It did not amount to the torrential downpours promised by the weatherbugs but there has been some flooding. I talked to someone last night as her basement apartment filled with water and no help could be summoned.
I changed pants today. And shirt. Same pants all week. Different shirts.
Just read some good poetry on the train. One about a watchtower, written by a woman in response to her ex getting married. It’s obvious to read it as a phallic thing, the bulbous tower and talk of body parts. Does she really lament the loss of being able to blow the guy, now that he’s married? Will she forever remember him for his tumescence, and girth? If so that’s a beautiful memory.
I talked to a woman who spoke lovingly of her man’s cock. She called it “beautiful” and “strong.” Mine’s been called “good” and “hard” and “good and hard.” One woman used to marvel at how hard it got. “So hard,” she whispered, stroking and playing with it.
She was the keeper I didn’t keep. The keeper I couldn’t keep. Race. Culture. All that. We still talk. I saved pictures from her wedding, even though I did not attend. I’ll never know if her husband knows she dated a white guy before him.
I woke up feeling good. This inevitably leads to the question: Why? How long will it last? I think I’m feeling different today because I took a beta blocker pill before bedtime. I’ve never done that. I only take one a day in the a.m. I typically wake up feeling like I should rush to pop the fist full of pills. It’s not really that many but I’ve never been a pillpopper so it feels like a new addiction.
Just feeling calm. Sitting in the breakroom at work. I’m always an hour early, but I leave the first instant I can. I’m not making friends here, as I’d hoped. The job is at turns tedious and exhilarating. I still can’t believe I’m in this at times but despite the seeming conflicts of interest there is nothing about my past that would interfere with my ability to do this job.
I don’t wear my glasses on the subways now. The natural colors, seen without corrective lenses, are soft and beautiful. I’ve never had a pair of glasses where colors looked natural as they do without the corrective lenses.
Two cups today reveal identical serial numbers with slightly different artistic treatments. The smears are obviously the work of someone demonstrating the versatility and potential nuance to be found in what most would consider a string of numbers, a smear of digits, a chain of numericality.
14229042720308
1422 was my first apartment # at the Parc Lincoln. 904 is an area code somewhere. Florida? Yes, indeed, Jacksonville, where I made many calls during and after college. 2720 means nothing to me. Wither 308…
I just shit in the shared shitter. There is a gender neutral shitter you can get all to yourself. But most shitters here are communal. We don’t hold hands and sing songs as we shit together. But there is that sense of discomfort in hearing the sounds of a fellow human being as he pumps turd from his bowels.
I used to think it corrupt to even share that column of air with another human. My turd and pee slipping through the exact same column of time and space as someone else’s waste matter. Who judges it? Who decides the winner in these unheralded, undeclared competitions?
I used to pad my asswipes with toilet flushes. By pad I mean silence. The grating, burrowing sound of a righteous asswipe gets drowned by the gratuitous flush of the toilet. I wipe vigorously and thoroughly and suspect neighbors analyze and think about this.
“How much of that is necessary? When does it just get gratuitous? After the third wipe is he just having fun?”
These are the thoughts of a mid-morning shit team. We are a team, are we not? Shitting in separate chambers. I took the handicapped one, just because. It shields me some from prying eyes who might want to match my shoes and pants as I squat to the shoes and pants as I walk about, shitless.
There could be talk of the brown-shoed white-pantsed shit machine who cranks out foul smelling beasts and wipes his ass for 10 fucking minutes. That would not be me. I’m not especially foul smelling, at least not today. But I have my moments of red meat steaks turned to shit so foul my eyes water. At home I keep matches handy for that. Matches, the bigger ones are best, neutralize the smell of a foul shit almost instantly. I don’t carry matches around for that purpose.
Anyway, all I’m saying is, I took a shit just now.
