the date. lchristopher.

She never needed anyone to get her round the track But when she's on her back She had the knowledge To get her into college But when she's on her back She had the knowledge To get her what she wanted

~author photograph taken by jane evers weatherbee; god knows where, not so long ago.

beso, amiga de mi corazon...

i discovered last night that i am charming in bed when i am not all fucked to the eyeballs on god-knows-what.

i managed to turn an absolutely destroyed date around into something that culminated in me returning to the lady’s apartment for dinner, a movie, a wandering kiss at the door. you know the type. where your lips are hesitant, not knowing exactly where this is going. then lips kiss lips, not cheek, and then you pull away and breathe in and the difference registers and you draw each other close, and you put your best kiss on, like your best tie or your best shoes, and you smoke away any thought that this was going to be innocent.

and then in the moments after, walking half a block down East 116 at 12am and realizing that a) I probably wasn’t going to make my train and b) when a Colombian kisses you that way at the door, she’ll probably kiss you more if you return. so amble amble back to the door and ring cellphone and buzz backupstairs and say thank you and i will take the couch and her saying back in that indirect way females talk about sex always always always at first: you don’t *really* have to sleep on the couch, you know.

now i do, you reply.

we read for half an hour before the kiss kiss kissing party begins in earnest (she: jules verne, 20,000 leagues under the sea. i shit you not. watching her read that was like someone switched on pr0nography. me: wake up sir!, by jonathan ames). her body is perfectly tanned, like a cacao bean poured into a 26 year old girl and then shaken only slightly. whispers and sheets and giggles. i am a terrible giggler sometimes. i once giggled so much during sex that i damn near got thrown out of bed. but there isn’t any sex cos she’s trying to be good. i tell her that my role as a male is to try and get her panties off. her role as a female is to try and keep them on. we’ll smash those rocks together until one of us tires or falls. 

she draws me on top of her and says: you lose.

i like it when you lie to me, you say, and reverse the hold easily, and your eyes delight in the game, the game,

the game.

her bed is so enormous after all of the floors and couches and air mattresses and backseats of cars and i feel myself slipping off again and again into something like sleep.

the whole time i am thinking to myself: i am going to change my life, i am going to be the kind of person that belongs in a bed this soft. all of the time this soft. hear me now and believe what i say is true.

MoMA:

she is a member and i am in top form. all of my senses are attuned. it is kind of like learning to walk again. a tightrope act of body language and eyepattern recognition. casual touches, the taking of an arm, the gentle press against the small of her back as we turn to go up the next flight of stairs. the collection of henri matisse’s work with pastels had me transfixed. Kandinsky i was lost in the colors and black slash delineators. every node on his palette reading like a contract of war.

i’m sorry about today, i tell her, leaving a line of kisses up her belly to her side. i slide my hand into the waistband of her skintight sweatpants which apparently had a walk-on role in the movie Juno. her underwear is designer and small and trimmed with lace; i do not see this, i can tell by touch, like braille. i am just that good. her hair there is light and there are no tanlines of demarcation anywhere. our shirts are off and our bellies are smooching little sighs into the fat silk of the manhattan night. i squeeze her neck gently and take her earlobes in my teeth. her eyelashes tangle in mine. her chopped bangs swept back with clips behind her ears. i pin her wrists back over her head and watch her reaction as her mouth opens slowly. i take her pulse with my tongue. i am exhausted by this day.

***
four hours earlier we were in the 17th Precinct on 51st and Lexington Avenues and I was trying desperately to remember what NYC knife law was as they had just passed an informal ruling on gravity blades (a knife that switches out with a flick of the wrist due to the weight of the blade - my knife has an oval cut into the hilt that allows, if you’re good - and i am unbelievable - to open it faster than any switchblade, and this is not the same thing, but is beginning to become so in case law...), as i had mine in my hip pocket, the cold weight almost begging to take my afternoon that much more off-course.

she wanted to go up to her office and get her coat. i waited downstairs patiently, why not? the sunny day basically sprawled before us. i was thinking, quite by chance, about towmen in the pacific northwest in the lobby of her securities building. it was on the way and the day was beautiful and a pretty girl has a way of making you unable of denial. that’s why men are mistrustful of women. it’s because you infect us with the sickness of impracticality if we are sucked in by your power. and we want to be that way all the time and society won’t let us, only you. it’s jealousy, plain and simple.

i was so lost in thought i didn't see what happened next.

***
from three blocks away i could see the tow truck's stinger/wheel lift settling in for a grab and i broke into a run and then burglarized the remains. the towman has done his homework: straps on the front tires (bullshit, lynn would say, they’re just for show; there for the insurance, they won’t stop shit). he’s jimmied the window which i doubt is legal and his truck reads NYPD. i tell him the vehicle’s not up and he has no right to move it (this is true). i consider starting it and throwing it into reverse but again, it is not my play. when you own nothing but walk along the lines of those that do, you have to recognize this.  

a squat latino man and closes the distance between us effortlessly: ”what? what did you say?” you know, that bullshit intimidation game. i laugh a little bit but my eyes are ironclad. because this is all i can see: i repeat myself - i’ve already pulled the summons from the windshield as i do so (without a summons, they will lose roughly forty minutes getting all the numbers off the vehicle and writing it up accurately. time is money to a towman), the door is open, and i’m checking to make sure the gearshift is slack and the e-brake up (you wheel lift a four wheel drive from the front as he’s doing on a non-manual shift, you’ll destroy the transmission and the vehicle will be worthless). i’ve already taken my blade from my pocket and put it in the center console in case this gets heavy, disregarding the canister of chemical mace that’s there (i wouldn’t know how to operate it anyway, i’ve never even bothered with such things but the attorney believes in strictly legal defense, as is his right and as well he should).

he puts his hand on the door and pushes it against me. i smile and snap my teeth a centimeter from his nose so they click HARD. Next to acting like you’re going to fuck a guy while you’re fighting him, nothing scares a man more than thinking your primary motivation in tangling with him is digestion. he jumps back about seven feet (good). He gets on a Nextel (bad). I double check the side of his rig (NYPD, which means the cops will back him, because technically, their paychecks come from the same place) (worse), and do a quick mental checklist of the whole situation:

1.mali is probably a block away right now and closing fast, and i don’t want her to see me acting like this.
2. he’s got the vehicle’s wheels strapped (i could undo the straps, fifteen seconds a side. it’s the Jerr-Dan system, I learned on it in PDX, but I prefer the Vulcan, which was my daily rig and doesn’t require them No tow chains either), and he puts the lift shortly up a few seconds later. it’s an american model and therefore not that high off the ground - the Urban Assault Vehicle could take the drop, but what the hell do I do then. Unstrap it, blocking off 1st Avenue? No good. We cut our losses on this one. 
3. Retrieve knife from panel so it’s not stolen and my attorney isn’t charged with anything when they do inventory at the yard. 
4. Give him back the summons. I know what happens when you really piss off a tow man. Things happen to your vehicle, property disappears. besides, this guy seems to know his stuff, he wasn’t out to damage it in any way.  I gambled with my time, thought it’d result in nothing more than a ticket. I lost.
5. conclusion of précis: **Walk away and save the date if you can**.

i let it go. i walk to the corner and mali is standing there and says: ”i’m sorry.” i say: ”for what?” and she says, ”if i hadn’t gone to get my jacket, we would’ve made it, huh?” and i say: ”if i hadn’t parked under the Queensboro bridge with only an hour of leeway, it never would have happened. forget it.” while thinking (shit, she’s right!). i ask if she minds if i make a telephone call and she says of course not. "To the tow place?”
"No, my attorney.” 
"I love it when you call him your attorney.” 
”He is my attorney.” 
”What is he going to do?” 
”Remove my bowels inch by inch with a rusty hacksaw blade while making me sing the Eagles greatest hits in falsetto for 9 hours straight?” 
”What?” 
”Nothing.”
 ”Oh.”

my attorney was at a Broadway play with his nice new wife and he gets a call from me stating that his vehicle has just been impounded due to my inability to adhere to the concept of NO STANDING. in my defense, it was a calculated gamble - in another hour the spot would have been free and clear for the rest of the night, and i was willing to eat a sixty dollar ticket for easy MoMA access. i overnighted this woman nearly a hundred dollars worth of roses the last time i dropped the ball. i could not be one millisecond late to this one. i tell him none of this. he says: get the location, it will be in a tow yard. the local precinct will know. we click off & we’re already on our way back uptown to the Met and i tell her stories on the subway car about towing and the mood is light. i figure i will call the 17th precinct on the walk from 86 and Lex to the Met and get the required informatics. I ring 311 and everyone is very nice and polite and they make me say i parked illegally onto the recorded line and then they give me the 212 and i ring ring ring the 17th precinct and no one answers, wash, rinse, repeat. mali tries and then we blackberry things around and even find some UES beat cops, both women, one hard as nails and the other sweet as buttered corn, i felt like we interrupted some intense lesbian psychodrama but of course i did not say this. and after a few minutes new york’s finest provides me with...the same number as 311. 

so we ring and we ring and i say what would you like to do mali where would you like to go with all of this and she says christopher i am **in** this, this is exciting and i think good, because this will be bar none the most expensive date i have ever taken a woman out on in my entire life and giggle to myself because there is no harm in it, but i would not say it to her either, because even i am not that good an actor some times. so we leave the steps of the Met and zip zip zoop we are back on the green line headed downtown and we ring the telephone all the way to the front of the precinct and mali dares me to dial the number while talking to the staff sergeant and i hush her because sometimes you are expected to be the boy and she puts her smile. down on command but her eyes, her eyes are dancing.

-scofflaw

i am branded by an undercover cop who looks like an undercover cop (too new jeans tapered out of style with the day, too balding, too new too big shirt to cover the shield and print of his sidearm). it will probably be about four hundred dollars to get it out. his secretary asks for the license tag number, which i happen to have in my telephones database i say yes ma’mm, i’m a scoffaw to the fullest, just please, for the love of god, let me get this over with, impounded. here’s the lot and locale. i text these to my attorney along with a phonecall that he does not pick up, as he is watching a play with his new wife and probably wondering if his lunatic fringe housemate has left a surprise for him, like a pistol under the seat or a kilo of undeclared #4 smack in the trunk (i did once manage to get on an airplane completely stoned to the eyeballs, without a boarding pass, with loose hollowpoint 9mm ammunition in my carry-on, and when he saw that fall out while i unpacked, his complete trust of me was gone forever). i leave a voicemail telling him where he can find his vehicle. i don’t bother offering to get it for him. we both know i don’t have four hundred dollars on me, and he trusts me, but he knows that i am me, and will err on the side of caution (his). so it’s him to the rescue again but i want to tell him that it is all right, because i am in the process of learning something important, here. (about my heart) and we are on the street and mali says ”i totally thought you were going to go in there and ask ”who the fuck is in charge of picking up the phones around here?!” and i laughed too loudly and thought inward and to myself: self, you really need to fix your attitude if this is the persona you are emitting as your default setting, your diner faire. some man is on the street yelling about crack sales and TRIPLE CROWN, TRIPLE CROWN!

***
and i let my hand touch her cheek and she says what now and i say what now and she says the day is young still and i say would you like to see a movie and she says i happen to like movies and i say how about portable cinema and she says oh my such as and i have a copy of [1]Brick permanently infused in my bag because it is so pretty and funny and smart and no one has ever seen it when i ask and she says lead the way and i say you first and we are rocketing on the green line back uptown again and i say are you hungry and she says i am aware of my stomach and i say i could eat and she says i have never seen you eat (i get this all the time, even before the days of ADHD medicines) and i say well then. she says, are you good with electronics/can you get my dvd player working and i say yes certainly because after the day i’ve had i’ll wire the fucking thing together with my teeth if i have to if it gets me to a place where i can hold your hand in the dark and steal a kiss after this godawful turn of events. we stop at the chinese laundry on the corner and i drayhorse my way back to hers. no a/v cables and no scalable coaxial so i rig up her work computer into something that might draw blood if asked and we are off and running like the very Andes.

she spreads a blanket out on the floor and we have a picnic in the middle of her living room in East Harlem [which is not now and never will be considered a vacation spot]. we decide on mexican and get our dolares out and walk down the street and i put my knife into my hip pocket and read the streets and they are like smokey the bear and his chance of forest fire signs in the national parks:

CHANCE OF FIRE TODAY: MODERATE. etc. except it is a light night and the neighborhood is sleepy.

CHANCE OF MUGGING/CALLOUT TONIGHT: SLIM. a few wandering eyes on her i bat away with not this white boy glances. nothing threatening. just showing temporary ownership, role of protector, what have you. if i weren’t so fucking stupid and hateful of academia i could go toe-to-toe with elijah anderson for my sociological opinion on things like these. as it stands, he’s the reigning king and i won’t go there. our food is ready when we arrive. El Paso Taqueria , 237 E. 116th Street, if you’re ever up that way. 

and we wake in the morning and my shoes are outside her door and our fingers are tracing, tracing the lines and curves of our bodies. she has to rent a car, meet her mother, spend the weekend in new jersey with either the Colombians or the Hondurans. she has an hour and is on top when she breaks down and asks if i have a condom and i say yes and she says you are such a boy scout and i wonder if men go around without condoms expecting to actually get laid after six hours of rubbing and necking and licking and light touches and strong hugs, do they really want to turn it all away for twenty five cents worth of surgical latex? so we do and so we are and her nipples are like chocolate drops caught between my knuckles and the light in the blinds and the blinds with the light and i am not really awake yet but we tumble for a good forty minutes or so and she says why did you wait ten years for this when i offered it to you back in ____ and i say because i knew that you were up on campus on holiday and that we were all the big important seeming men and upperclassmen and virginity is elusive and i thought perhaps maybe you would want to give it to someone you loved and she says you are sweet christopher and i say don’t tell anyone and then she hops out of bed to get in the shower and i can smell her on my hands and through my eyes and i watch her dress and her closet is walk-in and there are so many clothes inside it is like a candy-store of designer textiles and her shoes match her coat and her sundress is black over white or maybe it is the other way around and she packs a bag for her stay at her cousin’s house and has like six different swimsuits to pick from and i just tug on my *pressed* jeans and snap my Victorinox back on my wrist. she sits down too fast on the now-made bed and her skirt raises up a little and i say i can see up your dress and she gives me eyes and says ”anything good?” and i say ”you have no idea.” we kiss again and her hands in my now-short hair and yr hair is soft she says and i say yes and she goes out and i go out and her housemate who is actually her boarder comes out of her room and i say hello and she says hello and we do that little game of we’re-all-adults-and-nobody-was just-fucking-in-the- next-room-half-past-eleven-on-a-saturday-morning -ha-ha kind of deal. and there is Mexican lemonade left over from that walk-in place on and i sip it and we are in the elevator and she says, quite casually: ”it really doesn’t feel like it’s fifty degrees. i am going to freeze my pussy off.” and my heart leaps.

my heart leaps.

on the walk back through east harlem due to the trains being incredibly backed up to 125th street, yes, it’s showtime at the apollo, and walking through a neighborhood where the blacks hated me on sight because of what i represented. which to them was the end of their neighborhood. west harlem was already gone. the east was quickly being swallowed. mali is a beautiful girl and very fair but i am the great white north personified. and you’ve got no forum. what i am supposed to say? look man, i can’t afford to live here, either? it’s like whites when they get all OMG the blacks are discovering (insert predominantly white township here). we’re all fucked. every one of our races, fucked. but we’re a beautiful mashup all the same.

but i dance. i smiled when that dark fellow said: ”does that whiteboy need the whole sidewalk to himself ?”and he curled it low because mali did not hear him, but i did, i hear everything when i am alive like this, and i leaned in close and smoothed her hair in a tuck over her pert pink shell of a perfect ear, and whispered something silly and unrelated just so the street could see how beautiful her smile was, the sparkle in her eyes, the perfect turn of her hair. i traced her neck as practiced as a figure-eight and when she turned, i smiled and kissed her cheek, laughing at the street and the sunshine and the day. i know now the fury of the non-responsive. i don’t want to combat that which is not worth my time. i know that a pretty girl will make men storm the centuries. that coveted lap of Helen, lying just inches beneath that face that launched a thousand ships. i twisted the blade deeper than any flick scrap ever could have. i saw the fury in his eyes and fell in love a little bit more. her yellow shoes that matched her sweater, her Burberry shades blotting out all measure of the sun.

i see the man get blocked unintentionally by a group of men on his way out of the subway dugout on the green line north and read his lips as they mouth the words because he dare not speak these things out loud:

fucking black people.

i look at mali and she doesn’t see it and i don’t point it out to her, just move to one side so that she can go down the stairs in front of me, ladies first, and i don’t care how many people are backing up behind me. maybe that’s part of the beauty i covet so badly. this eminent blindness that others miss. i see it all. like riding a motorcycle and having to chart every car at each intersection as you shoot past at 35mph over the speed limit. every open door, every child that could dart out after a errant rubber ball. every pedestrian.

i see all of the bad ten seconds before everyone else, and it locks my chest up something awful, some nights.

because there will never be enough time to get it all down.

it’s nice, having a date.

a girl i used to knock boots with and think the world of texted me that she was in town and wanted to collide tonight. she is a locomotive of sexual activity (one time she met friends of mine and another woman, who i had also kissed with, said: ”so THIS is the locomotive!” and i don’t think she talked to me for a month). she is a definitive liaison. in brooklyn for just tonight before etching the vapor trails back to seattle, washington.
she tells me any time i am in capitol hill, where the men like to rape people on public street corners, she’s mine. and i just want to be my own. and i just want to trust someone enough to be fine with that.

i told her i couldn’t. i couldn’t tell her why, i like this glow too much, it is warm like the tissue paper right before the christmas present is revealed. it feels like hope and kindly yellow sundries, like wristclocks that don’t count away the days as gone, gone, gone.

the other day i told an old friend who is no longer on livejournal and who saved me in boise, idaho just long enough to make the leap back to neo jersey: i love my degas. i adore my degas. please keep it safe for me. i would throw all of my firearms into a smelting pit before i saw harm come to it. and i realized that i hate things that bind me to places, like furniture. and i hate things that bind me to laws. and nothing has bound me to more laws than these guns of mine. and it makes me sad. the great ship lchristopher. beholden to none.

i think i am having a crisis of identity.

it’s nice.

***

i come home. there will be much explaining to do. there will be harangue. i don’t want to upset my benefactor(s) and yet oh fucking boy.

i see everything when i am pharmaceutically vacant and perhaps that is why i run from my real life every chance i get.

but i always make the bed in the morning after love and the girls, the girls always remember me for it.

thanks for calling.



~FIN -lchristopher, Tuesday, June 30, 2026; 4:06AM; Fort George, Manhattan Island, NYC.