The ash of my cigarette should fall but holds on. It hangs, seemingly breaking physics. My mouth waters. If my legs cared they would lift me through the smoke to the kitchen where I keep my favorite bottles on the dusty top of the refrigerator.
That would calm me down. It is still drizzling outside. It seems it will never stop. The cigarette comes to my lips along with my hand. The drag I take is long. I look down my nose¾and see my own moustache, though blurrily¾and watch the beautiful red light: the smoking. The ash hangs, slightly curved and irregular in a spot. But does not fall.
My body is slouched in this uncomfortable chair ordered out of a catalog with my father’s money. It is the only thing in the room besides the telephone. The phone is by my left foot, the one that rocks with nerves. Nerves zap up and down my veins, all sugared and caffeined up. The nicotine is supposed to calm it. The ash still doesn’t fall.
My mind reaches for the phone, but my muscles don’t. They only bring the cigarette to my lips again. Through blurry nose and moustache the red ignites. I lean forward toward the phone and the ash breaks. It crumbles down into little pieces of paper¾perfectly sized for Barbie dolls to write their memoirs on¾which ticker tape parade to my toes. My hand holds the receiver but doesn’t pick it up.
My mouth waters. The red light on the end is the smoking, current; settling into the carpet is the smoked and the to smoke awaits my inhale wrapped tightly in white paper.
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
My favorite of Shakespeare’s sonnets, number one hundred and twenty-nine reverberates in my head and I curse myself. How did I land myself here, alone, in this chair, with the phone cradled against the instep of my naked foot, wrinkled, tired, burning with tension¾body lethargic, nerves racing. The state of in between, so intensely nothing. I search my past reason; it was lust. I admit it. I wonder if I should call. Can’t call. Why would I call now? What would be the point? Nobody would answer.
It wasn’t even the penis, it was that feeling deep in the stomach, where the deep nicotine breath goes, that center of enjoyment, the pleasure gland, just north of the penis.
I hear mumbling in my head. There go my great thoughts, inaudible even to myself, I see them fall from the canal, like a bobsled track, which pours through my brain. It’s a lot like veins but somewhat more cerebral. They fall from the track¾on that track everything is right, straight from the source, the inspiration, but I know now that they are fallen they are no good. I get a glimpse. It’s been two weeks. It’s too long. Way too long.
I get to the to smoke and turn it quickly into smoked. It’s so fast. It’s like that bobsled run. When it’s running, that’s ice, slippery-quick.
I came home, three weeks ago, tired, a lot like today. A lot like today. I watched the sun come up over Manhattan from the Brooklyn side, sitting on one of those benches on the promenade looking out over the east river.
I met her some moments before. It was all an accident. It was dark in the club. My eyes really aren’t that good in the first place, and my ears aren’t that great either, especially with background music.
It was lust. I tell you: ‘past reason hated.’ That’s how it is. I mumble to myself. I hear it, heavy.
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme,
A bliss in proof, and prov'd, a very woe,
Before, a joy propos'd, behind, a dream.
I light another cigarette. I am so tired. But I cannot sleep. I wait by the phone. Maybe it will ring. Soon I can call. The sun is nearly up, like that day:
On the bench, moon up but falling, sun down but climbing. I sat with a friend. The brain changes, the personality rotates along with the moon. The brain is in orbit. At that time conscience came. I realized I didn’t even know that girl. She didn’t even mean to go home with me, she meant to talk to her boyfriend, but he left with his friends, and she and I stood there thinking I was talking to her because I responded thinking she was talking to me. It wasn’t true but I was hungry so I invited her to one of those late night Korean restaurants with the fresh meat cooked at your table and the piss-drunk business men in their private room with geishas and the door open and spicy soups.
She slurped it right down, the spice not bothering her. She told me she was half French and half Mexican, her father and mother left her with her grandfather when she was a baby. She grew up in bars and on the back of his motorcycle. That was the Mexican side.
She was cute enough, and buxom so when she said, “I am a bad girl, okay? Come home with me,” the correct answer was clear. Smart would have said no, I said yes.
Then on the bench I realized how stupid it was without protection. Peace of mind was sucked out a black hole within me and that nervous strychnine-like tension worm-holed in.
After speaking with conscience, that mumbler, I had my blood taken with that long needle. I felt like fainting for a moment. Blood doesn’t usually bother me.
It is just too early to call so I guess I’ll have another cigarette.
© 2001 by Ralph-Michael Chiaia
Recent Comments