people and their chariots of metal and steel, the meters ticking, the buildings, cathedrals arching and shooting into the sky, and the cups of hastily grabbed coffee, the bottles of water, the phones, the keyboards, and the billboards, and boards that people wear as they stand and hand others small pieces of paperâ please buy, please buy, please buy âand the endless lights in a multitude of colors, the towering spikes that needle the clouds so that there is no need for stars, the restaurants and the bars and the endless people sitting on endless high seats and menus and waiters and bartenders tending to the girls in heels, business high and then higher at night, the dresses shorter, everyone listening to music or reading or pretending that they are not sitting next to a million strangers in love and out of love and between love and fear and failure and beyond all hope thereâs hope.
Oh, how you love this city!
You love public transport because anyone can take it and everyone does, from the claustrophobic man with his summer place in the Hamptons to the woman who has nothing but a row of scars up each of her thin arms. You love how, for a brief moment, you are all together traveling to somewhere else. You enjoy the feeling of transitory impermanence. How, in these moments, people make the place that they are occupying, theirs.
You think about when you first met your Ride.
You came in the night. You came in the dark, under the door, through the window. You came to him as he lay in bed, lay in the thin place between wakefulness and sleep. Why him? Why you?
Because. Because the wind blew, because the ancient cogs clicked into place, because the moon covered its face and the spray from the sea turned red and something stirred deep in the dust of the universe.
You drifted in, finer than smoke, thinner than mist. He breathed in, he breathed out. You leaned over, tasted his skin, his drops of sweat, tasted the wine he had drunk, the grease and the salt of the burger he had eaten. You looked at him asleep. An innocent. Your Ride had not known suffering or hunger or thirst or pain.
You studied the bridge of his nose, the tuck of his chin, the nape of his neck exposed, the soft lobe of his ear. The warm, sleeping lines of him. Your Ride, the body that will hold you while you do your work to keep the world safe.
He smelled like umber, the color of a day well done. He sighed a faint scent of toothpaste and the deeper primal wet of his mouth. He sighed and then he inhaled you in.
He breathed you into his diaphragm, into his muscles, his cartilage, ligaments, tendons, soaked you in through his skinâhis nerves and blood vessels sang, oil glands and sweat glands rangâinto his follicles and his fat, down and deep within his protein filaments, and into his liver and his stomach with its gastric folds and acid juices, bile black, intestines, gallbladder, deeper, deeper into the lobes and creases and jelly of his brain itself, and deeper, still deeper to the core, the very core of him of youâ
âare first an embryo, curled small and pink, the size of a thumb, a seahorse floating in the dark sea of your motherâs womb, forming, growing, being born with a wail. The shock of bright sharp light into the world, fat cheeks to be kissed, screaming your parents out of sleep, or laughing with delight, your first uneasy steps growing surer until you run around, fall down, cry, pull yourself up, start again, your fine hair growing darker, your limbs longer. Learning how to ride a bike, a skateboard, to ski, moving fast, talking, drawing, musical instruments, spraying Lego pieces over the floor, taller now. At school, shy at first, then raising your hand, answering a question, Me, me! Knock knock. Orange you glad I didnât say knock knock? Ketchup, burgers, Fourth of July, fireworks from the beach, swimming at camp, pillow fights, real fights, making up, reading, weird feelings, wet dreams, daydreams, some
Oh, how you love this city!
You love public transport because anyone can take it and everyone does, from the claustrophobic man with his summer place in the Hamptons to the woman who has nothing but a row of scars up each of her thin arms. You love how, for a brief moment, you are all together traveling to somewhere else. You enjoy the feeling of transitory impermanence. How, in these moments, people make the place that they are occupying, theirs.
You think about when you first met your Ride.
You came in the night. You came in the dark, under the door, through the window. You came to him as he lay in bed, lay in the thin place between wakefulness and sleep. Why him? Why you?
Because. Because the wind blew, because the ancient cogs clicked into place, because the moon covered its face and the spray from the sea turned red and something stirred deep in the dust of the universe.
You drifted in, finer than smoke, thinner than mist. He breathed in, he breathed out. You leaned over, tasted his skin, his drops of sweat, tasted the wine he had drunk, the grease and the salt of the burger he had eaten. You looked at him asleep. An innocent. Your Ride had not known suffering or hunger or thirst or pain.
You studied the bridge of his nose, the tuck of his chin, the nape of his neck exposed, the soft lobe of his ear. The warm, sleeping lines of him. Your Ride, the body that will hold you while you do your work to keep the world safe.
He smelled like umber, the color of a day well done. He sighed a faint scent of toothpaste and the deeper primal wet of his mouth. He sighed and then he inhaled you in.
He breathed you into his diaphragm, into his muscles, his cartilage, ligaments, tendons, soaked you in through his skinâhis nerves and blood vessels sang, oil glands and sweat glands rangâinto his follicles and his fat, down and deep within his protein filaments, and into his liver and his stomach with its gastric folds and acid juices, bile black, intestines, gallbladder, deeper, deeper into the lobes and creases and jelly of his brain itself, and deeper, still deeper to the core, the very core of him of youâ
âare first an embryo, curled small and pink, the size of a thumb, a seahorse floating in the dark sea of your motherâs womb, forming, growing, being born with a wail. The shock of bright sharp light into the world, fat cheeks to be kissed, screaming your parents out of sleep, or laughing with delight, your first uneasy steps growing surer until you run around, fall down, cry, pull yourself up, start again, your fine hair growing darker, your limbs longer. Learning how to ride a bike, a skateboard, to ski, moving fast, talking, drawing, musical instruments, spraying Lego pieces over the floor, taller now. At school, shy at first, then raising your hand, answering a question, Me, me! Knock knock. Orange you glad I didnât say knock knock? Ketchup, burgers, Fourth of July, fireworks from the beach, swimming at camp, pillow fights, real fights, making up, reading, weird feelings, wet dreams, daydreams, some
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