NYC

My God, why are they drilling at night?! It pierces my ears with the squeeky wheels of the constant passing buses, squeeling trash trucks. Honks. Honks! Beeps. Pwap. Twap. Mrr of the radiator, drip drip of its leaks, tap – dop – bat of it’s straining parts, but at least it’s steady fan softens the occasional calm outside, but then the fridge resides inside the bedroom and snores like my dad from his congested nostrils of allergies to dust and dogs and here, the fridge deals with street-grime and roars on to interrupt the city that never sleeps.

Amanda laid asleep, as much as she could sleep, which isn’t a habit she really has anyway, across the desk from me in bed. I sat near the window and looked outside across the cold-steel fire escape that led five floors down – we’d be the last to go in the event we needed to, which would make jumping the next-best option, or trudging through the flames, which may offer more hope because sitting there seems inactive, although, such calm. To find yourself trapped, or, to see yourself set-free, but that’s not to say enjoy death, but accept it. Let the warm arms of mother wrap you in her breast forever. Go there sobbing away Life, but never bitter. Father’s gruff streets and 5-oclock shadow, whether we accept it or not, is become us, but only so much as we let him. Someone power-washes the sidewalks outside as passers-by talk loud and traffic pulls up and something else whines.

I don’t want to see the landfills out here. The difference between Portland and NYC, which, I believe is a key characteristic that drapes - like soft Portland clouds or the City’s fog - both cities remarkably well, is recycling bins. The streets aren’t gritty, they’re blue with reducing; instead of harsh walls dense with smog and hefty black trashbags collected along the curb in lines like people waiting for the bus, except there’s more bags than people, not the only difference, obviously, waiting for 24-hour trash pickup. Happy colonial Atlantic seas or brooding and pleasant Pacific. New York commerce or West-coast cliff-sides. Either way, I’m in New York.
But I don’t want to see the Statue of Liberty either. “When will you take off you’re clothes?” Allen Ginsberg rings through my brain like the liberty bell - broken, understood, profound. Vespas resound between the city’s brick walls, reach high notes in the hollow-steel fire escapes. I think the wind howls, but it could be the radiator; no, it’s outside noise seeping through the window-frame seams. Truly.

It’s miserably romantic with all the noise, New York’s first snow last night, Rockefeller plaza and its Christmas tree, the windows dressed for Berghdorf Goodman’s holidays, white and crystal blue, pearls, dresses with lace and snow-white animals, the walk to Second on Second for karaoke, too crowded, leave soon after arriving, head for the next bar, decide to head back to the apartment and seek refuge from the cold. On the walk, the cigarette between my lips, the snow on Amanda’s cheeks, the smoke I breathe out and the breath that follows and there is no segue between where the smoke ends and my breath begins, it all looks the same in New York’s frigid cold. Damp, soggy, noisy, smeared street-lights and echoing horns, drunk karaoke, careless stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, frustrated nudges with elbows, Brooklyn accents, Italians, lovers under umbrellas in sheik, black pea-coats, earmuffs, scarves, leather gloves, women in fur, pimps in fur, hookers in heels and hose and miniskirts and big, open coats and cigarettes between their long-red-fingernails fingers.