it.  her soft solidity is so reassuring; her hourglass curves
such like leaning into the most challenging, glorious turns of Le Mans; 
[Porsche, Pont, Karting]
her skin is so perfect it's unreal.

the finest eyes i
have ever looked into whilst 
their owner's hair
 was spread in orbit across a pillow.

i have loved her body for as many years as she has spent hating it. that tale as old as time told between women and the men who love them.
her whole life or
in Georgian vernacular
All day long. 

there were a few moments of our past life that cropped up and were pleasant. she sings sometimes to herself, and was doing so as we passed tompkins square park (blondie, sunday girl). she called me by my first and last names, which is something she used
to do when she was charmed/pleased/pissed as all holy fuck at me, and it was something she knew i liked, and that was nice, like roses blooming in my heart, all at once, 1, 2, 3.

hurry up
hurry up, hurry up and wait...
come see
what you do to me...

crossing the street to cooper union, eating frozen yogurt (walking through new york city whilst eating frozen treats on a not-too-hot evening with a lovely girl is an incredibly early woody-allenish feeling), a bus jumped the light and i put my arm in the small of her back and sort of hurried us past, which is something *i* used to do. 

the touch crackled in my eyes, and i can replay that moment at will in my mind in perfect print 70mm Panavision. she was so light beneath  her summer blouse. her body temperature was exactly the same  beneath the tips of my fingers as it was when we shared a bed and a home and two cats that chirruped like a carillon when we  came to the door at the day's end.

it was funny, being back in that bar in the east village, sophie's, an old spot of ours from way back when. amazing jukebox that hasn't changed, with television, old dylan, the cramps, the fall, joy division, etc. she went to use the restroom and i picked up my 
billfold and pushed my money into it and realized that my hands were trembling. when i went to the bathroom i took my wallet with me.  i've carried her picture in it for ten years now, the one where she's standing on the deck of a house palatial estate we were watching on the long island sound. the one where we went in not long after to have sex in the moneyed owner's glorious feather bed roughly the size of a helipad.

walking jane to her car, she drove me to the subway. i didn't say no because her driving was one of my inital points of being attracted to her. she drives like she's going to tear the engine out of the car, and it is a treat. but she'd not been in the city for some
time, and kept getting the stops wrong. i let her until finally we parted ways on spring street, which was a local train (i take the express & live wayyyy the hell uptown). she told me not to get jumped. i didn't tell her that i still carried a thumbswitch
pocketknife sharp enough to shave with on me everywhere i went.

i do not know what any of this means, or how serious to take it. i just know that a great weight has been lifted, and replaced by something else. the need to create is still pressing me. somehow it is tied to her - she is definitely my muse - she alluded to the question of whether or not still i wrote about her and i of course played it off. she's still moving and the goal is to keep up. 

the optimal result from this meeting would be to continue a correspondence of some kind (coupled with lots and lots of hot sex, but i will take the correspondence, gladly). and now i am going to be quiet and see what happens in lieu of knowing what the next step will be. she may be in new york for the summer, i am not sure when she is returning to the far east.

so i guess the long and the short of it is:

i am only just back from a spinning evening.
my heart.
my heart is so full.
i have to write faster.

i must write faster.


-FIN. lchristopher. Sday, August 11, 2026; 4:01AM, Fort George, Manhattan Island, NYC.