The Poet : Chapters 6 and 7

SIX

 

I got off the G train at Carroll Street after witnessing two three-hundred-pound Latina women, with the word juicy written across both wide expanses of their asses, go at it like wrestling bears over a cell phone. They were sincerely pummeling each other for the device while their tired children cried, and other riders filmed them while laughing. The sight of those two beating each other down for a seven-hundred-dollar phone while oblivious to their offspring and the camera’s gaze made me sad for America. What were we becoming? Self-involved animals who took dozens of photos of ourselves daily; a citizenry who sat idly while two people demolished each other for a gadget? Maybe we already were that kind of beast and we just needed the genius of Steve Jobs to show us. We truly did deserve an orange-faced, racist, xenophobic billionaire with the I.Q. of a third-grader and a small-dick for president.

Carroll Gardens was one of those shabby chic mixes of old Brooklyn neighborhood holdouts and the waxy-bright gleam of hipster gentrification blight. Larissa’s block, on the other hand, was a complete and total shithole. Quite a few blocks removed from the swirl of old Italian restaurants and artisan ice cream shops and mommies pushing babies named Finn or Harper around in block-wide strollers; it was the last remaining eyesore in the gentrified hood. Some of the buildings looked bombed out. There were shopping carts everywhere. They were full of glass bottles and aluminum cans. Cars zipped by on the BQE at all hours creating a constant buzzing of noise. Mutts barked. People shouted in their apartments. At one end of the street a pack of teens huddled around each other. They were all dressed alike in red, satin jackets, shouting and screaming and all calling each other racial slurs as pet names. How sweet! The neighborhood had its very own gang.

I rang the buzzer. “Oh, it’s you,” Gigi said when she finally answered the door.

            I pointed to the kids dressed in red jackets, who’d been eyeing me during my wait. “What’s with the jets and sharks down there?”

            “They’re supposedly harmless according to Larissa and Millicent, if you consider them saying they want to put a baby in you, or catcalls about your ass and guess-timations on your breast size harmless.” That night’s ensemble: Doctor Who t with his magic box plastered on it; faded shorts that, for some reason now, had a part of the pocket hanging out; combat boots with just a touch of navy blue (also Doctor Who related) socks.

            “Speaking of, you know your wardrobe this mild November night is starting to make me appreciate the damage we’re doing to this climate,” I said. “And genre writing.”

            “Doctor Who is a TV show, she said. “And it’s supposed to get cold soon.”

            “That’s what I keep hearing. Missed you at the reading tonight.”

            “I was doing things for Larissa.”

            “Lipstick lesbians?”

            A sigh of exasperation. “Rand, why do you have to make everything so dirty and disgusting?”

            “I am the world I live in,” I said. “And gender fluidity is the new norm if I’m to believe what I read in the papers and online.”

            “Yes, but with real people living real lives against a hetero-normative society,” she said. “Not the sick porn fantasies that you have in your head about LGBT people.”

            “Don’t you mean LGBTQIA?”

Gigi shook her head. “I’m going back upstairs.”

            I caught the door before it closed. Gigi had no sense of humor. Millennials relied on one-hundred percent, pure, street value optimism with no irony allowed. My generation couldn’t spell the word optimism; that’s why we grew up into adults who shunned public service and political office. It probably didn’t help that I told bad jokes and had a bad habit of leering when I spoke to women under the age of thirty.

            “Doctor Killjoy is here,” Gigi announced to the party. There was a chorus of groans, and Fidel shouted The Bard of Bay Ridge from Larissa’s living room. In that moment I knew how both Charlie Brown and Charles Manson felt.

            All alcohol and poetry and no protein made Rand a hungry old codger. I went right for the spread on the kitchen table. I couldn’t recognize any of it. Most of the stuff was vegetal. I recognized Brussel sprouts and a bunch of salad bowls. There was chili but it was of the Tofu variety. I mixed a spoon around in it. Onion city. Fucking vegans. They ruined everything for the simple carnivore. For some odd reason there was a tray of Jell-O shapes in the center of the table. They were risqué shapes: boobs and cocks. Someone did have sense of humor. They looked to be the only edible thing. I went to town on them.

            “Those are full of vodka,” Gigi said, as she came back into the kitchen with empty chip bowls. I tossed two more boobs into my mouth. She pointed to a closed door in the kitchen. “The bathroom,” she said, as she headed back toward the party. “For when you inevitably break your streak and vomit.”

I took one more Jell-O shot cock for good measure. I grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge, another fucking burnt toast tasting IPA, and then made for the living room.

Larissa lived in a glorified storage container. Three grand to live on the shit block of a trendy neighborhood in a narrow railroad apartment that circulated no air. Only in New York. The bedrooms that Larissa and her roommate had were more appendages than actual rooms. They were little pods. There were bookshelves and books strewn throughout. Larissa’s roommate, Millicent Xiao was a painter, so there were tons of shitty paintings on the wall. Most of them were black with slivers of color. Clyfford Still they were not. There were sculptures that looked like found junk or torture devices; they rested on coffee tables. You could hear the roar of the BQE and the shouts of the gang from the unseasonably open living room windows. It was hot as balls in the place. I wondered where Larissa had the space for all that scantily clad yoga.

“Hey Doctor Killjoy,” Killian said.

He made room for me on the couch. “I’m not a doctor until I’ve completed the residency,” I said.

            “Yeah, well, I’ve always been a sucker for a good title,” Killian said.

            “I want that book,” Fidel said to me. “That Carolina chick’s book.”

            “You have that book,” I said. “It’s called my book. Just publish the fucking thing.”

            “We’re hurting for novels, Little Bukowski.”

            “I have novels,” Gigi said.

            Fidel shrugged. “Yeah…but…like for kids…”

            “I’ll write you a novel,” I said. “I’ll write you two novels.” I had some of the bad beer. “I’ll sit in an oubliette like de Sade and write a tome in my very own shit.”

            “When?” Fidel asked.

            “As soon as my ever-fornicating upstairs neighbor moves out,” I said. “And I find some way to euthanize the dog that lives across the street.”

            “Oh, there goes Rand blaming the world for his problems again,” Gigi said. She glared at Fidel. “And YA books aren’t just for kids, you ageist crank.”

            “Who’s Carolina?” Larissa asked.

            “My newest arch enemy,” I said. “I need to remember to add her to my enemies list.”

            “Rand’s old flame,” Killian said. “Or whatever. No one knows the real story.”

            “She does,” I said. “And there truly is a thin line between love and hate.”

            “And speaking of hate,” Jackson Urban said.  He was sitting on the floor across from me. “What’s with you and that Bob Kauffman shit?” Do I do that to you? Do I sit there and scream shit while you try to read? Do I say, hey, look everybody, fake-ass Bukowski is at it again slurring his words!”

            “Usually you’re on your phone texting your old man for rent money,” I said.

            “Always my old man’s bank account.” Jackson shook his head. “Yeah, my dad has money. My dad not me.”

            “Can I have some of his money?” I said.

            “You’re always acting like you’re broke, Rand,” Gigi said. “Like you’re still working in warehouses or whatever it is you write about, instead of collecting a pension and sitting in a library all day doing nothing but reading the New York Times and watching teenage girls bend over to shelve books.”

            “She’s twenty,” I said. “And I still have work-related PTSD.”

“You know you’re like the only one here who doesn’t have to have a roommate.”

“I…I don’t have a roommate,” Killian said.

“Yeah, but you have like a cat, right?” Gigi said.

“Hey, I’m not trying to be difficult,” I said to Jackson. “I just tease, man. And I get it. I empathize. In fact, I marched in the Black Lives Matter rally last year. Remember we met up on the street?”

“The fuck does that have to do with anything I just said?” Jackson said.

“About as much as it has with you using a nom de plume on stage and in real life.”

“Man, my name is Reggie Jackson. I can’t be an effective poet and be Reggie Jackson.” 

“But you can be a mediocre poet and be Jackson Urban?” I said.

“Fuck you, Wyndham,” Jackson said. “And fuck Reggie Jackson.”

            Gigi scoffed “Plus, Rand, you had a Strand bag and a bag from Lids that night,” she said. “I wouldn’t call that showing up for a protest.”

            “A man can’t shop and protest at the same time?”

            “You weren’t even there for the protest,” Jackson said.

            “Yes, I was, Reggie,” I said. “And I was there for a new Mets hat.”

            “He was,” Larissa broke in. “I remember you sending an email out to people asking them if they wanted to join you.”

Gigi, Jackson and I gave her a what-the-fuck look. They knew as well as I knew that I’d sent no email like that. But I could’ve. Who knew what I did when I was drunk. I left pools of invective all over the internet when the vodka took hold. Maybe the sozzled me had a progressive, political side. Or an altruistic side. Who knew how many suicides I’d stopped? How many fat kids I’d saved from attacking another bag of cookies? How many regimes I’d thwarted? How many donations I’d made to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. A protest rally might’ve been just the tip of the iceberg.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t join you,” she said.

            “Well, you should’ve,” I said. “Streaming Netflix all day is no excuse for eschewing the value of social protest.” Larissa gave me a dark look. “Or giving the old economy a boost. I mean where’s your Mets hat, Miss Haven-St. Claire?”

            “Sports are dumb,” she said.

            “I’m just saying you shouldn’t be rude, Wyndham,” Jackson said. “That’s all.”

            I got up. “Hey, next time you read, Reg, I won’t even go.”

            “That would be preferred,” Gigi shouted after me, as I went to get another beer. I wasn’t alone in the kitchen, but one minute, staring at all of that bad art, before she followed me in.

“You can’t bear to be without me,” I said. “Should we tell Reginald now, or give him the coveted surprised cuckold role?”

            “Shut up, Rand,” she said. “And it’s Jackson.”

“Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty.” Gigi gave me a confused look. So much for the old New Jack Swing. I checked out the bad art. “I think these paintings have to power to turn people against supporting creative endeavors. You get a GOP-heavy senate committee in here and I guarantee you the NEA is done in minutes.”

            “Millicent actually lives, like financially, off of her art.” Gigi glared at me. “Look, I need a favor. It kills me to say that to you but I do.”

            “I don’t do favors for people. It’s a moral and ethical thing that I have.”

“I want you to get in touch with this Carolina.”

            “Yeah, and I want to wrestle her and Goth girl on my bed,” I said. “But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

            “I’m serious, you patriarchal asshole” she said. “And Larissa is like emo-punk, I think.”

            “And I’m not serious?” I spied a jug bottle of wine on the counter and poured myself a glass. I took about half down while Gigi poured herself another one too. I had two cock-shaped Jell-O shots then decided I needed real food. I went to the fridge. There were two slices of cold pizza in it. They were as good as mine.

“Killian needs your help,” Gigi said, as I cautiously ate the first piece. “The store is in bad shape. We lost a lot of customers when they put the Barclay’s Center in.”

“And Carolina is going to resurrect the profits like Jesus Christ? You people have a more inflated view of her than even I once had.”

            Gigi had some wine. “It’s not her,” she said. “It’s her boyfriend. Godfrey Whitt.”

“What kind of fucking name is that?” I said. “That’s an asshole’s name.”

            “Like you don’t know him.”

            “Every pseudo intellectual asshole comes in my library asking for his book.” Still Gigi grabbed a NY Times Book Review off a kitchen chair. She flipped to the best sellers. In at number three was a book called In the Seconds before Impact by one Godfrey Whitt. “So?”

            “The book is like a masterpiece,” she said. “It’s about this guy on one of the flights that hit the World Trade Center. He imagines his whole life and life in America post-9/11 in the seconds before impact. Rumor has it Whitt like thought about the book for thirteen years after 9/11 and wrote all 1200 pages in the last two years.”

            “He must not have a Twitter account or Netflix,” I said.

            “He’s big time,” Gigi said. “He even predicted that orange-faced billionaire would run for president.”

“So did The Simpsons. Why don’t I try Matt Groening? At least he’s not the guy putting it to Carolina?”

            “You’re so crass. Killian saw them together at the Cornelia Street reading. You, dumb box of rocks that you are, were actually sitting at a table with Godfrey Whitt.”

            “That explains the hard-on and the unwarranted sense of literary accomplishment that I’ve been feeling lately.”

            “Riiight,” Gigi said. “Killian thinks that if you talk to Carolina maybe we can get Godfrey Whitt to read…but he has too much pride to tell you this himself.”

            “You know I have a better chance of making things worse,” I said. “Like molten lava apocalyptic, destroy Pompeii worse.”

            “That’s what I told him,” Gigi said.

            Then she frowned and walked away.

 

 

                                                                      SEVEN

 

I drank my wine then poured another copious glass. I stood there trying to figure how in the world I was going to convince Carolina of anything, when Millicent Xiao came stumbling out of the bathroom. She gave me one of those detestable looks that the world handed out to me daily. Not unwarranted, mind you. But she didn’t leave. Instead, she got herself a huge glass of wine and lingered around the food table. She wasn’t a bad looking woman; stringy brown hair with one side shaved and dyed in streaks of aquamarine; Millicent had those thick glasses like all the rest of the artsy fartsies, only hers were green. She was in all black.

            “You look hot in that,” I said, in an effort to break her icy stare.

“I know.”

            “I didn’t mean it that way.”

            “Old men who chase young women disgust me.”

            “Me too,” I said. “That’s why I mostly walk.”

            “You’re like that carroty-hued xenophobe running for president.”

            “I want everyone to be free.”

            “You say you hate my paintings,” Millicent said.

            “But I love art for art’s sake.”

            “I can tell by your face that you hate them.” She ate two Jell-O shots without chewing.

            “My face has had perma-frown since I turned forty,” I said. “You’ll have to dig deeper to see just how boring and pathetic I actually am underneath this glowering visage.”

            “It’s because you’re a man,” she said. “A white man in so-called post-racial America. You feel that everything is being taken away from you. You feel your powers of persuasion slipping. That’s why you and your ilk are rallying around that sexist beast. You detest successful women and minorities. You hate that your role in the world order is becoming more and more subservient. You hate that you will one day no longer control the vote. Your sway in America is diminishing. And that is exactly what I express in my paintings. You have no choice but to hate them. You hate diverse beauty because you can’t understand it.”

            “And I can’t stream movies or get my employees to show up for work,” I said. “I’m fucked the whole way around.” I went for that other slice of pizza. “Also, you use too much purple and black.”

            “Criticism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, white devil,” Millicent said. “And you stole my leftovers.”

            I ate pilfered gluten-free vegan pizza and looked at some of the art on the wall. “I don’t really have hate in my eyes,” I said. I pointed to a particularly ugly painting that was yellow and orange. “I mean there’s the end of your ofay patriarchy right there. What’s the point in me doing anything but waving the white flag and going gender fluid?”

            Millicent got close. Her breath was a touch stale but tolerable. I cupped my hands to my mouth. Mine smelt like roadkill dipped in cheap vodka. “You’re a liar Randolph Windrip,” she said softly.

            “Rand.”

            “Like the atlas?”

            “And just as tread upon,” I said. I took a few bites on the slice. “Sorry about the pizza.”

            “It’s in your privileged nature to steal and pillage,” she said.

            “I’ve purloined a few grapes in the produce aisle. I won’t lie about that.”

            “I have more art in my room. Would you like to come inside and hate it as well?”

            I chewed slowly. I considered my options. “Haters gonna hate, right. At least that’s what my grandma always told me.”

            Millicent’s room was so small her bed was actually pressed up against the door and the door would only open half-way. The walls were painted black, which would’ve been cool if she were fourteen, but maybe not so cool for someone hovering around…whatever age she was. But if Larissa could dress like Courtney Love’s younger sister and I could still put on baseball hats backwards and wearing rusty earrings, then Millicent could paint it all black. All bets were off these days.

I was thinking of getting a green mohawk myself.

There were several pieces of art taped on the wall. They were mostly drawings. There were a few collages of women’s breasts melding with American flags. I didn’t hate all of it. Some of it was quite good. I know Killian had one of Millicent’s drawings in his office, and he always touted her work. She didn’t need me to boost her. Still, a complimentary word or two was the right expression for the moment.

            “I like the bold use of…” I started to say. But Millicent pushed me face down on the bed. She jumped on top of me and started grinding her pelvis into my ass.

            “You like that, poet bitch?”

            “I’m not adverse to…” Millicent lifted my head by the neck and kissed me.

Finally, I managed to roll over. But again, she was on top of me. Our lips met. She was kissing too hard for this to be enjoyable, so I tried slowing her down, easing into it. That wasn’t happening. She kissed me like she was trying to bore her mouth into mine. She tongue-fucked me. The curled mother was six-inches long unfurled and pierced. The stud hit my bottom teeth like an anvil. I dropped the pizza slice on the floor. Just as quickly we came up for air.

            Millicent rolled off of me. We lay on our backs. You could hear faint traces of the party through thin walls, and the TV from the neighbor upstairs. “I did all of those drawings in a fit of rage when my boyfriend broke up with me.”

            “A bad break-up?” I said. “They say the end of long-term relationships is akin to mourning a death.”

            “We dated a month.”

            “Some love burns out quick.”

            “He said Brooklyn wasn’t big enough for both our genius.” I tried to get up to retrieve the pizza slice but Millicent pushed me down. She seemed very, very fucking drunk, which was probably why I was getting kind of lucky, minus the few teeth I might have to replace. Half of her rolled over onto my chest.

            “What kind of art did he make?”

            “Alternative finger painting.” Millicent looked at me. “Why do you hate my art, Rudy?”

            “It’s Rand,” I said. “And I told you I don’t hate your art.”

            “I can tell by your face,” she said. “You look bored.”

            “Continued scrutiny into my physiognomy aside; I’m an American. I don’t understand art except to roll up to a painting in a museum and take a selfie. My eyes have been trained to look bored. My constitution tells me to pour battery acid in a placid lake, and play my car radio too loudly while driving above the speed limit holding a Coke in one hand and my cell phone in the other. I laugh at the caloric content listings in fast food restaurants…and then I double down.”

            “This country is horrible.”

            “The worst.”

            “I feel no freedom here,” Millicent said. “Everyone is so dull and common.”

            “You should see my neighborhood on NFL Sundays,” I said. “Nothing but a bunch of overweight guys in Giants and Jets jerseys. They look like high school girlfriends wearing their boyfriend’s clothing. And now I gotta kiss Carolina’s ass to save Killian’s store.”

            “Do you always complain in non-sequiturs?”           

“I’d like to think that I’ve perfected the art. I once complai…”

            Millicent started kissing me hard again. If I didn’t slow us down her tongue would break a tooth because I hadn’t been to the dentist since the Clinton era. I started kissing her softly. It felt nice. Millicent was a good kisser.

But just as quickly she stopped kissing me and pushed me off of her. Millicent got up. She paced around the only small landing strip of room she had. “This is wrong,” she said.

            “We’re artists we’re carefree,” I said. “We’ll blame it on the Jell-O shots.” But that wasn’t good enough. Millicent looked down at me with her hand over her mouth like I’d just farted in bed. Her green glasses were askew. Then she tore out of the room, but not before her door bounced off her bed and pinched her in the doorframe like a squashed bug. She stepped on the slice of pizza too.

I closed my eyes and laid back. Millicent’s room was better in the dark. I could feel myself drifting in and out. The sounds from above me faded. The sound of the party faded. I could still hear the fucking BQE however. I pretended the noise of the cars was the noise of the fans in my room blocking out Brooklyn. I was almost out. Then I was out.

The door opened and there stood Larissa Haven-St. Claire in all of her Goth glory. Emo glory. Punk glory. I had no fucking clue. She was standing in some undefinable kind of glory. “Not the room I expected you to end up passed out in,” she said. “At least you didn’t puke on the floor.”

            “Millicent wanted to show me her paintings,” I said. “She took me for a regular Ambroise Vollard. I’m going to send her my student loan statements to set her straight.”

            “Leave her artwork alone,” Larissa said. “It picks up two-thirds of the rent.”

            “Maybe I am in the right room.” I looked around. “How long have I been out?”

            “About two hours,” she said. “The party’s over. Millicent’s coming down off her E now, and would like her room back.”

            “I’m going to have to doss here,” I said. “I can’t drive.”

            “You took the train here.”

            “I can’t suffer the subway off-hours in my fragile state.”

            I followed Larissa into the living room. Millicent jumped up from the couch and tore past us. She flung open her bedroom door but it bounced off the bed again. The door hit her square in the face. But our girl recovered enough to get inside. She slammed the door. Within seconds we could hear the sound of muffled mopey music from back in the halcyon days of the 1990s.

            “You’ll have to excuse her,” Larissa said. “She’s harboring a secret crush, and she thinks she ruined things by getting high and kissing you instead.”

            “And to think she and I were going to run away to Vietnam together,” I said.

            “You bastard.”

            “Huh?”

            Larissa’s lips were on me. A crazy artist and now a pseudo-goth-emo-punk poet. This was Rand Wyndham’s lucky night. A Haley’s comet kind of night. We kissed for a while. Eventually we pushed our way into her bedroom, and got right on the bed. Larissa wasted no time. She had my belt undone and the fly down. I pulled that t-shirt dress up and put both hands on that wonderful, thong-clad yoga ass. She was jerking away at the old cock like she was milking a petulant cow. It hurt too much for me to get horny. I kept worrying that she’d rip the thing straight off. I put a hand down Larissa’s panty and started playing with her pussy.

            “I don’t want to have sex tonight,” she said.

            “Even if you wanted to,” I said. “I’m drunk. And the equipment just doesn’t spring to life like it used to.” I listened to the muffled music through the wall. “And how can you fuck with this music?”

            Larissa kept tugging away. “I’m almost interested in you. And I don’t usually like guys who look like they’re perpetually stuck in rush hour traffic. But I’m intrigued by your poems. I like how you write about those guys in the bar, and about women, in this day and age, like you honestly have no clue that we’re living, breathing, thinking human beings.”

            “And here I thought I was a trail blazing feminist,” I said, getting a couple fingers in her.

            Larissa gasped. “You border on the offensive and retrograde.” Then she rammed her tongue down my throat while she continued her death grip vice on my cock. I thought about how I’d need to start reading a thesaurus if I wanted to continue coming to the Xiao-Haven-St. Claire abode.

We stopped kissing. Larissa released my cock from her stranglehold and I took my fingers out of her. “I thought you said I was a genius.”

“I said I found your poems intriguing,” she said. “But I’m drunk. Tomorrow, I might hate them.” Yeah, and hate me, I thought. Larissa squeezed my cock and started tugging away again. Eventually I had no choice but to head down there myself and ever-so-kindly move her hand away “Is something wrong?”

            “No,” I said. “I just might need that thing later.”

            “I want you to read with me,” Larissa said.

            “We did that tonight.”

            “Like now. Let’s sit across from each other on the bed and read our poems to each other.”

            “What the shit?” I said. “Are you fucking with me?”

            Larissa rolled off of me and pulled down her t-shirt dress. I sat up and looked down at my limp, manhandled cock. I could hear crying or moaning coming from Millicent’s room. The sound of a genius at work. She made my head hurt. Or, rather, two hours without drink was doing that.

“I think I’m drunk,” Larissa said.

“Cool…let’s get some shut eye.”

            “On the couch.”

            “For sure.”

            I downed a glass of someone’s leftover wine then promptly passed out. I woke up a few hours later to the clatter from the BQE. I got up and the room spun. My mouth felt like someone had taken a shit inside of it. And shit was exactly what I had to do. The good old Rand Wyndham bowels never failed me. In the kitchen was Larissa’s tablet. I took it into the shitter with me. I barely got to the bowl before I exploded a torrent. Eventually I settled in with the stink. I touched the screen. Sylvia Plath’s doomed expression looked back at me while my bowels exploded anew. I logged on to my Gmail. There was one single, solitary email. Carolina. It read, yes, like the end of a fucking James Joyce novel.

            Then I heard Millicent say. “Who’s in the bathroom?”

            “Rand,” Larissa said. She yawned. Christ, they mere feet away from me. Fucking New York City apartments.

            “Who?”

            “You should know him, considering you made out with him last night.”

            “Oh God no.” I could picture Millicent with her hand over her mouth. She thought my mouth was bad wait until I opened the door and she got a taste of what my ass could offer. There was nary a can of air freshener to be found. But Carolina had said yes, so what did I care for clean air. “Tell me I didn’t kiss that man on his mouth.”

            “You sure did,” Larissa said, as I dropped my last load. Did they even care that I could hear them in there? “And don’t say it like that.”

            “Why?”

            “Because he’s…”

            Then there was whispering. I tuned it out. Millicent sounded sharp and Larissa sounded pleading. Eventually there’d be that knock on the door, and I’d be asked to leave. I shut the tablet off. No point in reliving Larissa’s poems, or mourning poor Sylvia. But Larissa wasn’t so bad, right? We all had our quirks. She seemed to like me, which didn’t happen often these days for yours truly. Age was making me the forgotten man. And when Larissa wasn’t playing the poet, she seemed like a decent human being. I needed to know more decent human beings.

            “And there’s pizza on my floor,” Millicent said.

Oh, how my dick hurt though. If we ever messed around again, I’d have to beg Ms. Haven-St. Claire to use the fine art of finesse. I swear she rug-burned the poor stick. I looked around the closet-space of the bathroom. There was no toilet paper on the roll. Or in the cabinet under the sink. Shit. There was a copy of Poets & Writers magazine on the floor and that would have to do. Nothing like wiping your ass of hungover beer shits using ads for upcoming poetry contests that were predetermined in-house at said university anyway. When I went to flush the toilet, handle broke off. Fuck.

Then came the knock on the door. “Um, excuse me,” Millicent said. “Other people need to use the bathroom.”

“If I were you, I’d go outside,” I said. “Or go make nice with the upstairs neighbor.”

“I’m serious.” More pounding. Fine. Fuck her, I thought. I opened the bathroom door to face Millicent all morning disheveled and puffy-faced. I moved an inch and she pushed past me and slammed the door. “Christ,” she said through pock-marked wood.

“What did you do?” Larissa asked, from the kitchen sink. She was in a pink t-shirt that didn’t cover the belly button. It had black skull and crossbones on it. Her shorts looked more like black hot pants than sleep attire. There were tattoos all over her arms and legs. Hell, even Larissa’s coffee mug looked a mix of morbid and hot-to-trot. “And your fly is open.”

“Your toilet is broken,” I said, zipping. Millicent’s groaned and gagged; gurgling noises hastened her trying to fix the commode. “And why do you subscribe to Poets & Writers?”

“Coffee?” Larissa asked. She held up and empty, ghoulish mug. It might’ve had a pentagram on it.

“If I drink coffee I’m going to vomit.”

“So just leaving?”

“I’m late for work,” I said. “If I’m nothing else I’m dedicated to my profession.”

The toilet flushed. Or tried to flush. Behind the door Millicent started shouting, “No, no, no.” Then you could hear the plunger go to work. If only the woman had more patience, I could’ve fixed everything on my own.

“You don’t look like someone who cares about being late for work,” Larissa said. She sounded that mixture of sad and mad. I knew it well.

“I’m trying to teach an old man a life lesson, plus we got this ant infestation and…”  

She shrugged. “Whatever.” She stared at me. She kept the coffee mug to her mouth. 

I fumbled around. I rubbed my hands on my dirty jeans. “Um…why don’t we do a movie or something?”

“A movie?” She laughed. “Seriously, Rand?”

“What in the hell do people do on a date now?”

Larissa sighed and set down her mug on the table. “Well, I hope you get in touch with this Carolina,” she said. She came over to me and unlocked the front door. Going through the archway it was my turn to shrug. “See you.”

“I had a good time with you last night,” I said.

“Mmmm hmmm.”

“I really did enjoy talking to you.”

She pursed her lips. “Maybe you are too strait-laced for me.”

“If it helps my case,” I said. “I’m thinking of getting a Mohawk. A green one.”

Larissa shut the door and I was out in her gray, ugly hallway. I could hear chipper morning news voices coming from the apartment next door, and the ranting cadence of the orange-faced, bloviating billionaire. There was ominous bass playing from upstairs. There were two cockroaches duking it out over a morsel in the corner, and from inside Larissa’s place I could hear her and Millicent arguing through the bathroom door about iPads and toilets. I’d made everyone miserable again. That was usually my cue to leave. So I did.