By: Lisa Marie Basile
1
I met a kid from Nebraska.
And he says he watches the freight trains go by. And he says he's gained 14 pounds from sweet tea. He says he can smell honey suckle blowing from behind his window and he read most of The Idiot during a dust storm and he hated the protagonist. His father makes pickles and literally sweats into the pot. His mother braids her long red hair every night. He says he doesn't understand what toxic means.
And I forget everything I've ever known about TriBeCa. And Happy Hours. And the Poetry Project. I forget free AIDS clinics. I forget gentrification. I forget the people I've loved who call themselves musicians. I forget my byline. I forget the way I got there. I just want to sit in the wind. I had met forever.
I never got his full name until I visited the cemetery.
2
Well, I am on Avenue A with a balding, missing-toothed New York Times ex-pat still boasting his one writing credit. "But now I'm a photographer," he says. I study his face and he reminds me of Jocelyn Wildenstein, a half-feline, half-recovered meth addict. I don't believe him. He's a fool. His eyes are sunken and his lips are pulled down, but he was in his mid-thirties. And his hands are shaking, and it's not because he's nervous. I fake an English accent and tell him my name is Emma. It wasn't half bad, but it certainly wasn't creative. He asks me where I lived in the East End of London, and I say, "Near the Water District."
My friend, she's really white but she managed to pull off a half-Mandarin who grew up in Sweden. All I hear is "Ya! Ya!" to my left.
"Have ya golt a fag, ye?" I ask my washed-up friend.
"Sure do, Emma." And he hands me a Marlboro. I cough but try to look ladylike.
"Damn good when ye drunk, innit?"
"Yep," he says. And he looks out toward the Avenue.
I notice he's wearing a golden AA pendant. I cringe at myself for being stinking, and drunk and a liar.
He asks me what district again.
I wonder if he sees I'm a lush.
I watch his pendant jingle as he stomps out his fag and just kind of trotted away.
And he says, "Have a good night, kid. And so you know, I studied in England and there's no Water District. But good try!"
3
It's sort of amazing that there are people in the shower and at work and making sandwiches and kissing girls when you still think of them as a blinding supernova. You still think of them.
I am going to get back the words: This is the first day of my life.
When I hear them, I think of a culling song. The kind Chuck Palahniuk writes about in Lullaby. The kind of sound, the kind of word, the kind of trigger that might kill you, or at the very least have you ruin your own night out. But today I got it back. I didn't foam at the mouth. I didn't fall off my stool. I didn't get cancer. The quiet was just a stupid, silly habit.
I didn't listen to some singers for a while. Still don't. My friends said things, like it's been so long. I just didn't listen to them anymore. I didn't. Like "Elephant." Because no matter how far the past is from now, there's some semblance, some trace, some ghost booing, some portrait hanging. Somewhere. These songs were my songs when I couldn't tell the difference between light and dark.
I was on Broome Street when I listened. First, the songs start to play again, and then maybe later the stiches blend in.
4
I sit with a black dress on at Fat Cat. A man whose been looking at me for several moments comes and says that I remind him of a flapper-era gal. I would have bangs and pearls and a dress, and a long cigarette, and my skinny legs would be tapping away at the floor to the beat of a piano and a stand-up bass and a fancy footed gentlemen. I would would have charcoal eyes and the I'd be coughing in the wet, smoking bar. And I'd have thigh highs just barely tinting my skin.
But this lad doesn't know me, and I don't want him to. I just want to listen to that strange beat I'll never be able to understand. I just want to drink the summer ale and pretend I'll live forever.
And maybe stop laughing at that trombo-gel on the table next to me.
