I had seen Jane twice before we actually met.

So the first time comes up somewhere else in the story – the Bushwick Open Studio Weekend in June where Alexis goes home with this guy Steve.  The next day, I run into Steve just as i am thinking about Alexis being with him and it was just such a lovely sunny day and i had just left the Barn and Angie was asking me ‘how is that ms 2ne1 of yours…’ and I respond that she was at some big party last night and had told me in advance that she was going to ask Steve for a sleepover and before i am even finished, Angle like interrupts me okay and she says, “Hey, wait a minute…” you know like she is all excited now and everything and she says, “…i think I was at that party…is she…” and before she can freakin’ finish, I am like “look, I gotta go okay…”

 

So like I walk right out and i mean she’s got the shit eating grin. It is funny how so many people thrive on vicarious thrills it is one thing that never turned me on but here I am hitting Bushwick Avenue and now I’m turning left on Myrtle and I am thinking about Alexis fucking this guy who I am well acquainted with but hardly know and it is not getting me excited, I want to feel jealous and momentarily I do but mostly I am turned on by it, the idea that she is going to sleep with all of these men and that I will probably be hearing about it and encouraging her to tell me while in some way, I still am angry less so that she is doing it and more so that she is telling me about it!

 

I turn left onto Myrtle and the sun hits my eyes so I go for my shades.  Right up on the left, is this place Little Skips.  Little Skips is going to come into these stories a few times, it is one of the places in my manual here as I go there for coffee with Sid the first time we hang out.  We are not going to go into Little Skips now at all only to say that the two times being described both take place near the place.  So I am in inner thought mode once the shades go on and the thought of Alexis has progressed into just a deep buzz of elated relaxation.  But just at that ‘ah’ moment, I hear my name called and there in the street just left off Myrtle is Steve making a point of saying hello you know, wanting to give me a formal greeting.  I go to slip off the shades as I recognize him and of course before I can even remind myself I immediately sense in his eyes that he knows that I know where he was last night – sure at first I would just say ‘suspects’ but this was a mind fart moment and a zap went from his head to mine; he is a bit taller for sure.

 

“Howie, this is Jane…”

 

I look to his left so as I swerve I am facing Skips and I see this woman with very thick sunglasses and she bluntly reaches out and shakes my hand mumbling “Hello” but quickly turns back to what is now obviously a confrontation that I walked in on and clearly he is momentarily relieved that he may have an exit strategy now that I am here “Did you see my show?” he asks but so clearly he and this woman are ‘having it out’ about ‘where he was last night?’ She has definitely been his lover and she already got the word from another Angie or whatever. This is maybe fifteen seconds that contains hours of detailed, visualized information.

 

I would just have to say that I quickly slipped out of the situation with a few quick strokes managing to have one more face off with the woman. Indirectly she is thanking me for leaving so she can get back to what seems to be brutalizing the shit out of him verbally and so this power that I sense in her is kind of sexy. The idea that she has some odd ‘Alexis body type’ if not “Alexis age group’’ suggests an erotic registration but I pass it off along with the whole moment. Until a moment after that when I step out of their zone and realize that I am completely overwhelmed with euphoria that this just happened, that holy shit, this guy feels so fucking guilty like at some point last night Alexis asked him “like do you know this guy, Howie Seligman?’’ and like he’s ‘’sure…” and so yeah, like I feel this power and this man-to-man shit, which quickly turns me right back to where I was, longing to imagine Alexis getting off and having this instant sex and the one night stand concept, given what I sensed was a slight fear of me but clearly a significantly larger fear of this young lady. Shit I am not jealous!

 

It’s the following Monday and it was again a hot, very sunny afternoon and I’m waiting for my vivacious assistant – Ariel – at Little Skips. She had just started working at home on her own and we had been missing each other and so the thought of seeing her again had me excited. I am sitting outside this place waiting sitting on a bench and as I am first arriving I realize that that Jane is likely to be there, too.  She has not entered my mind until now and sure enough, as I sit down there are two women painting the wall on the side of the place this is another example of the psuedografitti stuff and I notice that one of them seems familiar it is quite likely the same sunglasses and so I say ‘’Hi, are you guys painting?’’and they say ‘’Yeah…it is our mural…” and then she says, “My name is Jane…” and I say, ‘’Yes, I met you here last Saturday”” but i mumble off and she goes back to painting.  She is having a reasonably intense girl-to-girl with the other painter and i imagine they are discussing Steve and she is telling her how she caught him and how they are back together but that is not really clear.

 

There could be numerous contexts and I am just thinking, ‘well, wait until they see Ari’ but I don’t think about her or look at very much, only enough to sense that she is edgy and still harbors anger and that I want to force myself to get attracted to her but she seems bland and white and I can’t do it.

 

It might be helpful here to review what has happened so far: Chronologically the story begins with Sam and quickly Sarah Leigh comes along and then follows Ahn Thu and Thu Tran then Alexis, Samantha U, Jess,Lisa, Katie, Alexis II, SamanthaJo, Aziza and most recently Lauren.  Lauren occurs on a Friday night and we make a date to go out the next (Saturday) night.  Jane occurs one week later at the same event it was an encore with a significantly smaller audience in fact it was a dead night and we made a date to go out the next (Saturday) night.  I started to actually write these stories after meetingSam. It changed the way I saw things. The first time I went back to see Jess at Skytown just having completed her chapter, I was strangely removed and objective about her and coincidentally, she seemed more straightforward and cleaned up in terms of her appearance.  To a certain extent, I believed that it was all over now that I was writing about it, but then I went over to the Bossa Nova and met Aziza. It seemed like I could not shake this attraction addiction young women.

 

It started all over again. It was worse in a way, because now I did not even have to work at it.

The night of the first of the two Fridays, this would be September 20th,Ari and me and Sergio walked over to The Living Gallery to say hello and see the show being hung. It was what they called Bushwick Fashion Weekend.  (Throughout my life, romantic milestones always take place on holiday weekends and this continues today.) I introduced Ari to Samantha Jo who looked marvelously skinny and was wearing those kinds of stocking tights with no dress so that you could see just how small and tight her ass was. There was Nyssa who is always a professional and she greeted us all formally indicating she was going to give us a slight tour. In the right corner, the romance corner where I had performed on September 6th was a very interesting looking installation, it was violent and phallic and like painted tree branches that might look like exploding teats attacking demons in a Japanese Goth Horror epic.  Nyssa could clearly see that I was going to ask or comment or something and so in professional gallery girl fashion she piped in:“These are by Jane.  Do you know her…?  …she lives above Little Skips.”
“I think I met her once or twice…uh huh…this is pretty interesting stuff.”

 

“Oh, she is coming and she paints herself and does a whole performance!!!”

 

I did not bother to remember Nyssa’s response and simply grumbled and moved on.
Clearly, as of five pm on September 20th, I am showing zero to one percent interest in Jane.

I glance back at Sam as she is leaning over setting the jewelry she makes on her display table.

I walk back to try to flirt or at least see if I can be aroused by her. I pretend to look at her work noticing how obviously something they are and so now i have had a full palate cleansing.  And naturally Nyssa introduces me to a few other participants so that I can exit somewhat gracefully.

 

The incident on the 27th is so stunning that is has left me sitting on the side of the road and I cannot recall the sequence.It is a week later and the reprise Alberto event is on. Chrissy is there but she shows up maybe after the following happens.

 

The first DJ has arrived and set up.  I watch the door from seven forty till nine something.  I then go up and Rocko takes over.  The place has almost no one there and so I start dancing to the DJ and make their acquaintance by showing off. They are very interesting DJ Rave characters, both obviously queer wearing pajamas as outerwear and they are bouncing around and speaking Spanish. When the DJ first walked in, i noticed a strange six pointed star amulet around his lower chest hanging on a chain while his beard and the outfit made him look like an Afghani pal of Osama Bin Laden.  “Are you Jewish?’’ I asked…”No, I’m Puerto Rican!’’

 

“Close enough…” we shook hands.
So I am doing my usual show off dancing and looking a bit in the mirror and kind of just chillin.There is not any attention and this goes on for awhile. I have already lowered my expectations to believe that no one will show up although Alexis has been texting in that she is on her way.

 

Facing the Myrtle side wall out of the right corner of my eye, I see someone coming towards me. I turn and continue to dance so that my full observation powers are being constrained. The hat is the first thing that strikes me and then the sheepskin coat. The whole thing is quite hippie.

 

Classic hippie but as she move quickly towards me I see her boots and her stockings.

 

“Are you an artist?!” she is in my face so I stop dancing, no excuse me, nothing just “Are you an artist?” after I mumble, “Excuse me?’’
I come to…”No, I am a dancer!  Can’t you see?”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry…I really love these paintings, I thought that you did them.”

 

“That’s okay…the guy is right over there…Alberto.” I point across the way.

 

Again, unlike everything so far that I have inextricably detailed, I do not recall when we talked again was it before or after Alberto showed her his work but at some point I asked her that question and when I asked her the question, yes damn it hit me – is this going to be a book moment? I am precisely in the same spot in the room where this happened with Lauren the week before and I think “this is so NOT going to be a book moment” though something about her is a bit intriguing just the way she walked right in and yet was totally ignoring me in a way.

 

“What’s your name?’’

 

Time stands still…

 

“Jane.”

 

“Jane?” I am aware that I am not in a book moment, I am very relieved.  “Oh, I have met you.’’I do not think of last week with Nyssa, rationally however I say “Oh, you live above Little Skips.”

 

“Yes…” I tell her my name and ask her if she wants to dance.

 

“Maybe in a minute…” she turns and goes off to look at paintings with Alberto. Pretty soon young Colin is chatting her up rather aggressively. But I am quite stoned on weed and I go back to dancing and there is another suspension of time. Then, it comes along creepily incrementally that this is so different than the ton of bricks that have occurred each time before at the ‘my name is’. Oh…my name is…

 

She is it!  She is it!  She is stunning!  I am stunned…I have not felt like this in years.  This is beyond the previous book experience.  This is the reason the book started!  The pacing of the book has just changed:  all up until now was simply a preamble, the warm up set, the opening act.  Jane begins a completely different scale of time and a completely different adventure.

 

Immediately I think, dude this is ridiculous, this is nothing, where are you going, you are just stoned.  Then she walks over to the little love seat by the window, the one where Ari and I usually sit. She takes off her hat, she takes off her coat, she has a scarf on.  She is wearing these stockings that are quite like Sam’s and she bends way over to grab her phone out of her bag.

 

Her putting her stuff down indicates she is going to hang out for awhile, it reminds me of the early incident when Alexis – who is not here yet – stashed her coat.She comes towards me to dance a bit she is keeping a distance. The stockings end and the top matches and you can see her belly button and she has these stomach muscles it is way too much I am totally gone.

 

“Where are you from?”

 

“Los Angeles!’’
Alberto comes up to me and tells me that she wants to buy a painting.  She walks back to see the small pieces in detail and look at Colin’s work.  I watch her behind as she walks away.  This woman has the most beautiful ass I have ever seen in my life.Now look, you are thinking ‘how the fuck can he say that?  How many more times do I have to hear you say that?’  But I have not said it yet, have I?  This is the walk, the strut, the whole bit.

 

Alberto repeats as though I did not hear him…”…owie…owie…” I must be mezmerized.

 

“My God Alberto!’’

 

“What?’’

 

“That woman is incredible, I think I am totally nuts about her…this is crazy!’’

 

I think he must think I am a complete asshole.  First he hears about me with Chrissy and Mae from his own brother then last Saturday I bring Lauren to the place and start making out with her on the love seat now here I go again with my churlish impulses…no fuck me…

 

“GREAT!!!”  “I will give her the piece that I was going to give you…I will tell her that you are buying her a piece!”’ YES, of course, before I can respond he is running towards her, drink in hand.  It will be at least another hour before I speak to her again. I will have an excuse to see her to deliver the painting, too.

At some point she walked back over to me and we started to talk again. She was very enthusiastic about the art on the walls and the space and she wanted to know what my role was. Then we got to talking about the history of the place and the various configurations so I thought well, if I can give her a tour it will test how long I can sustain being with her so I actually asked her if she wanted a tour of the place and she is ‘Yes, Great!’

The way that she responded to questions with this very positive confidence was different than all the other women I had met in the area so far.

Her voice was husky like a late night Disk Jockey like an older woman who had been smoking and drinking for years. She seemed to have lived a much longer period than her youthful appearance indicated. We walked over to where the stack of newspapers were and then onto the side room where crazy James had left his installation and then I asked her if she wanted to go up to the roof. I kind of felt that if she was willing to go up to the roof that in fact she liked me a bit.

The access to the roof was thorough a metal ladder and as she went up first I tried very hard not to look at her butt which was so tightly meshed in those stockings but I could not help myself. I was having difficulty not becoming aroused each time I noticed the way she was dressed. When we got on the roof and continued a rapid banter about art, I told her how attractive she was. Clearly I mentioned three or four times that she was stunning and that I was honestly having trouble not thinking about how attractive she was. This did not seem to phase her at all and she never said anything in response to it. She knew how attractive she was and she already had figured me out I felt. In the middle of a conversation, I told her that I really wanted to hang out with her and would that be okay and could she give me her number before I forget to ask and she said ‘sure’ without hesitation.

(Insert scan of the ripped sheet of paper where she wrote her number and email here)

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