I get out of bed, take a piss and happen to look up and see myself in the mirror. My hair is rumpled, I'm unshaved. I think I look sexy with my shirt off and my cock hanging out, pissing in the commode. I walk downstairs and flip on the light in the hallway. I pull on my boots and grab a sweatshirt, then head out to start my chores.
A cooing mourning dove starts this day as does a dense fog and the sound of the running stream. Gravel crunches under my feet , then the sound crosses over to swishing grass as I make my way down the drive and then through the fields to the barn. Dew completely soaks my boots and pant legs.
Inside the barn, a flock of chickens waits eagerly at their coop door. They jostle about, but make no clucking sounds. Even the rooster is quiet. I open the door and they rush out into the pasture, into the fog, damp and dawn, then march upon the fields. They are merciless. They inspect each blade of grass with precision, either with their eyes or their sharp beaks. Whatever they find is seized from its resting spot, like grabbing a pea with a pair of chop sticks. It is grabbed, clamped and swallowed. There's no time for chewing and barely a pause in their march. They are the most loyal soldiers to appetite, survival, and selfishness.
I remain in the barn. A quartet of young wrens flies about in a mild panic. Their wing-beating sounds like an airplane with a rubber band propeller. Some lightly thrum themselves against the glass window frame trying to make an escape. They flutter here and there, through the wire of the chicken coop, into the rafters, back through the chicken wire. They're fat and healthy chicks. They've been reared on chicken feed and insects from the field. These cherubs will be small masters of the sky.
I am waiting on the platform for the A train to take me downtown. A tall, twenty-something Hispanic, in the company of an older woman, asks me for directions. He has on a tight-fitting, long-sleeved shirt, tight pants, heavy jewelry and sunglasses. He looks like he's been outfitted from the wardrobe department of Sanford and Son. Though he is manly looking, he still has enough baby fat on him to give him feminine curves and despite his flashy, ethnic look, he is gentle and soft spoken. After I help him, he and his mother (?) settle into the bench next to me. He and I exchange smiles. He has a sweet, submissiveness.
When the train arrives, he and his mother stay close. The young man and I exchange smiles again.
What happens to me when I want like this? I stand there, holding onto the overhead handrail and feel my attraction to him weigh upon me. What is it that fuels the intensity of my desire? Years I've spent, readying myself for this day of work in New York City. I have suffered for years with long work hours and education to get to a position where I can command the money and the schedule that I do. But none of that matters now. He radiates a heat. I relax my knees and feel how easily I could just lie down on the subway car floor. This feeling is like a release from every tension I've ever known. Awash in it as I am now, I might float, I might stop in time, I might not remember anything that has ever troubled me, I might live one pure, now instant.
The car shakes as we move the through the tunnel. We enter a longer stretch of track where the train accelerates. The momentum is carried through each car and each of the bodies on the train. Those of us that are holding onto the overhead rail lean back into the wake of the increased speed. The connection I feel to the young man is like this invisible force that acts on all of us in the car. I imagine the distance between us commuted by this connection, just as you erase distance when you look through the scope of a rifle, just as your eye is locked onto the object in the cross hairs while the rest of the world tumbles to blurred edges.
We are several stops into the trip. I know where he's going because I'm the one who gave him the directions to get there. I know that in another stop, he'll be gone, that I will never see him again, and I'll only be left with this wanting. That prospect seems unbearable to me. I rush through my work bag to search for a business card. I don't know how I'm going to give it to him or what I'll say when I do, but I know that this can't be the last time I see him. I realize, pathetically, that for months, I've been tricking myself into believing that I've been happy or even ok. Outside of the train, solitary light bulbs whiz by. The contrast to what I feel now and what I have been feeling and thinking for months is like these spaced moments of light in barreling darkness.
When the doors open, he moves to exit and looks at me again. I hand him the card. I have to reach past two people to do this. I only say...I flounder it...I say, "here you are". He smiles and nods like he's known all along that this would happen. He takes the card, and exits.
Two hours later, he texts me. When I receive the text, I'm immersed in my pretend life, the one where I pretend that the words coming out of my mouth and the things that I talk about matter. In fact, when I see the text, I'm in the process of talking and I stutter so that the last part comes out like babble. It is maybe the most real thing I've said all day. Meaningless, yes, but at least is is true. I look around me and really take things in. I feel like inviting everyone to a bar. I feel like taking my clothes off and going to bed. I feel like opening up the window, climbing out, making my way down the side of the building, then down the block, and not turning around. I text him back 'great to hear from you'. I write the word 'great' but the words do nothing to convey how I feel. I ask him, 'can I see you later today?' and he replies back quickly, 'yes'.
In the quiet of the barn, the wren chicks have exhausted themselves trying to beat their way through the windowpanes. They perch on the seal panting shallow, quick, silent breaths. The light that shines into this dark paddock is like the light for which you build church windows. Even though everything has been still, dust remains floating in the air, rising and sinking like a thousand hot air balloons in a race to circle the globe in 80 days.
After we are together, I catch him looking at himself in the mirror. He studies his hair, his face, and then his eyes. He scrutinizes himself for flaws like the chickens look for bugs. I want to take a snapshot of him so that I catch the shine of the pomade in his hair. So he can autograph the picture with a marker and write on it 'See ya 'round, Casanova'. I recognize that face that he makes at himself in the mirror, as he swivels his chin from side to side. I know that bandaid of affirmation that gets applied. I know that Dumbo journey up an down in the bright, white rays of morning. And all these years I thought it was a spotlight. I had no idea it was evidence, proof all along that I was part of something infinitely larger and much more stark. I know why the little birds are so afraid and why they've rushed to the sides of the frame.
