she said: frost? blah blah blah indignant blah. cummings is good for masturbation. whores, man. underage whore poetry.

My dick was so hard in my hand it woke me up early without the alarm. Porn for breakfast, no shower and naked pushups until failure. I left a sticky handprint on the floor and there was spackle just below where my waist nearly touched the parquet between half-packed boxes. Or maybe they are half-unpacked.

A neighbor introduced herself in the elevator and shook my unwashed hand. She rubbed her face in several places and I wondered how many times I had shaken hands with someone who did not clean up after masturbating. In fact, maybe she had just masturbated and did not wash. I touched my face here and there.

A little girl in a pink trench coat and fluffy hat opened the door for me when I walked out of my building, no mother anywhere. She held a metal lunch box painted with a cartoon.

"Thank you," from above.

"You're welcome," from below.

The sun was blinding gold and still heating up low in the sky and I had to keep my eyes on the sidewalk. Pigeons pecked at dog puke that had not yet frozen to the concrete and my Metrocard expired and I missed the train while I bought a new one but another came right away and some days you know — you just know.

The hands of a woman on the train were almost as small as the ones holding the lunchbox. She hypnotized me with leopard print and two kinds of stripes. Amazing. But her little fingers could not close the gap on the pole. She gripped it with both hands at all times. Black stockings, gray boots. Dark hair back with barrettes on the side. A cutesy yawn, mouth barely opened, small teeth. Big black leather purse. Black earbuds. Nails painted the color of her skin, like a woman from my long-ago used to wear. She gave me head in my car the last time I saw her. I came all over the steering wheel and never wiped it up and it baked into the plastic under a decade of desert heat, a scar I could run my finger over and enjoy the pain it took to create it.

Time passing is better than prescriptions, even the pharmasmack a doctor pushed on a friend who dislocated his shoulder. The medication was developed for terminally ill cancer patients and now he goes to bed mumbling like a junkie because he slipped on some stairs. He said he is going to stop taking the pills and I asked for his leftovers.

Some she once said that I'm the type of guy who will piss in the sink if he has to. This other she said, "... the way absinthe makes your tongue numb." And the last she — well, her and me care too much about each other to be friends. Her dust is on everything still. Lint and hair, coughs and kisses. A quarter-sized piece of pink fabric spilled from a coin jar, three unutterable words written on it in unmistakable handwriting. It went into my pocket instead of the trash.

I had to go to her favorite store, which I hate, to find a few things. Women were smelling candles. They would never understand why I do not play the missions on the game in my phone. I hate missions. I will never finish the game; that is not the point. I play it to relax, so I drive around the city in stolen cars, destroy stuff, run over pedestrians and shoot cops.


~O~