Bio

A native New Yorker who spends his days teaching how to grow up and write down and his nights adoring New York City and the conglomerate culture inherent therein. He appreciates the arts and humanities, conflict, and women. If you'd like to peruse his prose and verse about these appreciations, adorations, and considerations, visit him @ www.raphelps.blogspot.com.

God. Goddamn it.

When I began wakin up, I couldn hear anythin but the static drone of everone else's A/C. I can' rub ma eyes out to that white noise, and I can' stand that harsh EH EH EH EH EH EH, so instead I gotta alarm set to WROK, 98.7 FM "The Rock" to rooster-crow me up an' out. Usually I need more than Fleetwood Mac to garagedoor ma eyes and telescope ma fists. But the lilting "Gypsy" snakecharmed ma synapses, at least. After hittin the snooze five times and countin
one
___two
______three
__________four
______________five conscious numbers
shitnowamahalfhourlate, I did it. I sat up an' swung legs outta bed, scratched crack, jiggled dick, an' opened arms to a new fuckin day.

I hava studio window so I can see Brooklyn Bridge ottovit. I wish I had suspension cables strong enough to hold me up for more thana century; sometimes the coffee and overthecounters don cut it. Maybe I should switch to black and white, respectively. A wide window also means voyeurs have a hootenanny with me. I don care if the redeyed insomniacs and yuppie earlybirds across the way see me sprawled up from down. I stretch my Holocaust emaciation right there just to piss em off. Ribs and fists makin a regal entrance into the public mornin.

Maybe they like it: one Suit 'n' Skirt does in the red brick penthouse lookin down at me. She pouts after slappin on lipstick and kisses the glass of her seethestreet window sometimes, an' I know i's for me. I know I got one guy across the way with bottlecap glasses growlin his way through the world and sneerin each sippa espresso with scoldin eyes on mine smirkin. Another, few stories lower, is a flamin broseph desperately attempting to subtly spy ma pimpled ass when he's flippin a tie in the mirror. He looks good, but no; I wouldn fuck em.
Is it odd that I wonder about their lives sometimes? I mean, I got my own problems an all, and thinkin about others is a nice, cheap waya goin about not havin to deal all the time. Don hafta pay any fees or bother any girls, jus stand an wonder through the window. Suit 'n' Skirt's prolly got a man or two that she keeps aroun for a good time and dinners outta the house, but they like her more than she likes em. I know she comes home after work after dark all the time because she's walkin roun, trippin an' stumblin until 11 otherwise. Those kisses aren't for me: they're sweet but superficial goodbyes in her earlier-than-his morning. An she's gonna keep seein em until they realize themselves that she's not treatin exclusive explosives an outta all the arms dealers they've worked with, she's the quintessential cutthroat.
Bottlecap's gotta family's jus beginnin. I can see the kid in his arms bouncin sometimes. He stares. He doesn coddle or gaze lovinly. He doesn kiss his alright wife without seemin distracted. She doesn pay im too much mind either, though. He's at the right age with the right savings and the right job in the right place with the wrong woman. And I see that in his few and far between smiles. He's not sneerin at the street's happenins; he's sneerin at his decision. It's worst when he talks to her over the kitchen island and each time she rushes to the kid cryin, he walks away from the island draggin his fingers off and away.
And Lispy McFootball could have any man he wants, if he wanted men. I know he does. Why doesn't he? Maybe he grew up in Indiana. You're in New York, man. Lou Reed New York: "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side." Bob Dylan New York: "Oh the times, they are achangin'." Jesus Christ.


So stretchin out like I do, I reach to grapple and hooklinesinker those last moments of ephemeral but entreatied unconsciousness rapidly ascending into nothing. Like a diver's lungs'll explode comin up from the depths of the ocean if he doesn exhale, ma imagination's gonna have it out with ma awakin memory if he can' remember details that could mosey into riffs, poems, equations, prophecies, or actions that lead men to greater glories than their conscious could've provided.
Those nonsequitur flashfictions in my life where I have no responsibilities and no control over anything. Anything. Those who say you can at least control yur own life, or yur decisions, didn take dreams into consideration: I've killed men an' kissed sisters in my dreams; uttered untouchable names and touched unutterable friends in my dreams. No control.

The lady next door started hittin' the wall widder fists instead of her usual "Shet up!" so I figured she had a rough night an' deserved a little quiet. Lord knows that bitch's got reason nough to complain: gottawaxhisbackhair husband, brattish kids, and a cataracted dog. The works.

I smacked the radio head, heavy stepped to the stall, threw a roach on the wall into the tub drain with a churna the faucets, and was about t' hop in when the window struckmestabbedmekilledme. This closet peephole into outside forced me closer to gritting my teeth than anything before. If I'm ever in prison, I've already got real nice associations with sieve-thin grids and grates in opaque glass now. Jesus Christ.

I never understood why Whitman was so fond of the word "yawp" until I heard it away from verse. She didn scream, an' she didn sigh with her throat out, but she yawped. Like a kid gettin licked witha belt or a doe before somethin' bites i's neck. The mornin was spoiled with this wall of a beached whale moan, someone's untraceable agony. Was this someone I had seen through my window before? I never considered considering voices in the faces I had come to know through my kaleidoscope psychology profiles an' hypotheses.

I thought about connectin a face who had to taste blood in the back of her throat: a woman jus--just absolutely hysterical...uh, her pinkin streakin face collapsed into her tremblin hands. Fuhgeddabadit now, c'mon-is a nice mornin. Like she's got Parkinson's or somethin. Mornin hair, uh, cascadin over. Flurries of dreams and nonsequitur flashfictions gettin her hair mussed overnight tossin and tumblin. Every part of her body spasming with each abrupt breath. Catch your breath, lady, c'mon. I looked out of my squarefoot glass 'n' fence open nexta the street. Ambulance lights dancin roun the surroundin windows. Ambulance sittin an' hummin. Oh god, c'mon No. Waitinta serve humanity (yet knowing that its heart couldn't beat fast enough to race too many dyin lovelies to the hospital in time).

I can only imagine what happened, buh why would I wanna?

As a distant humanitarian, I stared into the air for a consideration, eyes blurred and crusted over, tryna concentrate on some onesizefitsall prayer. I couldn muster up more than "God. Goddamn it." A softness for myself. Entirely inaudible to her. Was it because I really cared?
Or because I really wanted to care?
Or had I wanted to believe that I cared but really didn't?
I didn't know her. But is anonymity reason nough for apathy? Is this why news anchors are so calm when recitin genocides?

Even if I did care, she prolly would've been just a mere acquaintance, a petty "Bleshou" to an overheard petite sneeze while standin next to one another and waiting for the screechin metro to take us to our eighthour burdens. Maybe I'm anyone an' she's noone.

We weren't even that.

I couldn tell who or what she was from her exacerbated weep (for solace and silence, I'm thinkin). Let it out, lady, let it fall. If she was younger, maybe I'd checked her out down in the diner at the corner of our streets before; chewin on some bacon, thought about fuckin her from behind. I didn know. If she was older, maybe I thought about how happy she is in an "American Beauty" sorta moment of reflection.

As an ignorant-everyone, I caught ma breath, blinked, and took one stride into cool blue tiles with even cooler water punchin me in the back. I oscillated ma head under what felt like cicadas explodin an' meltin down my back an' face. Remnantsa summer dronin beetles drippin from ma hair. I pissed in the shower thinkin bout how I couldn see ma contribution to the faucet-rain illuminated by the sunlight cascadin in then. I thought bout how the water surroundin taunted how I hadn't cried in 4 anda half years. I miss you an' I'm sorry I don think boutchu more often... --why did I feel so awful bout it? People die everyday.

Why did I think that someone died?
This was gettin ridiculous.
I tried t' focus on wakin up.

By the time I gototta the shower, the ambulance was gone and I couldn hear the woman yelpin no more, so I didn have to close the window. I shaved in silence. I brushed my teeth in silence. I went through the motions of corporate presentability in silence. I straightened ma tie in frontuva mirror, and proceeded to drag my hard hand over ma face, closing ma eyelids with the thumb an' forefinger like I'd read bout before. Jesus Christ.

Conversation

"No one else loves you."
"...Like you do?"
"No, period. No one else is capable of loving you but me."

Strawberry Knees

Evelyn didn't mind being a girl. She knew what it meant to be a girl of her age; wear pink and frilly everything. Love unicorns and poke boys with sticks. Enjoy candy, cartoons, and sleepovers with other girls.
She was unaware--at the gentle, pigtailed age of nine--of all the obligatory accoutrement that she would eventually grow into. At this age, she was not yet familiar with what "patriarchy" means, who Anais Nin was, and what expectations society had in store for her teen-aged and adult selves. Pencil skirts. Spider eyes. Celine Dion. An explicitly specified sense of sexuality.
But these qualities of womanhood were so surface and she questioned much more often the elemental differences between boys and girls. Cosmetic surgery and drag can make anyone anything, so she knew that physical appearance wasn't it. Give a man some duct tape and a woman some duct tape and they can switch roles.
Instead, she thought, while riding her bicycle, if only girls liked riding their bicycles. If only girls sometimes trip up, get a shoelace caught in the cogs, or glance away when eyes should be bullets forward, and scrape and chafe their skin against pavements, dirts, and cool spring grasses. If only girls beat their chests and yawped in pain and pride for their strawberry knees and busted anklets.

Corona, Queens, New York, New York

There are six barbershops (and gold traders and bodegas and laundromats) in a 10 minute walk. These trades and services are seemingly flourishing, at least along Junction Blvd. The recession did not affect them because everyone needs a clean cut, Downy clothes, a 1a.m. fix of coconut milk, or cash from World War II brooches.

The streets have never not smelled like la basura and pigeon piss.

Contemporary Mexicana pulses from loudspeakers outside of record shops that also sell shoes.

Under techniwarmcolor fabric umbrellas, glass-plastic boxes of fruits (from sweet sun mangos to succulent flamingo watermelon) and corn-on-the-cob-on-a-stick are sold. Thick-spread butter and snowy paprika for savory flavor to grit the sweet crunch of maiz amarillo. Even in these months when we know what "wind chill" means, these umbrellas offer the reminiscence of summer temperatures atop Mayan mountains, lush and green.

Cheekless pantyhose over shameless mannequin budonkadonks and spouseless shoes shrinkwrapped in plastic.

Some random crazy dude yelling craziness in Spanish at the top of his lungs all the fucking time. The same phrase over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Something about buying cell phones....

Dudes two feet shorter than me handing out cards with beautiful black haired women displaying their curves and the opportunity to talk to them for only $8.00 a minute.

Fifteen hours a day and night of car alarms going off with no one sprinting to be called humanitarians and an ice cream truck with a clap clap clap manifesto rhapsody.

Trash of La Dentista Handbills, Restaurant Sewage, and McDonald's bags line the tiles and curbs and pocks of this urban ground, this gum-tarred and Graffiti pretty streetside. I can't tell you how many infants' socks and shoes, without their significant others, have been been abandoned and left to dampen and spoil in the streets of Corona.

In a Mall Midmorning

I just saw an old couple waddle past. They were holding hands. Even with the arthritis, the liverspots, the hair, the hairlessness, the yellowing, the wrinkles...even with these, they're still in love. In love through it all, in spite of it all.
It made me smile to see them. Because I want that. I want a girl to ask to marry me and then I say yes and to fast-forward to this. To hold our hands in public. Waddling in sync. Waddling in love. To kiss her sagging cheek and wrap my scrawny arm around her paining back. All for the glory, the marvel, that it might bring to a kid watching us. The smile it'll bring to him.
When I hold hands, old and decrepit, with my decaying wife. Whom I love very much. Still. Still. Through it all.

Sunny's

I've never been a Casanova. The opportunistic surges of urges I've endured since I was eight (when I discovered the sacred Penthouse found street side) have only made me shake hands--firmly and indefinitely--with hesitation and self-defeat. Getting pantsed in elementary school, wearing floods and a buzz-cut in middle school (Thanks a lot, Mom), and being the quintessential acnefied brace-face in high school all pointed to: loser. All pointed to: virgin. All pointed to: wait for college.

So I tried on patience and it seemed to fit, so long as I could bounce my legs in class and hide my cumrag at night. When college came, I was invigorated by the independence and irresponsibility that would soon take over. I had convinced myself then that all my New Year's Resolutions to talk to girls, talk to them confidently, make something happen, would amount to all I'd figured out prior to my arrival on campus. Thanks Jason Biggs.

I had heard urban legends of collegiate sex. Panties off, no sweat. Kiss on the cheek, at least a handjob. Kiss on the lips, piece of cake cunt fuck. Bite your ear? Her face'll be clown mouthed, spider eyed, with spit and cum drizzled in no time. But I wasn't ready for all this yet. I'd leave it up to Ron Jeremy and Frats to immediately corrupt the innocence I once recognized in my female peers. These experiences slapped down the reality of my own premature ejaculation, if not a solid limp-dick incident.

Instead, I merged into the collegiate female territory. Each step quiet and precise, regimented and documented.

1. Pre-shower downwind, post-Axe bodyspray, "waft away, ladies." What man wouldn't want to smell like "Dark Temptation," "Recovery," or even the number "3?"

2. Girls like stronger guys (except for a few on Craigslist looking for their tenor Jack Skellingtons), therefore there were mornings spent wheezing through five push-ups (I was never particularly athletic). The high school hairy, wheyshake drinking smallballers rolled their eyes with perturbation while the mulletdyke coaches sighed at the overshot androgyny I so illustriuously exuded.
"C'mon Smith! A few more! Get that Testosterone pumping!"
"Ms. Humphrey, you've got more testosterone pumping than I do."
"What was that?"
"I said 'Lou gets bored testing on a throne jumping Xanadu!'"
"...You're a weird kid, Smith."

3. Nights dancing naked in front of a mirror to Ricky Martin (shut up).
"She bangs, yeah, she bangs!"
Yes she does, Ricky Martin, and so will I.

So the other night, I realized I wasn't twelve anymore, that my balls had dropped, and that a night downtown would do me good. That night was the night that the fuzzy VH1 Pickup Artist's tips and tricks of chivalry and gentlemanliness were gonna fall from my sleeves with majesty and grace.

"Hey."
"...Hi."
"You're fat."
"OMG I totally want you!!!!!1!"
"I know, right?!"

I went out to the one and only barslashdanceclub in town: Sunny's, 43 Water St. I remember the address just because I thought it was such an odd number to follow 35 Water St. This address belongs to the infamous Club 35, the only topless-only dry-bar strip club within a three town radius. Known well for its scantily clad Pillsbury doughboys and a patron in the back who wears a neckbeard and yips at the girls from time to time.
"Yip! Name's Elvis, sugar. What's yerrs?"

I met a girl named Thera. She couldn't believe I pronounced her name right the first time. "No one ever does," she said. I didn't either. I called "Karen?" But the pulsing music and alcoholgulping company were raucous inside, and I was having difficulty paying attention to the words slingshot from her glossy pink pout.

We managed to understand one another in that moment, however. With the heat of the major chords clogging our earseyesmouthnostrils and the sweet sweat scent sensed, we embraced our novice parentless autonomy in the mutual desire to go home unalone under a Friday 2 A.M.

I was shy and she was tipsy. She smiled at me and--God bless her--walked through perverts, cologne, and whores to initiate something. A rather strong first encounter, she took me by the neck with her cunt stuck out. I played passive ("Let the dolls come to you, man" said the fuzzy-hatted dude). She had gum to cover up the rum. She thought she knew what she was doing.

And she hadn't noticed the mustard stain on my jeans under the blacklight yet.

"Yip!"

She smiled and chewed, coming close to my ear to shoutwhisper "ooh!" and her rendition of the song's lyrics. I wondered who she was and who she had come with. She wondered what song this was and asked me what my name was again.
"Schtick?! Is that like a Jewish nickna--"
"No; Nick!"
"What?!"

We grinded no matter the tempo or mood of the playlist because we wanted that touch. I tried not to appear too white and to utilize those Ricky Martin rhythms I felt in my hips earlier (shut up). We wanted that overt sensuality without the embarrassment or shame of touching strangers known for less than an hour ( and within the confines of the reality that it would be an otherwise solitary solitaire night).

I would later experience similar occurrences, touch the backs and waists and necks and breasts of nameless girls. They were girls so incredulously vulnerable to my anonymous hands, fingers licking and palms pressing. My left and my right were my pioneers creating maps of seas of skin, complexions and smoothnesses expansive and varied. I could never grasp that comfort; where did the readiness to have their straps and strings snapped, their charcoal/mahogany/strawberry strands combed into a sexed-up disarray, come from?

She thought she was being cutesy and flirty when she'd bend forward dropping her head--snap!--and fling her moussed and fingercurled hair back while craning up and leaning back into me. When she came up for air and feminism, her delicate fingers grabbed my hair and neck, and I tried to muster a smile. My thoughts were telling me two opposing notions simultaneously at this critical junction in time (resulting in my mere mustering):

1. Right shoulder: He-Man: "HE-MAAAAN! MASTER...OF...THE UNIVERSE!!"

2. Left shoulder: Steve Urkel: "Ooooh, cheesedoodles! Don't blow your load yet, son!"

But she was petite and all that slithering and snapping ended up amounting to was a dick digging into her back and hair spouting from my mouth.

"Hey."
"Who are you?"
"You're stupid."
"What? I don't even know yo--"
"Shut up and let's suck mouths, female."
"Wha--! But-and I am not stupid!"
"Sh, jus' rub my Jamiroquai hat."
"What are you--"
"Slap my ass. Call me 'Sally.' C'mon, Sugartits."

When this shitty bar in this shitty town was closing at a shitty hour, I thought she could clean us up. I offered my place for a movie (maybe some shite she'd adore like "Must Love Dogs"). I had a shag in mind of course. But she came with friends. Both Barbies and barbacoas. They didn't know me, and that meant each smirk was met with a grimace. So with the same enthusiasm that cubicle colleagues retaliated against their bosses at company picnic tug-o-wars, her friends pullled her arms with zest and zeal.

She said her goodbyes, remembering my name as "Dick." Incorrect again--even in her bornagain sobriety--but I, like so many young men just looking for legs, did not care. "Close enough," I called out to her hips jiving away between her friends' legs furious. And it didn't matter either way. I went home sneering. She went home giggling and telling me to call her without having given me her number.

"Yip!"

A Difficult Drive

They drove in silence for a long time.
They were distracted by the dead beige of the trees, only scenic as their regular surroundings were of a dead gray pavement.

She thought for a moment. Half-whispering "Do you still love me?"
"Yes." Without hesitation he responds, because he's honest and he daydreams.
"Good. I missed you."
She extended her inquisitive hand to to take his.
"I missed you too." Though in disbelief of the current state of things, he plays along. How long will this dream last? How long will reality be a holding and not a pining?
"Don't ever hurt me again."
"Okay." She spoke with the faintest melancholy, the subtlest sincerity. But it was still there.
In earnest conviction, they went back to their scenery.
Holding hands in the lap of her jeans.

Living Along Main St.

The tap dripped before I brushed, and I pissed into a porcelain cleaner than my record.

A night of jazz and hooch, rock and crocks, the wrong people called and no one got fucked. Some fucked up, but none fucked. I came home with expensive grease to a wall I was begrudgingly familiar with: illegal greens. And the thing is not the smoke itself, which I could avoid with a bandit bandana, but a lack of consideration for my well being in these few, small rooms (albeit from a passe posse that satisfy enough, but are not exuberant). I was in good company, but no one to make me cum, and no one I missed.

Almost asleep, I'm aware that I will be cleaning a mess I did not make tomorrow. Cans, glasses, packs and ashes, spills and vinyl--the room to entertain has served its purpose with no supervisor seeing to its cleanliness. Damn it.

"What if?"

I don't know. I don't know why I did it. I just saw the blinding opportunity and took it for granted. And you were nothing to me but a pair of headlights. Nothing more--you couldn't be; it was night. I jus' thought t' myself, for the last time, "What if?" Of course I considered family and the future and all that junk, but really--really none of it compared to the spontaneity, the moment, the phantom muse that crawled into me over these years and--with a single swift action, defying all consequence--arose and said "listend' me now." It wasn't a rush. It wasn't a cause. I didn't do it for myself. Or anyone else.

Wanna know why I did it?
Because I can.
Because I wanted to answer "What if?"

Solve for X

Puddles meant it had rained recently. Not a lot, but enough to keep oases in otherwise dry parkinglots and driveways. She was glaring out, her expression paralleling the picaresque gloom of a midwinter scene: naked branches, browning snow, and a sky four shades lighter than the pavement in this town.
It wasn't necessarily that she was feeling down, but rather that she was profoundly confused. I'm not supposed to be staring out this window she thought. And it was the naturalism of her incredulity that eventually brought her blue.
Her husband appeared at the doorway heading towards the room in which she stood. His silence and distance explicitly expressed that today was not a new day. It was not a bright shiny morning. It would not be different. He reluctantly accepted the necessary paces (regretting his reluctance because they had only married months ago) to come within an adequate distance. An appropriate distance. An obligatory close. Close enough to put his hands on her shoulders. Close enough for her to ignore his false affection. And she felt his distance, his closeness, a breath away enough to transition from his bitten lip and triangled brow to a stoic calm and pout if she were to turn around.
"I saw what you tried to hide."
She whimpers in response.
"I--...I can't tell you how marvelously disappointed I am...but I can't tell you that anything's going to get better."
He squeezed her shoulders gently to try and instill what little comfort he had to offer. And though he was aware of her awareness of his falsity, it was an all too subtle attempt to save face for his sincerity.
"I'm not supposed to be staring out this window," no longer to herself, alone.
He took some time to understand how he wanted to say this, but did not think to say anything else.
"I know"
...
"but I do still love you. You must realize I--"

Mary considered herself a mathematician when she first realized her gift.
"I can't believe it. She's-- It's incredible."
"Mary: what is three hundred twenty four thousand two hundred and nineteen divided by four hundred fifty six point two?"
"Is this going to be on our test this week?"
"No, Mary; this one is just for you. I have a calculator here, so--"
"--seven hundred ten point six nine four eight seven oh six...seven. I think."
...
"Incredible."

*to be continued*

Mona Lisa-esque

Everytime she walks past, I hafta rubberneck 'er. She is no striking beauty, no keel-over gorgeousness that'd make me pitch a tent for those legs reaching from the heels to godknowswhere.
But she's no strain to the eye, either. I mean, I don't mind a lot of her. I don't mind most of her.

Her eyes are lightless and curious. They bead like the eyes of a stuffed animal, an inanimate softness with a permanent smile and an absence of thought. And though they don't sink into her marbled complexion (pale, hived, and porous about), they are cradled by the subtle billowings in the wake of the bridge of her slim nose, rouged with the deprivation of sleep, carelessness, and acceptance. Her face is long and worn, 19 going on smoker-50, as if she's got no friends, no joy, and works the day and night shifts just to pass the time. The time of an insomniac; it's somethin' else.

And simply to spite these inadequacies, god made her lips their own. A supple pout, red like an autumn Maple leaf, and looking aroused--engorged-even when she's not. And it's saddening to think that these lips may never have been touched and--at that--so rarely smile, even in the weakness of a smirk. I don't care who you are or what god you follow, you cannot unimagine your imagining of kissing her. And I imagine kissing her, slow and powerful. Slow and powerful enough for each nerve ending in her lips to meet their dopplegangers in mine (being a man of lust and not love). But what lust is carried out gentle and precious? Slow and powerful?

Subway Observations

So much of humanity is defined by its jarring polarization between the comfort in contact and the comfort in distance. Faces are stoic or solemn, mouths either closed in isolation on these lone treks, or agape in a stranger's unconsciousness.
Distance is comforting when it is a possibility, and our only opportunity to delight in our solitude. In this space where persons sit few and far between, we glance and glare at the few others within sight, often out of curiosity and a mediocre paranoia.

I wonder why he's wearing a hoody in this heat...
Geeze, that guy's patriotic!
He looks homeless...do I have change? I don't want to give him my change. What if my cell dies?

And in the morning rush of our working and meandering population, and in the places with the most neon billboards, the metro cars congest like the streets've got the flu. Here, men cop feels (or resist the temptation). This guy is so obviously looking down my shirt, but I don't wanna turn around to see if he's cute or a pervert. Women stare blankly to avoid eye-contact with everyone, and you always stand next to the punk kid with way too much passion for the noise pumping into his ears. Giggles and glares, stoicism and stares.
Here humanity experiences the intimate space and pheramones of complete and utter strangers.
Day after day after day. After night. After alcohol. Too close for comfort?

Pissed at the band...A Monologue

"Listen, nobahdy heah's any respo'sible. Y'all gots this complex about the assu'ptions and expectations of othahs. Or, y'all'ah jus' hidin' behind the masks of othahs to say what'chu' want, so that'cha don' soun' selfish. In any case, why don'chyall jus' fuhgeddabadit an' lemme have a voice, eh? This is my band too, y'know."

Dima and Anya

With the gentle blade of a single finger, Dima and Anya exchanged petal caresses: he her bare, fair thigh in those denim summer shorts, she his mobile wrist. And, staring at them out of fatigue and fascination, I thought quietly Isn't she his first cousin? Have I ever touched my cousin like that? Certainly not.
Later that evening, she retreated to the bathroom, a subtle smirk of some random satisfaction across her face and with panties and a faded shirt (XXL, perhaps an ex's) underneath pinched between her forefinger and hidden thumb. I marveled at the delicacy of her hand and immediately the word "prim" came to mind. As she prepared for bed at 3:30am, we three men-- a Russian acquaintance, a Russian cousin, and an Italian nerd-- saw in awe her petite and smiling mysteriousness.
"Iee do naught know what eet ease, but when sheh step-pid off the plaen from Moscow, Iee could naught help myself."
"Waddaya mean, Dima?" I asked with precedented suspicion, noticing how our eyes (including his) trailed behind her ass as she exited the room earlier.
He thought how best to respond, and with a finger on his lips, he looked up at me and replied assuredly "Iee haff never met her before five days ago. She ease my couseen, ahnd Iee--," he puts an arm over our shoulders, "my friends--haff indulged een forbidden pleasures...."
The ellipsis is for me, not for him. I couldn't think of how to make out what he said.

The toilet flushed, the door squeaked open, and Anya came out in nothing but the large faded shirt with Russian pop culture written on it. Her blonde down and her makeup off, she was more beautiful.
"What?"
We were all huddled, standing and discussing her (a raucous subject), and then interrupted by that very subject of our juxtaposingly quiet dialogue.

Anton didn't react to her presence beyond turning to acknowledge her.
I reacted with a blink and an inaudible and timid "--nothing."
Dima smiled.

I wondered at that, too, squinting my eyes at him as if blurring my vision would brighten my mind.

Anton slept on the couch after smoking cigarettes he rolled himself.
I slept in the bed sprawled and alone and aware of the floored air-mattress below my side, and the sounds I was hearing on it.
Sounds of Dima coming to bed after Anya had fallen asleep, to wake her up and corrupt her. I heard zippers though-are there pajamas with zippers?

They were gone when I awoke, and the mattress looked deflated. I shuffled to the living room, scratched my head, turned it to see Anton waking to see who was shuffling. We smiled at one another, at our incredulity, and went back to sleep.

Train stories: Hick

A sad woman lost to herself sits next to me, and I don't know how when or how I'll tell her to move, but I know why. Her escapes and by-no-means-purifying catharses are seeping into the senses of those whom she surrounds.
The children one seat back can smell her cigarette breaks in the train car's bathroom (though their mother smokes, so I doubt they'll notice). The Red Dog can she pulls from her bag and cracks between her thighs makes me wonder how long she can go without drinking. Makes me wonder how long it's been since she'd been content and sober.
Her attempts at small talk with me, interjected with coughs and hawks hither and thither, make me question how far she allowed her education to go, and whether or not she's ever discussed more than the weather with anyone. I don't mean to sound so pretentious and lofty, but when you're stuck answering "So how about Britney shaving her head-what the hell was that?," it's arduous to agreeably assert that she's an avid thinker.

A Muslim woman walks past and she had to remark "looka that get-up!" nudging my elbow with her own--boney--as if she were a happy uncle of mine. She is not a happy uncle of mine.
I only smiled and nodded, doing as little as possible to cause any sort of advancement on what could potentially be a confusing and/or prejudiced conversation for her, and phantomly responded "It's not a "get-up," as you say, but a head scarf or hijab, I think, symbolic in the Muslim faith of obedience to God and appreciating women beside thei--you're not even caring, are you?"

She got on at Stop A and--an hour later--left for Stop B.
In that time she downed 3 beers she had brought on with her and pulled five cancerstick breaks.

Sometimes, I love America.

Introduction

English aficionados, I present to you the all of me that I find most comprehensive and appealing. My writing.

I loved to write as a kid, as so many did.
Newspapers, short comics, and the like.

I used to draw monsters and aliens, and always came up with stories behind them. One of them was called a "Moo-Och," and a friend of my mother's gave me 25.00 to draw him one and write a short story about its alien planet.

I endured the "painful realization of my pitiful existence" in 9th grade and wrote my depressive episodes. It was a nice catharsis and I was very emo.

I fell in love in 10th grade with a girl who recognized "we have the same shoes!," poking my converse adjacent to hers. I ignored her lacking prowess in gym class-badmitten with smiley you can do its. She served as catalyst for my decision to write in composition notebooks for the rest of my natural, but certainly not normal, life. I'm currently (Summer 2008) on Notebook #11.

For a while, I heavily influenced my work with the seemingly arbitrary abstractions in lyrics from the likes of At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta (Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala precisely), and experimented with archaics like thees and thous and shalts, but that all ended when I realized I was focusing muchtoomuch on sound and aesthetic than on substance and content.

Upon that realization, I set out to ameliorate my writings so as to cater to both aesthetic and substance, beauty and meaning.

When I was 19, I thought I had found "my voice." I hadn't. But I'm still trying.

My influences are few but powerful, and-for the harshest critics-blatant. E. E. Cummings. T.S. Eliot. William Carlos Williams. E.A. Robinson. W. H. Auden. Lucille Clifton. Charles Bukowski. Taylor Mali.
If you see anyone else in my work, I can't remember them now, or I haven't read them, and I haven't read a lot. Teach me.

I am an English Teacher in New York City, my dream, and I will never have time to seek publication. This is my tech-savvy alternative.

I recently alluded to this entry as an example for my seniors to write a story or several poems based on the following question:

"How does one's sex, age, race, environment, cultural traditions, social status, et al. affect or influence How and What they write about in personal writing?"

The following is an elaboration of my introduction as a means of more explicitly addressing these particular factors of my personal writing.

I grew up in the suburbs, and so I write about both the natural world--the trees, the moon, the rain-- as well as the relationships and experiences that can only spawn from the walls and windows of granite, steel, glass that span such great heights. How depressing it is to miss the sunset because I was traveling subterranean on different colors and numbers and letters.

I started writing when I was young, and have come to realize that each time I write--no matter what my age--, I include what I've learned, what wisdom I've come to understand, into my perception of the world. My language changes with each new word that joins my lexicon, my style changes with each new urge to experiment on the page.

I'm Italian and English with a Jewish stepfamily, and so attempt to include the cultural traditions I'm familiar with in my personal writing. Sunday Dinner @ 2pm @ Grandma's House. Dad trying to teach me golf. Learning what "Oy Kevalt" really means.

Being a man who has often questioned what it means to be a man, I've written a great deal on those pontifications. How did the phrase "boys don't cry?" come to exist? Why are men so fascinated with cars and football and chili dogs? How would I be a different person if I was closer with my father instead of my mother?

I have experienced both poverty and the white collar lifestyle. Where my father often enjoyed spending his money and indulging in boat trips on Lake Ontario, and little Toblerone chocolates when he would return from working overseas, my mother made sure that whatever she'd cook Sunday lasted her, my sister and I all week for dinner and going to the dollar theatre once a month was "reasonable." When I lived on my own during college, one meal a day and wrapping in blankets and scarves instead of turning on heaters gave me a more mature understanding of poverty.

Having endured the poisons and ecstasies of relationships, I have also written about how my mother knows exactly what to say to make me cry, the uber-intelligent, multi-lingual artsy fartsy types of girls I'm into, and, thanks to Paul, Jenn, Anastasiya, and Chantal, the true meaning of a friend.