well after more than eight years i have decided to pick up where i left off so buyer beware – A Year In Bushwick is BACK and I have a strange feeling that I am much badder than evah this is just my commitment to get back on line and blogging – telling my story – i hope to have a real sequel like (NOT JUST) ANOTHER YEAR IN BUSHWICK – that’s a rough working title thanks!

But I saw a street called Myrtle Avenue, which runs from Borough Hall to Fresh Pond Road, and down this street no saint ever walked (else it would have crumbled), down this street no miracle ever passed, nor any poet…

Henry Miller, Writing in “Tropic of Capricorn”

And so it would begin again. The association of a person, specifically a young lovely lady and a location. A street corner her corner the corner where we were first introduced the corner of Myrtle and Willoughby Myrtle off Bushwick Avenue that sunny day in June the art exhibition across the street that coffee shop Little Skips the building she lived in the blue light screaming out of her third floor window that night you made love only in your mind that night you called up to her window just for your own satisfaction that night you confessed in her doorway and ended anything that would not have been.

There was another location for Jane too that spot on Bogart where she sat by her bicycle selling her paintings her coloring books her pretty face her self-designed clothing her sexiness her being itself. So it had been nearly five months since I had seen her since anyone had seen her here she had been in Italy and Colorado and Los Angeles and I had decided it was long ago over since that lunch on Bogart when she told me she liked ‘boys, not men’ and I most certainly could agree to that amen. A relief really to be done with her there was no point and she had only been a drain on the asset base and the inner mind.

So rigidly planned ahead I awaited our seven o’clock meet up with nervous anticipation reminding me of a first date when I was twelve with Carol Epstein. I got off the subway and walked past all the spots around Bogart elated to the level that I was moaning a sweet high hum of elation remembering the memory of the romantic illusion I had dwelled under last Fall, longing to see it return in her lovely eyes. I walked down Evergreen towards where she lived practicing the rules I had memorized, do not touch her do not even think of anything sexual physical romantic she is simply a friend strictly business baby.

I walked past her building smiling it was still sunny I walked over to Skytown to recreate the time the young lady behind the bar there informed me that their liquor license had expired the place was not the place I remembered it was already gone so quickly I should have taken this as a sign. I walked up Jefferson to see a building that had been demolished removed the stray cats Yana used to feed all gone a vacant lot the clear brick over the head sign that the neighborhood was indeed changing as I remained optimistic redundantly naïve again in denial heading towards a soft cool hell of my very own creation.

I waited on the corner looking at her signature on the painting on the side wall. I was a few minutes early and was going to text her just at seven. Instead, for the first time in so very long she hit me first with the sorry Howie, I am running about ten minutes late. Not stuck on a subway or in traffic or at her studio as in the past no simply in her apartment safely tucked away upstairs most likely tossing clothes and trying to figure out what not to wear not for me of course but for the lovely ladies who would be hosting the event just across the street at what was formerly The Fitness Center, yes, I could wait yes.

And so I did, till seven twenty five a full thirty minutes from the first text quite typical constantly trying to reposition myself so that I would be in a good position to first spy her as she walked out of her front door as she walked towards me to recreate my assemblage of images of her pretty face of what she looked like of how she walked of her constantly rising cheekbones but alas, none of that she snuck out snuck up came towards me not even smiling much apologizing for keeping me waiting I kept my rules in tact she moved towards me bent and lowered her head and allowed me to kiss her cheek that’s it.

There and then I sensed it was over, she walked rapidly ahead of me her ambition obvious to get there and work the room and virtually ignore me so reinforcing my early impressions of her so reassuring that she could not even pretend to give a shit so much a relief to me that I needed to do nothing more that I had almost instantly relieved myself of any vestige of real romance but to keep on seeing her to write this to follow up and edit what had happened to get her to help fact check it but even that would not be necessary as the coldness got colder and even the memories of my feelings began to erode rapidly.

Sure the same what was I thinking I thought in October I was re thinking but I sensed it was important to try to land this ‘affair’ for lack of a better word on its feet firmly on the ground with a sober finale a closure so to speak but alas dear reader clearly this will not be possible she will remain a dangling thread a strand of lost lust a diminished chord of repressed sublimation a glance across the room a handshake on Myrtle that summer day that moment on the escalator when she burst into song the view of those ankle boots as I peeked under my desk the hug in the revolving door at the museum her hair in the wind

There was nothing left between us since there had been so little to begin with it was easy to sweep it clean but the stain and strain would remain she was a part of me now but an annoyance a mistake a wrong turn that led to disaster even the inspiration to write so damned much was dissolving in a blur as there were now so many stories to tell so much hope so many new things to come things not permitting her name and her likeness to remain in my mind things that I needed to bury fast things that I wanted to get past the urge for an instant hit of a palette cleanser to wipe the slate clean to sterilize my desires

We chatted briefly about her flight that was about it. All the times we had seen each other in the fall I had had that thick Dennis Farina mustache I don’t think she even noticed my face or thought about it there was no how are you no what’s new no how have you been no nothing no nothing to say warmth was out of the question while having no fantasy to dwell on as I had while with her in the past I tried to figure out how the hell a child could end up this cold sure no apparent love between the parents sure I was sure she was an only child sure she craved men’s attention non-stop I was the ultimate obvious fool

On the way to work in the morning is the time grief gets to me most. I often think of my mother and the way I never quite said goodbye to her for better or worse. Mostly, I see fathers taking their little girls to school holding hands all wrapped up against the drab winter skies. I try to visualize taking my daughter to school but she always got on a bus or got in the car we never quite walked like that sure the emotions are strong the same but there was no inner city moment in her early childhood just the vestige of the suburbs the first time she balanced a bicycle the first time she took the car off on her own all of that.

I cannot cry for losing Jane I never had her I never even pretended to have a simulation of love I should have left it as a glance through the sunglasses on that lovely June day but I went and spoiled it there was nothing left to remember but the inspiration that moment she first walked towards me at the Market.

 

 (a compilation in progress)

solohowie@gmail.com

Dedicated to All the Girls I Loved Before

©2014 Howard F Seligman

Straight Outta Flatbush

It was October again. A most beautiful warm and sunny day kind of spring like thus changing the entire tone of my winter’s tale setting. Preparations were in order for the big event this evening. I had rented The Living Gallery, a very charming storefront just a few blocks east of The Market Hotel on Broadway. It was to be an opening for the lovely Jane, her artworks prominently displayed along with a few of her friends who she had carefully selected as participants. In addition, she had aggressively booked a band and I had agreed to sit in with Cum Blood, an improvised noise ensemble featuring a topless Chrissy pounding the bass guitar with a drum stick and fronted by the extremely charismatic Nyssa who was the proprietress of the Gallery, her radiant smile and extremely well teased blond hair made her a candidate to replace Jessica as the flashback to the old west woman of the year in addition to the fact that she wore what appeared to be an old school corset further accenting her fine well maintained shape.

Nyssa and Jane had performance styles that had a lot in common. First and foremost as redundant as I can possibly get away with being here, they were both comfortable throwing their bodies out to keep the audience occupied. They both utilized a megaphone to rant in one continuous screaming tone somehow believing that this had deep meaning. While Jane’s act was built around a Jessica Rabbit persona, Nyssa referenced years of feminist performance art in what I believed to be a calculating academic fashion thus making her inherent sexiness even more stunning since the earlier roots of this style involved so much alleged feminism (in the seventies) where the female form had to be contained.

I was busy preparing my bag: the big black and yellow knapsack with all the netting and hidden compartments. It was camping store style but I had made it super urban I had been attached to this thing throughout the year in Bushwick. This bag could hold everything it was magical like the legend of the mitten or the clown car trick. An entire list of the contents on this particular October day is going to follow as each of these objects is really a talisman into an entire other story. But before we get into the sticky details, I need to digress here and tell you several anecdotes that make this story so significant. The first one is a compressed version of a story my dear Bubbe used to tell me:

Back in the ‘old country’ as she called it (this would be The Ukraine outside of Kiev in the late 1800’s the southern end of the pale of settlement made Hollywood by the stories of one Shalom Alechem the creator of “the Teyve stories’’) there was a man who lived pleasantly enough on his sustainable farm with his wife and three lovely daughters. One day, his peaceful existence was shattered by the death of his father in law thus leading his wife’s mother to move in with him. As in so many dramas, this immediately drove him crazy as she tended to nag everyone and play at control freak type behavior. Without hesitation, he contacted the town Rabbi, the consigliore for all residents.

“Rebbe, I can’t stand it, what should I do?”

“You have chickens on your farm, yes? I want you to move them in the house with you right now!”

“What?! Rebbe, excuse me, are you fachachta?”

“Do you believe in the Lord God Hashem, Creator of the Universe?”

“Well, of course, Rebbe…but…”

“No butts…just do what I say!”

This story goes on for days but since we are in the century after the century after, let’s condense it. Each week the man goes back to the Rabbi, feeling even more manic and disturbed and still the master insists he bring yet another animal into the house. Finally, he shows up without an appointment storming into the temple office and demanding that he find an immediate solution to his breakdown.

“Okay…” the Rabbi stops to light his pipe before beginning. “Take all the animals out at once!”

“What?”

“I am sending my wife and son over to help you now. Remove all the animals and they will help you do a thorough cleaning of the place. Please report back to me tomorrow morning first thing…now GO!”

The very next morning the man shows up looking pleased as punch.

“Rebbe…you are a genius! It is so calm at home now, just me, my wife, my three lovely daughters and my mother in law…what do I owe you?”

Reader, if you are still with me I need to assume that you get this story. It is the essence of the entire Yiddish philosophy from Aleph to Final Tsuff. “It could be worse!’’ And believe me, this story could be longer as it was in my dear Bubbe’s time; name each daughter each time you go to the Rabbi with a description of her age, height weight, physical state and potential marriage partners. Name each animal with a long detailed analysis of their excrement. Thus I have saved you additional pain and suffering though you could simply skim or skip through it. Given the general shorter attention span of audiences in the one hundred something years that have elapsed, here is the Reform Jew version:

A young Rabbi is on his way to work in the village just after dawn. On the side of the road, he sees a young Jew who is crying out loud while clutching tightly to a small knapsack (the bag.)

“Young Jew…what is troubling you?”

“Oh, Rebbe, thank you for stopping…I am so upset. I have worked so hard and yet I have nothing to show for all my troubles: everything I own, all of my work…it is all inside of this very small bag!!!”

“Is that it?” the Rabbi asks.

“Yes…that’s it!”

Immediately without any pause or hesitation, the Rabbi grabs the knapsack out of the young Jew’s hands and tosses it far far across the surrounding field into what may be a mudpile of cowdung. He turns and walks away, thus abandoning his latest charge (or client) by the side of the road.

Nine, ten hours later, the Rabbi is returning home from work, and approaches the same spot. His thoughts are consumed as he thinks out loud: “Ah…what is the fate of the young Jew I counseled only this very morning?” And just a small series of steps up the road, he spies the same young man:

He is dancing elated with what seems to be a recently acquired following of similar young Jew followers.

The Rabbi stops and addresses the young man plainly:

“Young Jew…praise Hashem! This morning I left you here despondent and yet now you are so content!”

“Ah yes, Rebbe…” he replies as his followers look on, “I found the bag!”

Well, I suppose I have beaten a dead horse here and I need to go on line now and find a good Yiddish translation of that phrase. I had planned to start and end this book using a Sunset Boulevard screenplay device. That is to say: bookends surrounding a flashback. The story begins where I lose my knapsack and I introduce myself as this cool, edgy Brooklyn guy now totally disrupted by the loss of the bag. You are probably wondering, dear Reader, how this could happen to a former member of the Flatbush four? Well the story begins in an illegal nightspot, on Kent Avenue, in the Chasidic part of Williamsburg…

But I abandoned that idea for the more simplified chronological method. After all, this is simply a treatment for an HBO Series and not some kind of real screenplay. Lord knows, if the quality is too literary it will fly right past the small minds of the Hollywood Producer types sitting in their windowed offices contemplating how much boost they can put into the actress who will be cast to portray Jane. How they will bring a black guy into the plot even though clearly there is not one in my version. Where is the chase scene where explosives must be utilized when the whole story involves peaceful behavior?

My bag had everything I needed and then some. See the Appendix in back for the full itemization!

Also my rain coat in case it got cold later I don’t think I put a microphone in but I may never know. The keys were the most stupid part. Wearing skinny jeans I hate the protrusion of all those sharp metal objects jutting out of my pants only one long thing will do so I had been keeping my keys in the bag. All through the year I had hidden this bag calculatedly everywhere I went. The initial meeting with Alexis was foreshadowed by me watching as she proceeded to hide her bag in a similar manner! Besides her sexy bony shoulders and glow in the dark eyes, this affectation naturally drew me towards her. I could go dancing for hours without any ninety second period where I did not lock my eyes on my bag.

I was not used to using my car. I certainly was not used to having this bag, a part of my subway based Brooklyn life in my car, the vehicle that was a part of my suburban period, a phase that had ended. It was the persistent persuasion of the lovely Ms Rosenthal that led to this tragic juxtaposition, having me take the fully loaded bag into the car to drive to her studio on Ingraham to pick her huge inventory of artworks up to transport her to The Living Gallery that set up the tragic situation that would lead to the loss of the bag, the property contained within and the sudden slap in the face that I was in big trouble that I had lost all of my control my senses my common sense for the simulated love of a woman who was born on the same day as my own Mother, the same year that I got married the same year that I turned double chai, the very lucky thirty six, the same woman who lived above the celebrated coffee shop where we would stop en route to the Gallery to pick up food at that time with the hatchback fully loaded I pulled out a huge wad of twenties to show off to her since I was fully done with the romance angle as I indicated earlier I was still entertaining the let me give you money to be nice approach.

“Jesus Howie!” she uttered with an unusual alarm that had been observed earlier when I ran a stop sign.

“Where did you get all this cash?!”

“Oh, I launder money for marijuana dealers…” I said. “It is one of the reasons I can be so generous.”

Then came the key question:

“Why are you doing this?”

“To help them get legitimate…you know the tax laws…”

“No, no…why are you being so nice to me? I mean you are doing everything and you are spending all this money and you know I won’t sleep with you so I mean what is your motive here?”

“Well, Jane…I am glad you asked that question…yes…I am going to tell you now but you won’t believe me…I am sure of that…but I am relieved to see all this come out in the open. I am writing a series of stories about you and I want you to give me your permission to use your name and likeness. You see you are so intense a character that I just can’t change your name…and I believe people will really get the idea of you and fall in love with you too so I need you to read my stuff and give me your blessing!”

“You’re right!” she responded quickly with that pert tight lip that I wanted to lick all over.“I don’t believe you…”

We pulled up at the Gallery and there was an open driveway. This was the first mistake. I became comfortable as though as I was at a friend’s house in safe Long Island, not in the heart of a borderline zone between Black North Bed Stuy and South Latino land Bwick. It was prime time for crime even on this lovely sunny afternoon and I was obviously inviting it. While I may have passed for cool in the dark night with this car and this lovely babe beside me, I read white money lame all over, every which way. From the moment I parked the Honda I was doomed. But the warning sign was earlier that same day:

We were outside the studio building known as Brooklyn Fireproof Warehouse. The sun was at noon peak and instead of boots or a fashionable new jacket, I complimented Jane on her slick sunglasses. She took them off immediately and let me try them on. At that point, I pulled my ‘blues guy’ shades out of the green case in the knapsack and showed them off to her, quickly putting them in a compartment in the car door placing the empty case back in the knapsack. For a moment, I had a déjà vu flash hearing a voice saying, ‘well, that’s good, you won’t lose those, you’ll get to take them with you for sure’ I thought I was dreaming then again that was a frequent occurrence when I was around the lovely Ms Rosenthal so I brushed it off as the strong sun only accented what made her so attractive at that moment.

Later on, after unpacking at Nyssa’s gallery, I pulled the fancy audio cable out of the knapsack and told Nyssa I would be plugging my phone into her sound system when I performed. She told me to put it away since she already had such a cable set up and I did recall that from my last performance there but I always packed everything ‘just in case’ and again, for a second I got the same feeling that somehow that object was about to slip through my hands and that a foretelling was reaching out from beyond to warn me of what was to come. In retrospect, these signs are always easy to spot, if only we could see ahead:

After meeting Jess I frequented Skytown just to see her it would brighten my day and also I would indulge in their shot and beer happy hour prior to letting loose at the Market. I photographed myself one time that I was there and sent the picture around it was a rare moment where I was in a suit my shirt neatly starched my mustache at the time neatly trimmed in the background was what I thought was interesting wallpaper I had no idea at that time that it was Jane’s artwork. During the Bushwick Open Studios weekend where the first accidental introduction abruptly took place I was vainly chasing Samantha Keller around the whole zone, she kept texting me to meet her here and then when I got there she told me to meet her there for awhile I thought this goose chase worthy of its own chapter but I since got sober about it. However, there I was outside the Brooklyn Fireproof Warehouse feeling romantic for no reason at all feeling that déjà vu buzz feeling like this present was me having been there before as though everything that happened during the year was simply leading up to this climatic sunny October afternoon where all my planning all my just in case all my manipulating would just stop.

And so it did. That morning in my apartment I had told myself not to drive. I had told myself enough was enough with Ms Rosenthal she could get a friend’s van she could hire a cab I was the producer the old man with the money behind the scenes I could not demean my role and be a delivery driver. She persisted in texting me she was consistent I knew it was a mistake the same way I knew when I first got struck by her that night at the Market that pursuing her would only lead to trouble but I went out with the fully packed fully loaded black and yellow knapsack and headed straight for the Honda. There I was driving down 58^th Street past the cemetery heading straight into fucking Bushwick, the radio blasting.

So I moved Jane and we ate outside Little Skips and once she got to the gallery she was done with me. I put the bag down in a safe place and chilled for awhile, in fact the same Sam Keller was there. Nyssa was always entertaining and always exciting to just stand next to but she would burst into fits of being busy she reminded me of Ginger Rogers particularly the role she played in “Lady in the Dark.’’ I became restless and began to explore my options. It was only like three o’clock – too early to start drinking. I could go park the car. I could go pick up Ariel. I could just drive home. I wanted to go back home. I needed to get an instrument. Really I did not feel comfortable leaving the car around once the party started. Later I had mumbled about buying beer for the kids but Nyssa was kind of like whatever and at first I thought I would leave the bag and drive over to the beer distributor and come back but then I took the bag and put it next to me in the front seat all propped up with its own seatbelt just like it was my daughter in the car.

I looked at the sun even under the J train and it was just a perfect day. I decided to drive home and chill out. I felt like I had accomplished something and it was complete. Everything good was next to me in the bag, I was proud I started cruising I made a left onto Bushwick Avenue and went past the Silent Barn. This was likely my second big mistake. I should not have done this alone. In music, in art, in catering: always bring someone along. They watch the car, they haul the stuff while you leave the engine running, their presence keeps you stable – someone to see you outside yourself. I did not have a plan – no specific route as to how to get home, no one waiting for me as it was when I had made the trip there earlier. So I was being impulsive. That works okay when you are walking but not when you are in a car there are one way streets, there are police blocks, there are certain sections of Brooklyn you should never drive through. I was too elated to think; those two or three ‘tells’ were taking over my entire frame of mind.

When I got to the street where the beer distributor was, I hung a left. I pulled up and was excited to buy a few cases of beer to fill up Nyssa’s fridge. At this point, I do not recall if I locked the car. The guy in the dark beer warehouse acted like he remembered me, in fact when I respectfully told him that I had never been there before he insisted. He brought the three thirty-can cases out to the car and loaded them in and I gave him a dollar. I happily slipped back into the driver’s seat and sped up towards Broadway once again under the din of the elevated train. I would have to make a tricky left turn and was nervous but a big bus driver heading east saw me and waved me to make the move in front of him. The timing seemed perfect so in that moment I sort of slapped five on the passenger seat. I am almost sure that the bag was there at that time and that I hit it, since I was not stoned. If it had been removed at the beer joint I would have noticed at that moment of the ninety degree turn even though I was so elated!

I pulled up to the Living Gallery and got back in the same spot. I was aware that the car doors were unlocked that the windows were wide open but there at that moment was Colin smiling and like a small child I wanted to show off the beer. I opened the hatchback and pulled out two cases quickly he held the door and I ran into the Gallery noticing that Jane and Nyssa were still there eyeing the spot where my bag had been earlier near the sound system. It is probably thirty feet from the door to the fridge I made it fast and ran back out and looked in the front seat and hey wait a minute, the bag was gone.

That was pretty much it, that’s my story. Three trips back retracing my steps. Speaking to the beer guy was pretty hostile. Saying you did not have a bag the hard left turn was very difficult and that’s when I tried to remember I had no keys to get into my apartment. I had lost the keys to all my storage lockers.   I had lost the keys to my friends in Greenpoint where I was planning to crash as a last resort. I had lost the keys to my friend’s loft in Lower Manhattan. I had lost my custom made night guard and oh yeah, my special favorite yellow caution tape guitar strap that was in the bag, too. Yes, like that young Jew everything I had had was in that bag but I wasn’t going to get it back and that was the big moment.

But it’s obviously not a big moment. When I told Ariel later she had the kind of reaction my mother would have had. I would have called my mother right then and there if she was still alive. “Listen, you are okay, you did not get hurt so everything is fine, Howie!” As I am writing this now, I feel as though I wrote this before. Alexis just texted me “Jane R nude model tonite living gallery I dare you’’. I am one damned lucky son of a bitch man, the crew at my apartment were still there, I found a parking spot fast, they were able to get in through the special fire exit and open my door, they installed a new cylinder, I made it over to the Guitar Center and bought a lovely pink Squire guitar, I made it to the M Train, I met Ariel at the Trophy Bar for a drink and a burger and we walked to The Living Gallery. I promised myself to have a good time and act like nothing had happened. Ariel and I took one of the best photo booth shots I have ever taken. The gig with Cum Blood was fantastic. During Jane’s own performance I stared at her exposed upper back and paid no other attention to her. I felt so over her. All of her guests kept greeting me and thanking me as the donations piled in for the beer in the fridge. I reviewed in my head what the entire evening had cost me and it wasn’t really much. In the backyard, Alexis showed up. She had managed to catch the second half of the Cum Blood set and she introduced me to her mother. We had a very nice chat I sensed that Alexis was rigid and nervous with her mother I recalled the time she spoke to her on the phone the night we had made love and how her demeanor had deteriorated so quickly while they were talking to the point that her wool hat just slipped off her head onto my carpet. As she was leaving, her mother gave me a big warm hug and said, “take care of my girl for me…” “I will,” I said…”I am trying” I felt fantastic at that moment, Alexis left with her and I was missing her immediately. I had Chrissy and Nyssa around and then I met a new woman and asked her her name, “Alaina’’ she said my god she was cute she had nerdy glasses in a few minutes she agreed to meet me sometime for coffee when she returned to New York she was visiting from Pittsburgh.

My eyes changed my vision physically was altered but my actual vision remains the same much like the song. The same old song. That moment of eye contact. Yes, that’s all there fucking is. The compulsive addiction to romance, the constant state of desire, the moment you believe you have quit and that your interest has ebbed, another young lady walks across the hall, enters the room, smiles from the other side of the restaurant catching your eye, lifting your spirits you see a leg a thigh the soft impression of her behind against her fine silk dress the pressing of her shoulder strap against her muscles the glance the lowering of the sunglasses to get a better look the hard stare the licking of the lips the gaping mouth the lipstick being poured on the shoe strap adjustment the running of her polished nail finger along her bones the frightening sense as the mesmerizing lust sets in as time stands still there is nothing more! If this was Citizen Kane and I was Welles/Hearst you could take your beloved Rosebud your winter sleigh and substitute the one word I would utter as I passed out and dropped the ball, “Alexis!”

It was quite a year in Bushwick. I had a helluva time. I can recall every moment and that’s because I told everyone everything I could remember and then I went and wrote it all down. My life has improved. I will not stop pursuing young women. I have never felt better. When you least expect it, she will be there. Every lyric of every love song that you remember that makes you cry, it’s all true. So, how do I end this story? Lead in with a snide implication of the sequel, “A Year In Venice” “Another Year In Bushwick,” or perhaps a bit more Bay Area, “Tales From The Market Hotel?” The Autobiography of Sidney Bernstein (as told to Howie Seligman) featuring music by Connor Oberst? No, just quit while you are ahead. Reader, I need your feedback for this to work, I have had a lot of love and a lot of rage from a few of you but constructive criticism is always useful. By the time, YOU specifically are reading this all of the names may have been changed to protect you and I so hit me with your best shots now and tell me what you honestly think and exactly how you might fit in to the growing development of the hood!

Thank you, Drive Safely, Good Night!

 

Howie Seligman, Brooklyn, New York

 

Next Chapter 

I became progressively more intrigued with what had happened on Wednesday night and increasingly more convinced that I was simply being played after I wrote about the incident in detail on Saturday.   You were convinced that the faux email was real and that we ‘broke up’ and even when I told you the voice was mine you did not believe me.  I was still not sure if I had actually spoken to her so that there was a convergence of the film within the film, this story was taking over my entire state of mind.

On Saturday after I became so delighted that you had been fooled I took my brother to the Museum to see the same Magritte show.  We also walked down to the basement and I was able to recount taking Jane to the Italian cinema there as well as describe the walk through we had shared of the Hopper work

He showed great enthusiasm for my story and also was determined to know what exactly had happened

“Did you actually say anything to her?”

“I honestly can’t remember…I was really drunk…and I was writing the script as reality was unfolding!”

I told him I was convinced that I had not said anything to her or I would have in fact received the email.  However, he explained in professional psychoanalyst fashion that she was probably confused that is in some kind of internal conflict herself and this rendered her unable to respond simply wallowing in some form of ambivalence.  I agreed, though it never hit me that maybe she was motivated to ignore my verbal platitude in order to facilitate getting the exhibition she wanted out of me.  It then hit me that we had to meet in theory to discuss the exhibition and that at that point, the truth would have to come out.

The very next day, I walked straight to the Morgan Avenue zone where I had spent our first date watching her sell her art wares before going to dinner at Momo Shack.  I texted her asking her if she was in the area and of course, she was…if I could just wait a bit she would show up.  I sat on the same bench as if to create a replay and in a few minutes she pulled up on her bicycle calling my name in her deep voice. Once again, I had totally forgotten or simply buried how good she looked and I started to shake.  I asked her if she wanted to get some tea but a few strokes on we were sitting at Momo Shack again.

I thought I would calm down once I was inside the joint and once the pretty boy waiter started flirting with me but no my voice was trembling so I took a breath and waited for the small talk to wear down.

“Listen…I have to ask you something…” I said as I clasped my hands together to ease the tension.

“I came over to your apartment on Wednesday night…right?”

“Yes sure…” she said.  I briefly told her how I had been writing about her she knew this already and I told her how the chapter described calling girls’ names from the street when I had been in High School and that essentially because of her relatively novel location above the coffee shop of choice for hood hipsters, I just simply had to walk over to her place and replay the romantic situation. So far, she was charmed but clearly maintaining a cold distance.

“So…you came down and opened the front door…and I handed you the painting…”

“Yes…” “…and then…did I just leave…or did I say anything?”

There was another extended moment of silence…I realized I was really shaking it was so exciting.

“You said something!”

I started to mimic what I said, the pick one from the menu of four to five phrases but clearly she did not wish to replay it any further there and then only to say very professionally that meaning in a cold tone:

“…yes, it is exactly what you are thinking…”

“REALLY!??”   Look, I was expecting it…I was surprised you hadn’t said it sooner.

Okay, no ego problems here.

The fact was there had been an email the next day.  It was nothing like the email I wrote, no, it was the real Ms Rosenthal, the above board manipulating power hungry grabber asking if she could move her closing event to The Market Hotel.  Of course, The Living Gallery was an option to.  I had often accused Alexis of only contacting me when she wanted something but the juxtaposition was fulfilled here.  I will present unedited the internal content of every email I actually received from the lovely Ms Rosenthal in order for even the most naïve reader to sense her blunt direct tactless ‘user’ approach.

Given that, why was I continuing to be a victim?  Particularly at this crucial juncture where the romantic cat was out of the bag and there was no love found.  “I like boys my own age,” she said very candidly.  I could never think about older men.  One must give her extra credit for being extremely transparent.

“You should just hire someone to beat you up a couple of times a week,” Alexis would tell me later when we were discussing these transpirations in therapy sessions.  Certainly I was feeling a great deal of relief when Jane opened up.  I looked into her eyes and realized that yes, she had never been in love.

I obviously wasn’t rejected.  Looking back even on this narrative, I knew that nothing romantic existed between us.  I had written that I felt used long before I let myself get used.  I was using her as a pawn in order to right this damned book.  Okay, she was more than a pawn, she was a fucking goddamn queen.

And it didn’t take very long for everything to be self referential even at that brief Sunday lunch:  She got up and had to leave to ‘get back to her studio’ before I had even finished.  I got up to say goodbye and she asked what I was doing over the weekend but then realized oh well and laughed awkwardly.

I thought wow I know it is over!  It was fast, efficient and now I can manipulate the truth, take a great deal of time to read and write and re read the same story.  For me, it was a victory, I had gotten to play out my High School fantasy and not really blown a wad and shit, she was so goddamned pretty WTF?!

I had no idea as I happily paid the check and finished up lunch all alone that my troubles with Jane had only just begun.  That that one last hit, that just one more drink, that creeping continued addiction and abuse cycle was about to play out into one of the greatest single moments or mistakes of my life!

Next Chapter

Convinced that I need complete withdrawal like cold turkey, I back off completely from young Ms Rosenthal. Logically, her interest in me is purely professional and while I don’t mind playing the fool, I could probably use the time and money invested in her more productively with another young lady.

No sooner said, she writes to me all bright and cheery suggesting that we might go out dancing that night, in fact there is a party she is planning to go to and what have I been up to and all that. Thinking now, I should have either not responded or at least waited more than the usual five seconds.

At the venue known as The Market Hotel, a major event was on for this particular Wednesday. I told her I was around but not available since there was this event. She accepted the alleged bait and wanted more information on the party stating that she knew there would be no guests and anyway she is planning to be hanging with the aforementioned assistant (home girl) their appearance would be impossible. I promptly boasted that since I was the owner, they both could attend. Of course, as the course of the night unfolded, we only got to see each other for about five seconds, as you’ll see.

Perhaps at some point, I will describe this party but since there are so many parties at the Market in this series I would be better off with one generic schematic. This particular night had a very strong waxing moon there was the usual crowd in full and it was just way wayway sexy sexy. I was prepared for the professional contact, basically a lot of meet and greet and this business kept me from even thinking about the lovely Jane. What caught me off guard, and further cemented the complete substitution juxtaposition syndrome was walking in and seeing Alexis and yes, exactly for a good long moment or two I was convinced she was Jane and even after I realized she was who she was (her hugs feel very warm and loving whereas so far that was so not clear with Ms R) I looked at her face and it turned into Jane’s face and then it turned back. And yes, when it turned to Jane’s face, she was alarmed that I was clearly feeling a huge physical lust for Alexis at that moment as though I had been caught cheating. It was mid October 2013 and so I had known Alexis for ten months. In all the time I had known her it was clear that she had never looked better. It was probably her level of pure objective beauty that made her more like Jane. It was also that now that she knew that I was seeing Jane whatever the fuck that actually meant she was determined to restate her grip on me and in fact, emulate Jane so that I would be confused and seduced. And for sure, that I was…

As the month had progressed, it became clear that all of the cynical views about this Rosenthal babe were completely true. The closing party for her art exhibition had been scheduled for the 28^th at a Lower East Side venue, Arlene’s Grocery but the morning after the Market party she contacted me saying it had been cancelled and could she please please do it at the Market and would I let her know asap and all of that stuff. The night before, I would have done anything for her. Here I was with Alexis and a virtual harem of lovely young women who were all apparently high as model airplanes and I was trying to invite Ms Rosenthal over. Eventually when she responded, she told me that she had already gotten home and was calling it a night. I insisted that I come over just to deliver her painting.

I was already walking up Myrtle, in a hypnotized state as though I was on assignment in a faraway place.

She was attempting to run a defensive strategy: “I want to retire,” she texted.

Ok, fine give me five minutes – Outside your place in five –

If you insist, but I don’t always appreciate insisting (there’s the money shot)

I understand (I wrote): Will leave at doorstep – No need to see me

It’s just the end of the day and I’m reeling thank you for understanding (She wrote)

Sure – Really, I was thinking about Donna Levine and Laurie Beth Clark and Bette Goldwert and to a certain extent, Beth Goldman. These were the girls I had been close to and loved as friends in High School. Of course, I had a ridiculous crush on Beth and you need a map, but Beth, Laurie and Donna lived within two three square blocks of each other. If you had been out late hanging on Avenue J, the Midwood High School equivalent of Myrtle Avenue really, you had to walk past all three of their houses and you would linger outside their window or whistle up knowing they were awake just to have them look down and whisper “Howie, go away!’’ You are crazy, you’ll get ME in trouble, just stop…

That was sufficient after all I was fifteen maybe just turning sixteen what did I know – it was just romance it was Romeo and Juliet it was wallowing in the tears of profound rejection that was oh so fulfilling…all the other guys did it in fact sometimes we did it in pairs. So there was something very deep going on when the single brand reference to Ms Rosenthal was that she lived above Little Skips. Pretty much if I was out in the hood and on the prowl I would walk down that stretch and pass Little Slips. How could I not look up to what I guessed was her window and see the blue light and imagine lying in her bed and touching her thighs. How could I not torture myself into repeating the patterns of my youth after all everything about her so far was an instant replay except well all four of the girls I mentioned were Jewish and Lord knows, the lovely Ms Rosenthal was so ‘not Jewish’ but hey, Bushwickain’tMidwood!

I had to do this, I had to deliver this painting, I had to have a ground to window encounter, I had to get this fucking bitch out of my goddamn system! I got to the doorway, I had never realized where the entrance was as the actual address was on Willoughby. – Door locked – I texted as I looked up.

I was starting to figure how I could place it inside the metal gate when the moment I had so waited for actually happened…the whisper yell from the second floor. There she was, those lovely pale eyes burning through the street light the moon light and the lights of the M train in the distance…”Howie!” That was all I needed. All was wonderful now. Once again, nothing else mattered…she had called my name. She was waiting by the window. Sure, she was annoyed but she was excited too. “Wait, I’ll come down…” Quickly she appeared behind the gate…I was so determined to be chivalrous and prove her incorrect that I did not even look at her, I don’t know what she was wearing I would not even make eye contact…I handed her the painting and was walking away as soon as I felt her grip it. Here’s where the mystery moment happened however: “Jane, I’m in love with you!” You can substitute your own favorite phrase as you wish, for example, “Jane…I’m crazy about you, I think I have fallen in love…”

Did I say it…at the very same instant I was so rehearsing a dance turn and bouncing away from the door I suddenly I got this urge to tell her that I was crazy about her and I thought no nono you are so not actually crazy about her and you went through this on the F Train already, jerk off! And if you do anything like this now, anything at all, you will completely seem like a fool, a fucking drunken fool! So, now Howie just turn and walk away…maybe mumble good night or oyasumi or something like that stay totally cool. Be cute but don’t descend into romance – and the truth is – I don’t know what happened.

For the next ten minutes as I walked back up Myrtle to return to the party as I walked up the stairs of the Market Hotel as I resumed dancing in the front of the house I kept replaying the moment. A nice portrait from the MOMA, very French, maybe call it the vestibule or Jane descending the stairs or above Little Skips and I am mesmerized by this dark image the girl in the night all the reflections all the very pale blue hues, her eyes, the doorway the sound of the M train and there I am repeating:

I’m crazy about you – I think I’ve fallen in love with you – Jane, I think I’m falling in love with you

WHAT!?!?   What the fuck did you say?

You THINK!?!?! You think…? How can you think – too late sucker you are so deep in love now. Did she hear you – you tried but your voice is too low – too mumbly – Bette whispers out her window “Howie, I can’t hear what you said…you should go home…it’s late!”

I believe I did not say anything to Ms Rosenthal. The next day, when she wrote her bold email requesting the show, there was no mention of the painting, she has never thanked me for it nor did she mention my coming to her apartment building and she certainly did not write the anticipated response:

Dear Howie,

I really think I need to get something off my chest at this point.

Obviously, I like you and I like spending time with you. You have been very generous and I really appreciate that however, I am afraid you mis understand my intentions and you need to know this: I did not see you in any way as being romantic or a love interest or someone I am dating I am sorry.
I thought I made it clear that with my work and my plans to travel I have absolutely no time for romance and I thought because you are so much older and have raised daughters that you really would understand this. What you said last night really upset me and to be honest, I could not sleep. If you get what I am saying then we can continue to be friends but otherwise, I really don’t think we should see each other. I would appreciate you not talking about me to anyone and in particular, Alexis Rivera. I don’t think you realized that Alexis and I are very good friends now and she told me that you had slept together and that really made me uncomfortable and it actually creeps me out that you could be in bed with a woman who is even younger than me. So I really need you to step back and take a deep breath.

Howie, I really like you – you are really smart and you are probably the best dancer I have ever seen.

But I need a friend. Just be my friend. Thanks (for understanding)

 

Next Chapter

Jane and I went to see the Magritte show at the Museum of Modern Art.  She was wearing one of those new retro high school letterperson jackets with a hood and this skirt that looked short from the side view but was long in the middle, as I recall these were called ‘bondage’ skirts though this one was not particularly kinky or leathery or anything like that, however when we repeatedly got on and off the escalator, I could not help but look down and once again marvel at the conscious shaping of her behind.

In addition, she had these blue gray stockings and these obvious imitation Doc Martens hipster black boots except they also were a bit blue gray and as pseudo simulation-ist as the jacket, she totally matched as always everything about her was thought out, put together, a real professional actress. She had showed her boots off to me earlier in the afternoon, lifting her leg up and calling my attention to her perfect ankles, bragging how she only paid ten dollars for them; I struggled to hide my foam.

We had walked up Sixth Avenue together and it was a lovely afternoon.  The street was quite generic midtown – it lacked the character of Fifth Avenue and the skirt and the jacket forced her walk to be a bit like 19^th century or certainly like the women in Seurat’s paintings.  We had had Korean lunch and she got a bit wired up.  I was in a state of passive ecstasy and I realized I was sporting a very ‘shit eating grin’ with my mouth gaping open that often reminded me of my older brother.  She talked and talked on:

“Well, I want to start my own theater company and direct plays I wrote…of course, that’s after I sell my paintings and sculptures.  I need to have my own building. My intern is so great she is only 18 can you believe it, I should get her to have lunch with you while I am away so you can teach her it would be real easy for me to just go back to LA and be a successful actress. I mean, I already have done that – I have been in movies and I kind of really know the business. That’s what my father says: why don’t I just work at that, you know you don’t realize that I am established in the business in California and I could…”

I calmly piped in, using the moment as a well timed excuse to stare into her eyes warmly.

“It is very obvious Jane,” I kept the voice in the bass range, “you so have that down.”

She stopped realizing she had been in a long run-on sentence and twisted her head around to make sure her hair was still neatly pined up this was what I call the ballerina headset move.  She only seemed more lovely and my humming mind fell deeper into the spell of being fully mesmerized by her.  By comparison to all the others so far, this was more intense and also I was neither stoned nor drunk, it was the daytime and the feeling was quite pure.  “You come off like a professional actress.  So impressive…”

She smiled as if to say ‘really?’ but it wasn’t necessary. Again, unlike the Alexis and Eliza model, she appeared to be completely self confident and exuded self love.  That glow she had was probably what made her so attractive and she knew it and worked it like a well cleaned machine.  For a second, she looked up the avenue and acknowledged how aware I had been of all the attention the two of us were getting from men in suits walking by us.  Of course, she seemed well adjusted to this too, so perfect.

“That is my question, why do you want to come here and struggle being an artist when you already are so much further along than so many people who want to get into the movie business?”

For a moment, once again, time seemed to stand still.  The conversations of passersby slowed down. It was nothing like the Buffalo Stance seizure, it was a passing glance.  She could get angry at this moment.

“I know, I ask myself that all the time…” she took it very well, it seemed. “I don’t know, I just have to do it!” For a second, she seemed to take my hand, she had been brushing up alongside me and I wanted to insert my arm into hers just for the efficiency of walking together but I was shy of course.  I thought that something had just happened, that for a second we had bonded internally and that she too was aware of it.  There was no point to telling her how lovely she was. I had said it ten times already, it was pointless.  I thought maybe the conversation pace would slow down considerably, but no, she continued

“Once I get established in New York than I can go back to LA and make my own movies and…”

I stopped bothering to remember what she was telling me.  I looked around Sixth Avenue and I slowly grabbed her arm with my right hand, feeling the wool of her jacket.  She looked at me and smiled to tell me this was acceptable behavior.  I can’t remember anything from that moment on, I visualized all the women I had been in love with when I was younger, walking down Sixth Avenue with them on the way to the Museum, listening to them go on about their artwork and their careers and their plans.  I was overwhelmed with a wonderful sentimental euphoria.  I felt like I had never been so happy in my life.

We got to Fifty Third Street and suddenly, all hell broke loose in a very small way:  There was a long line of tourist looking people, it went all around the block. We had both forgotten that it was Free Friday and folks were intending to take advantage of it.  At first, we agreed that we simply had to make another plan but then we parallel agreed to give it a try anyway.  We walked into the Museum lobby and it was obvious we would be able to get in with no problem since I had two membership cards.  We checked our stuff, I checked everything whereas she chose to keep the coat on.  I was becoming hard to not look at her now as we walked up the staircase, I could see the eyes of so many people on her it was too much.

For many years I had been taking dates to the Museum.  I would walk through the same exhibition three four even five times, getting a different take on the show depending on the person.  Of course, I love to brag and show off my knowledge of 20^th Century Painting but in the last few years, the women would take the bait and see the walk through as a sort of ‘oral exam’ as if I was their Graduate School professor. Without any prompting, Thu Tran had volunteered to take a flash card test, correctly identifying every painter in the permanent collection, one after another, adding her opinion as well.

Well Jane went in another direction, spurting out intellectual aesthetic comments all the way.  She was damned smart and comfortable with her intelligence, it was not being presented in a compensatory manner it was in line with her appearance: neat, calculated, quietly elegant and yet a bit understated. This only served to aggressively deepen the hole I was rapidly falling into.  Again, unlike all the others who have appeared so far, this time I suspected I was going to fall in love.  While it was ludicrous and destructive and infantile and hopeless, it did not matter, I had set my mind on it and that was that.

At some point while looking at the Magritte paintings, I found myself directly behind her and I felt very sexualized, briefly.  I peered over her shoulder and let go of my rigid self control for a moment.  I put my left hand on her shoulder very tightly gripping it for a second and lining myself up against her back.  For the moment, I felt as though I was going to conventionally ‘take her’ and saw us from outside looking down, our two heads staring at the painting and my waist rubbed against her behind of course it never got this far but was only a brush an allusion to what I desired but she turned and smiled with no pause.

As we were leaving the museum, we were moving towards the revolving doors.  It was getting that early darkness of the autumn when you become aware that the days are rapidly growing shorter and shorter. I wanted to become sentimental, I started to get that falling in love feeling again I quickly resisted it all and the substitution became the start of an erection and before I could switch that off she did her own version of reciprocating on my earlier move: she put her arm around my shoulder and she forced me into a fast hug kissing my cheek and saying ‘this has been one of the best days of my life!  It is so good to hang out with you, I really enjoy spending time with you Howie!  Thank you so much…’

I was stunned and as time resumed again I realized that I had a very large erection but more importantly I was seized by a freezing lovely feeling that I was dreaming that I had just won a contest that my ability to control my behavior had lapsed for a moment and that while it might not have meant a great deal to her, it had changed me completely.  I wondered what cued it and why she did it.  I put my arm around her shoulder and moved her over to kiss her cheek.  I realized that my mouth might be wet and I pulled back.  For a few paces as we got back onto 53^rd Street, we were silent, I was unable to speak.  It took me a full sixty seconds before I stopped panting.  It was too late now, I was overboard.  I was in love!

We walked down to the Rockefeller Plaza station.  I bought her a big bottle of Poland Spring and I got my can of seltzer.  Other than the Metro Card, I would never let her spend any money.  I wanted to give her all of my money at that moment.  I knew she was aware of this take advantage thing where she would pretend for a second to look into her purse.  I had gone through this with almost every younger woman but with Jane I wanted her to think I was rich or at least demented enough to spend lavishly.  The more that I seemed foolish and churlish and taken by her, the deeper my emotional commitment came on.

We were waiting on the northern end of a very crowded subway platform.  All the other trains came and went and it was obvious that there was a delay on the F train.  Usually, this would make me nervous but it just meant we had that much more time together so I was delighted.  Her hair was still up and she was a bit nervous and we went in and out of bouncing up against each other and feeling embarrassed.  I did my usual bit about growing up on the subway and about all the tourists in New York.  We seemed to be struggling to get back to the moment of intimacy we had had in the museum but yet it appeared futile.

“You know, I have never been in love.” She sprung this out of nowhere again I felt as though she had been sharing my mind briefly and indirectly telling me not to fall in love with her.

“Really?’’ I said.

This came as a bit of a shock. Logic set in for a bit, she is twenty-three she mentioned a big break up she said relationships were too much work now that she had no time for romance but why come straight out and open a can of worms on a crowded rush hour scenario knowing we were going to say goodbye in a few minutes anyway? I wanted to tell her what a romantic I was. I wanted to tell her she must have been in love at least once. I actually thought about and even saw myself saying to her,

“You know Jane, that’s so funny that you just said that because I was about to tell you that I think I am falling in love with you?”

I ‘think’ I am ???

What is this disclaimer shit?!!  I was about to tell you?!!  I want to tell you…

I was not going to say anything like that.  I am not really anywhere near being in love.  I am addicted to the feeling of romance, to the unfolding of falling in love as a repetition compulsion that is the whole point of why I am writing this whole damned thing.  Even if I am developing serious feelings for the young Ms Rosenthal I would be a complete fucking idiot to say anything.  She is leaving for three months in less than a month and she is involved with other guys her age and it is not going to do any good in any case anyway.  So, instead I explain what I just said about being into the process of romance

“Well you have seen me dance but I don’t think you have ever seen me sing and I really focus on capturing the hook line, the feeling of falling in love that is the secret of my performance in order to convey that feeling of romance, I have to exude it myself, I become that feeling look at me now.”

I concentrate briefly and turn on the be my baby attack, I know that she gets this at least objectively it is picking up right where we left off acknowledging how she is a master actress and knows it she smiles but in a contained professional manner as a response.  There is no reference to her in my romantic nod.

“I get that but I have never felt it.”

“You have never felt it, where nothing else matters…where you want to abandon everything?”

“No…I don’t know what its like.  Can you tell me what it’s like?”

“I can’t tell you what it’s like but if you don’t…then you are correct, you have never been in love!”

Again, I want to stop and scream and tell her that I am crazy in love with her.  “You know how in musicals, there is that moment where you can tell the guy is about to start a song?”

Before she can answer…I start a song:

“You ask me what it is to love in love…”

We both giggle, my voice is still down. I forgot to mention how she makes up songs and sings the entire time we were on the escalators in the Museum.  So don’t go thinking that she thinks I am crazy, she is a musical nut and that only makes it more odd that she has never been in love.  Maybe she has really been in love but had to repress it, deny it, maybe this is some elaborate manipulation to get the subject up since she has been sensing my feelings and wants to reject me with ease and caution and respect.

 

I imagine: well obviously I can’t feel love so it would be stupid for you to fall in love with me okay?

But the song ends after one line…I allude to some Judy Garland staging and she giggles again in that deep voice but it sends.  The F Train comes in and it is crowded as hell.  We struggle on standing in the back corner of the last car.  I continue on about the musical and my romance with the musical.   I look around the car for a second and I turn back.  She has let her hair down literally.  She runs her hand alongside of it to loosen it.  I put my hand on her hair and tell her how lovely she looks now that she let her hair down.  She thanks me.  Again, I see the crowd lining up suddenly and my song begins:

Ms Rosenthal, the F train is delayed.  Unfortunately we need to stop again…so I can tell you something you need to know…and New York City will act as though…

But alas, this does not happen only the choreography in my mind.  The usual what are your plans for this weekend as we move to hold onto a pole after the next stop…Fourteenth Street and once again, I have to get off the train…we kiss on the mouth and then she turns and I kiss her cheek.  She gives me that look that she has every time we say goodbye and I can’t tell if it is just good business or if she really is giving me a perfume ad glance.  As I turn, I realize calmly that I will probably not see her again.

It is as though nothing happened.  I never met her.  She is a friend of an acquaintance, a woman I was introduced to and promptly forgot.  She is someone I saw at a gallery once and thought I would never forget but I did as soon as I left the gallery.  She is the girl painting the wall at Little Skips.  Her work is not even mediocre…you have dismissed her…each time she has sunglasses on and I never have gotten to see her eyes.  She is probably an airhead anyway.  She is not really that good looking…so fuck her.

Next Chapter

 

 

 

The song Buffalo Stance was playing on the system.

I had not heard nor thought of it in at least twenty years. My ex-wife had worked with the singer and I had met her father.  But it was a case of a one hit wonder and now it did sound quite dated.

The beat, however, was infectious and no one was really in the place so of course, I just had to start dancing.  As it always was with the memory of a song, the words would just come back to you word by word as if you were following a bouncing ball or the subtitles on a screen maybe a karaoke bar machine they were buried in your memory as was the song itself and of course where you were when you first heard it if it was a love song or what the album cover looked like and later on, what the video was like but this song had the hook line jump start before I heard it because it was so catchy and as I heard it I realized that I did not like the second part of the hook line but since the first half was oh so good it did not matter:  “No money man, can win my love…(it’s) sweetness that I’m dreamin’ of!”

Come to think of it, as the song played on it hit me that even the sweetness part was not so great but still it was all worth it, the moves were getting more stimulating and invigorating so play it again:

“No money man, can win my love…his sweetness what I be dreaming up!” Then the title clause: “We always hang in a Buffalo Stance…I give you love baby not Romance…so don’t you get Fresh with me!”

So perhaps the producers were trying once again to start a new dance craze: The Buffalo Stance though she refers to a dance called ‘the dive’ as follows…”we do the dive every time we dance, I give you love baby not romance…” of course, I jump ahead in my head to 50 Cent’s “I’m into having sex, not making love…” so is this woman singing here saying love is real and everlasting and romance just like money?   You can’t buy her love, her friends are tough, a real crew, they always hang in animalistic ritual!  The thing is all of that was a pre existing condition but now, decades later a new part of the song emerged:

“Who’s looking good today?’’ “Who’s looking good in every way?”  What a great line that is…after all, you don’t hear lyrics like that now and who is in fact looking good today?  Well, just as the line came around and the euphoria got a major boost up, this young lady walks in through the wide entrance across the room as though she was being set off by a Film Director who said ‘okay, sweetie…who’s looking good…you are so GO!’ She was nearly strutting to the beat as though coordinated with me and yet she was clearly not aware of this – I was aware that she was approaching me quite directly – now!

She was about to speak to me, even though I was still dancing and trying not to reveal how much attention I had already given her.  But before she could say anything I saw her face I saw the color of her eyes and it hit me immediately at that moment that this image and the line “who’s looking good today” would be linked from now on.  I would never be able to hear this song again without thinking of her face even if we say nothing if we never meet or become friends or go out for dinner or make out on a subway this imprint was locked in and so, time resumed and she smiled and I smiled and still tried to ignore her:

“Are you an artist?” she’d asked.

The funny thing about the sense memory of music was that sometimes I might start to cry over the time I heard the song just recently.  One night I was at the Market Hotel during the Eliza Walton phase.  She was upstairs and I could not bring myself to leave even though I knew it was futile to remain.  I thought maybe when she came down, since she had to pass by, that I could maybe walk her home.  It was a very cold night during the dead of winter and it was already past one am so that the trains were running like shit.  It would take ninety minutes to get home and I had to be up early the next morning but then there was the promise of crashing on the couch upstairs just outside of Jenna’s room it was warm up there and it was the couch I had been sitting on when I first met Eliza when we were both so drunk that I started to run my hands all over her and she did not seem to mind something I was not sure actually happened or if I just made it up until months later when we discussed it while both sober.  I just wanted to crash out on the couch but I could not then I was too wired I was way too excited about being in the same vicinity as Eliza and it was Eliza and Matt who were busy sitting on it upstairs.  What exactly were they doing up there anyway, he wasn’t her boyfriend was he? No, her boyfriend was that guy with the glasses but he was on tour with some band so here she was two timing on him with Matt Sullivan and here I am the old guy, the awkward guy she won’t even remember meeting me and if she does she might just slap me around after all I had my hand on her pants and I did not even know her name that night. What the hell was I thinking? But I wasn’t thinking, I was killing time. I was avoiding being alone -that is what scared me the most I guess, well maybe I can just nod out here on the downstairs couch even though it is not big enough and it is cold down here but it is quiet and I’ll wake up when Eliza walks by to leave and then I’ll be prepared just as I am startled awake. I’ll practice ahead of time so I can say “Hey, Eliza…can I walk you home?’’  I don’t know, girls don’t like ‘hey’ so I’ll try “Hello Eliza…you remember me, the guy who is going to teach you to dance right…we can start right now with me walking you home…I think it is snowing…say, you know I think the snow is so romantic…do you believe in romance, god damn it Eliza I have had one long conversation with you and now I am ready to just give everything up and behave as though I am falling in love with you even though you have a boyfriend and you have another guy on the side and you may not give a shit and it doesn’t matter, because I can feel!”

Well, so…I am stuck in a ditch of indecisiveness when the rescue arrives in the form of Oscar LeGuinn IV and his best pal that Lebanese dude and they say ‘hey’ (okay, so ‘hey’ is okay with the dudes here at least) and they turn on a laptop and five six seconds later they are blasting out PET SOUNDS that’s right the album by the one and only fucking Beach Boys the album that we all fell in love to Bette Goldwert listening to the album we sang songs from standing outside Donna Levine’s terrace watching her on the couch with Stephen what’s his name who played second trombone the album that inspired the Beatles’ Rubber Soul the album that may be one of the most important Pop albums of all time and these twenty two year old guys start singing along and they know every word so that now every time I hear a song from it I remember being crazed by Eliza and by Becca and those few winter nights I slept there as the J train rattled by and I was cold and sniffling and had to take a shit but did not want to get up and use that bathroom and the lovely relief that I was not alone and that Eliza might walk by and wake me up or that in the morning, Becca might give me a scarf and a little kiss on the cheek before I left and that here I was forty fucking years out of high school and first love and first rejection and I had had children and I had had sex with more than sixty women and even a few men and here I was and emotionally nothing had fucking changed it was the same goddamned Beach Boys album and the same feelings and it was so fucking wonderful to feel this way and feel alive and feel lust and fantasize about licking pussy and just putting my hands on Eliza’s black silk pants and seeing her respond and her mouth opening and waiting for her to slap me and scream and watching Becca descend those dangerous stairs in her stockings and wondering when her legs would quit but they wouldn’t quit, they kept on coming and wondering if she would yell at me for drooling out loud while she walked by but no she would just smile warmly and it was all so good it was all so lovely at was then I wished that this would just last and that there would be no sleep and no next day and no need for me to deceive them into vacating the place.

Sure there was something about this place The Market Hotel from the first time I walked in and the night of that crazy party and then the night of the Karaoke throw down and the surrounding environs and the Taco Truck and the strange undercover cops who circulated around the J/M/Z subway station.

The tension caused by the constant sound of the train passing, making its sharp turn metal on metal the same damned train noise that passed by The Trophy Bar the same damned train noise that ran along Myrtle Avenue near Little Skips outside The Bossa Nova under the floor at The Old Silent Barn.

This was not the world of Morgan Avenue.  This was a world dominated by rats converted slums turning into rooming houses of marginally employed sweethearts.  Whereas Morgan was upscale, a former and present industrial wasteland with the potential of so many Soho style lofts, this here was a ghetto.

A ghetto where being from Connecticut or Rhode Island was something you had to keep secret.  Not one of the residents at The Market had a conventional job.  Very few of them woke up before noon.  The irony of all the nights I had crashed out was that I would wake up at seven in the morning only to find a few of the regulars just coming in from their respective night out.  Many a morning during this year I went into my business office on three hours of sleep with a fresh hangover quietly eyeing the legs of my first appointment as though she was one of the nymphs in my private chamber up at The Market.

I was playing out all kinds of unfinished business and the sleep-dep offered more open access to all of the realms of desire and past affairs I had had while I appeared to be a young man out for his first taste.  While the women of The Market had the wisdom to see me for what I was I am still not sure about Jane.

Every man who saw Eliza would generally become nuts over her, even if only for a moment.  First there was Alexis and the next night it was Samantha from Friends who just stood so close and put her arm around me but she was in control she was a pro she knew I was shaking she was just getting kicks and I saw this Steve guy hug her and kiss her and I asked her if that was her boyfriend and she said no so catty and then the next night I was already out buying Alexis dinner and taking her out to The Trophy Bar and there would be another another this one but nothing prepared me for the moment of Buffalo Stance:

“So…are you an artist!?”  “You didn’t answer” she pounded.

Next Chapter

The Morgan Avenue stop on the L train had had a reputation among hipsters for many years before it became the Oakland-looking environment that it is today.  When I first met Mandy, one of the founders of The Trophy Bar, she said she was qualified to run her own establishment because of the years she had spent tending the hippest of the hip bars in the BK scene.  Where is that I wondered and she said, it’s called THE BAR at the Morgan Stop although it was about to close since the neighborhood was becoming too hip.  This irony happens over and over and over again.

The choreographer John Jasperse had had his dance studio at the Morgan stop in the nineties and when he was interviewed by the top dance critic at the NY Times he bragged about how he would meet ‘crack whores’ in the staircase when he took a break between rehearsals.  He was happy to be moving out of there he said in the early 21^st Century because the area was full of too many good looking people nowadays and “I just can’t concentrate!’’  I most certainly know that feeling.

The Morgan stop is especially charming and ironic in that it has its own stand alone little brick building where you just walk up out of the tunnel and land on the street in the middle of what seems to be nowhere.  An industrial zone that is still technically labeled “the East Williamsburg Industrial Valley!’’  The abandoned feeling has had quite a successful appeal to the new immigrants many of whom seem to be from Ohio with thick beards and thicker flannel shirts that they wear even in the summer afternoons.

Walking large dogs and starting to drink early in the day are not unique to any community but characterize the hanging out zone that paints clean graffiti along the appropriately named Bogart Avenue strip.  The strip hosts high end ‘the next table is available in two hours’ restaurants such as over rated Pizza Place, Roberta’s and secretly excellent Japanese style, Momo Shack.  The center of the Bogart strip about a block south of the station house is the down home local version of Whole Foods known as Brooklyn Natural.  It was there that Jane was doing her retailing.

She had brilliantly designed a display cart from wood that had a hitch to her bicycle and she opened it up to display her coloring books and t shirts and other ‘glyphs’ that she was trying to sell.  However, it was clearly the young lady herself who was the object of attention as strollers meandered by and immediately struck up a conversation with her.  She was once again wearing one of her hippie hats and her sheepskin coat but had a t shirt that she had painted and red striped tights that once again emphasized her firm muscles and her very sexy mid section.

She seemed even more adorable in the lovely warm sunlight and as I arrived she immediately gave me a long warm hug, quite a move given that we had just met and chatted the night before.  Naturally, she was drinking a tea and chatting with a very lovely young man who was tall wearing a leather jacket and obviously, her own age.  She introduced us and continued the conversation.  I had a completely different impression of her now than I had had the night before but there was no question that I was gone on irrational attachment and addictive lust.  So much goddamned lust!

She showed me her coloring book and started to discuss her characters and her ideas of creating a series of ‘deities’ as she related some of the coursework she had taken at the Gallatin Division of New York University.  For a brief moment, I realized who it was she reminded of, the actress Ellen Page who I had discovered from my daughter and specifically the character she had played in the Rome based Woody Allen film.  I brushed this thought aside only to have it filed in the ‘dude, you are really in deep now’ category.  Her voice grew deeper and more seductive as she said hello to every single person who walked by and tried to get them to look at her work.  She exuded confidence and an almost annoying aggressive ego at the same time that her nervousness and constant re arranging of what she was wearing and where to place the objects led me to believe she was anxious.  I realized that I might be making her nervous and that she may have heard stuff about me.  She clearly had a business agenda as a component of wanting to see me again and she got right to it without any lead in or disclaimer:

“Do you run Showpaper too?’’ she asked. “Showpaper…,” I say, “kind of, well, I work as an advisor to them yes…I don’t really run it.”

“I really want to get my work on Showpaper, I mean I think it is the greatest thing.  It is just so great…I have a chance to get my work out there!’’

I paused and tried not to do my usual, I-can-do-anything-for-anyone-with-a-pussy conditioned response.  I was about to say something when she bit back at me really hard:

“Do you know Alexis Cabrera?’’ she asked.

Once again, just as when I first had her ask me if I was an artist the night before, this simple direct question led time to suddenly stand still.

In that frozen pause, I saw Alexis, I saw the two women superimposed on each other as all of the connections I discussed earlier bled out.  “Sure…I know Alexis. She was there last night”

“She was…well, I don’t know what she looks like…she emailed me…”

Our discussion continued and I was proud of myself for not offering anything – for remaining vague about everything.  I thought about how my pulse had gone so high for a second when she said Alexis’ name at first but I shut down fast and I was amused at how this was the first time anyone had said her full name out loud something that I had been singing to myself inside my head for months.  The melody probably came from something Tom Mandel had written back in college.  Every once in awhile I was able to steal  a firm scrutiny of her leggings.  I was sunk in a mine!

“So what are your plans for the rest of the day?’’ she asked.

“I don’t have any plans so…”  “Great – so we can go to dinner tonight then…I am kind of hungry!”

We were off nearly hand in hand to visit the very tasty and very overpriced Momo Shack.

 Next Chapter

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)

Next Chapter