I was sitting in the den of our apartment with my LSAT study book and a steaming cup of Moroccan mint tea by my side. I had left work - sometimes too many hours of serving rich, inconsiderate people got the best of me and my middle-school self kicked into gear, faking a cough, sneeze, or whatever it took to get me out of that hell-hole. Luckily for me it was Labor Day weekend, so I was stationed at home waiting for Sam to get out of class, our bags packed by the door for a surprise weekend at the lake in celebration.

So when I heard the front door creak open around one fifteen in the afternoon, I was no doubt confused. Sam always came home around four or five, sometimes six at the absolute latest. At first, I panicked – grabbed my tea and nearly broke the mug when I dropped it, threw my LSAT book across the room, and scrambled to spread the rose petals that I was saving until the last minute out of fear of them wilting- “I’m so glad, I’m so happy,” someone burst out laughing. Strangely, that someone didn’t sound like Sam.

I tiptoed down the hallway as quietly as possible until I reached our bedroom door. I didn’t know how I should feel- scared, surprised, suspicious, shocked, maybe all of the above. I lifted my hand toward the door and with a flick of my wrist, pushed the door open until I could see two figures under a single white sheet in our bed. Our bed.

---------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------

I paced the streets of San Francisco aimlessly, waiting for Sam to call me, text me, anything to pacify the emotions arising within me that I had suppressed for so long. I left the apartment without her even noticing I had been there, she was obviously too busy with the mystery man to realize. I walked into the first neon-sign-bar I saw and inhaled the musty smell of smoke and sweat, familiar but not familiar at the same time, my own personal forbidden fruit.

I sat down at an old wooden table that had leather stretched across the top of it, metal bolts lining the edges to hold it down. I nodded to the bartender for a drink, “anything,” I said. Anything to take my mind somewhere else.

Looking around the decrepit bar and the people within it, I was immediately transported back to my early 20s. The sprawl of Chicago, the low-key streetlights, the hustle and bustle of a city in its prime, the late nights (or were they early nights?) that began it all, the first girl, losing my grip on reality, pawing the ground for traction and finding it coated in metaphorical baby oil instead, and finally, the move.

The waiter set my drink down on the table, donning a grin that was lacking a few teeth – like a puzzle with missing pieces that you try to solve, becoming frustrated with your own inability until you realize that it isn’t your fault. But everything is your fault. “Stop,” the waiter turned around as the word slipped out of my mouth. “Uh, sorry,” I manage, picking up my drink (a Waldorf?) and saluting him.

He looks confused but forces a smile nonetheless and walks toward another customer, a young woman with crescent moons of mascara underneath her eyes.  She’s a portrait of lost innocence with her yesterday’s curls coming undone and trembling fingers grasping her drink as though it were life support. Sam. Sam was the kind of innocent you had to admire from afar out of fear of corrupting it, but I was always one for unconventional living.

I looked down at my drink and sighed - to drink or not to drink, the burning question to my seething desire.  “**** it,” I knew there was no turning back the minute I raised the glass to my lips. The liquid ran down my throat like a fire, destroying the three years of sobriety I had accumulated with a single match that ignited the thought to drink even more.

She pushed you to this point. “I know she did,” when I realized I was talking out loud, I lowered my voice, “I know.” Are you going to let her get away with it? “Stop,” I threatened, even though I knew it was pointless. The whiskey flooded my veins and fueled the fire, the voices, the thoughts. You loved her because of her innocence, you know that. I knew that.

Her innocence is what drove me to her, you didn't find just anyone with that fleeting virtue that escapes too many of us too soon – I envied it, even. I hadn't had that innocence since I was young. It was taken from me by force and I grew up believing that free will was nonexistent. But it isn't. You can do whatever you want, it's okay. No. It isn't okay. It wasn't okay, even when I tried to convince myself that it was.

I slammed my drink back, letting the ice cubes collide with my teeth as I kept the last gulp in my mouth, allowing it to burn my cheeks and bring tears to my eyes. You wouldn't have started drinking if you didn't want an excuse. “I don't need an excuse,” I said, too loudly again. The portrait of lost innocence glanced over at me, forcing a smile and offering me false comfort.

She's the type you love. I know, I know she is. Now Sam is just like her – just like all of them. I found myself grimacing into the reflection of myself in the bottom of the empty glass. I raised my hand, but the bartender was already on his way after he noticed I was dry.

“Another Waldorf, sir?” He looked at me with his sunken green eyes, expectant.

“No, I'll just take two shots of *****,” I responded, smiling, “nothing else.” He smiled back at me, uneasy.

More? So you really did miss me. I'm ignoring it, I'm not going to listen. Yes you are. No, I won't. I refuse. Just wait, you'll see.

The bartender came back with my shots, one in each hand. I took one after the other and set a twenty-dollar bill on the table, “keep the change,” I said as I got up to leave. The young woman eyed me as I was walking out and I flashed her a quick smile - that was always how you drew them in.

I decided to skip the bus and walk home instead, hoping that the rhythmic beat of my steps would help to clear my mind. It didn't. When I walked in, I still felt the whiskey and heard the voices. I'm here to stay.

---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------

“Saaaaaam?” I yelled, waiting for the click of her heels on the wooden floor.

“Hey babe, I'm in the bedroom.” Her voice was honey – sweet. Sickeningly sweet.

I walked toward the bedroom, “so how was your day?” I would be innocent for now. Come on, cut to the chase.

“It was good, I had a long day at work. I just want to relax. You didn't want to go out tonight, right?” She looked at me, her blue eyes glistening under the fluorescent light.

“No, I didn't. Actually, I wanted to ask you something,” I tried to sound as casual as possible. Yes, yes, come on.

“What is it, sweetie?” She moved toward me to reach for my hips. I flinched away. She knows.

“I- I know,” I stammered. “I know what you did earlier, with that guy,” I slurred my words together, partly from the alcohol and partly from the nauseating feeling in my mind. Yes.

“Oh,” that was all she had to say. Oh. A single syllable, the most effortless word in the English language – that was all I meant to her. Oh.

My blood set on fire and I released the floodgates, I didn't care anymore. “So who was he, hm?” I wasn't afraid anymore. You know what you have to do.

“Actually... it was Dominica,” I heard the words come out of her mouth but they didn't seem to match up. I must have heard her wrong.

“It was... a girl?” I tripped over my words out of disbelief. She must have accidentally said the wrong name, maybe she had been drinking, too.

“Yeah, you got a problem with that?” She had the audacity to ask me if I had a problem with her cheating on me. I had nothing left to say at this point, I was void of any feeling. Jacob, listen to me.

“Well give her my ******* regards,” I had reached my boiling point. She looked at me, her ocean eyes beginning to pool with salty tears. As she blinked, a torrent of them rolled down her cheek, leaving a faint line where the makeup came off – a scar, if you will. I think she half-expected me to apologize for the harshness of my voice, the way I always used to after I realized the effect of my tone on her fragile composure. I didn’t falter - this time, I had no remorse. Good.

“Jake, please,” was all she could manage to say. She pushed her jet black hair away from her face – strands had begun to stick to her cheeks from her tears. Even in her seemingly delicate state, she still held her nose to the sky, as if her dignity and precious reputation were resting on the tip of it – an invisible string connecting it to whatever ******* aristocracy she liked to think she was a part of.

Thinking of this and then back to the entire situation at hand, I couldn’t help but laugh. Hoarsely at first, but then louder and more pronounced – I was completely taken over with maniacal happiness. Scare her. Do it, Jacob.

Glancing up, I could see the look of bewilderment encased within her eyes. You're doing so well. She had been sitting a few feet away from me the entire time and upon seeing her fear, I leaned in until I was close enough to taste her cinnamon gum and whispered, “boo.” She jumped. I guess it did work like that, the way you’d see in the movies – push someone to the edge of their mental cliff and a simple syllable could force them off. Don't let her off the hook.

The rest of the act came easily.  I had performed my part too many times for it to go awry and had scared her too badly to even move, let alone run. You know the drill from here. I watched as bewilderment turned to fear and fear to desperation and I swear, if I could have taken a picture at the exact moment that her eyes begged for me not to, I would have. It was in that moment I realized it wasn’t me she wanted to run from, but herself, and that was exactly the way I wanted it to be. It makes the guilt easier, something I knew from experience. It's just a play, Jacob, that's all it is. Play your part. I did. I played it well.

It didn’t look like she would be speaking again anytime soon, so I repeated, “give her my ******* regards” and winked, a smile creeping across my lips as I walked away.

A couple feet from the door, I looked back at the lifeless figure laying under a single blood-stained sheet in our bed. *It was supposed to be our bed.

I get off the Belt Parkway at Rockaway Boulevard and
Jet aloft from Idyllwild.
(I know, now called J.F. ******* K!)
Aboard a TWA 747 to what was then British East Africa,
Then overland by train to Baroness Blixen’s Nairobi farm . . .
You know the one at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
I lease space in Karen’s African dreams,
Caressing her long white giraffe nape,
That exquisite Streep jugular.
I am a ghost in Meryl’s evil petting zoo:
I haunt the hand that feeds me.

Safely back in Denmark, I receive treatment
For my third bout with syphilis at Copenhagen General.
Cured at last, I return to Kenya and Karen.
In my solitude or sleep, I go with her,
One hundred miles north of the Equator,
Arriving at Julia Child’s marijuana herb garden–
Originally Kikuyu Land, of course—
But mine now by imperial design &
California voter referendum.
(Voiceover) "I had a farm in Africa
At the foot of the Ngong Hills."
My farm lies high above the sea at 6,000 feet.
By daybreak I feel oh, oh so high up,
Near to the sun on early mornings.
Evenings so limpid and restful;
Nights oh, so cold.
Mille Grazie a lei, Signore *******!
Andiamo, Sydney, amico mio.
Let it flow like the water that lives in Mombasa.
Let it flow like Kurt Luedtke’s liquid crystal script.
We zoom in. We go close in. Going close up,
On the face of Isak Dinesen’s household
Servant and general factotum. (Full camera ******)
Karen Blixen’s devoted Muslim manservant,
Farah: “God is happy, msabu. He plays with us…”
He plays with me.  And who shall I be today?
How about Tony Manero for starters?
Good choice. Nicely done!
Geezer Manero:  old and bitter now,
Still working at the hardware store,
Twice-divorced, a chain-smoker,
Severely diabetic, a drunk on dialysis 3 times a week.
Bite me, Pop:  I never thought I was John Travolta.
But, hey, I had my shot:  “I coulda been a contenda.”
Once more, by association only,
I am a great artist again, quickly made
Near great by a simple second look.
Why, oh God? I am kvetching again.
I celebrate myself and sing the
L-on-forehead loser’s lament:
Why implant the desire and then
Withhold from me the talent?
“I wrote 30 ******* operas,”
I hear Salieri’s demented cackle.
“I will speak for you, Wolfie Babaloo;
I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.”

Must I wind up in the same
Viennese loony bin with Antonio?
Note to self:  GTF out of Austria post-haste!
I’ve been called on the Emperor’s carpet again,
My head, my decapitated Prufrock noodle,
Grown slightly bald, brought in upon a platter.
Are peaches in season?
Do I dare eat one?
I am Amadeus, ******, infantile,
An irresistible iconoclast and clown.
Wolfie:   “I am called on the imperial carpet again.
The Emperor may have no clothes but he’s got a
Shitload of ******* carpets."
Hello Girls: ‘Disco Tampons!
Staying inside, staying inside!
Wolfie: "Why have I chosen a ****** farce for my libretto?
Surely there are more elevated themes . . . NO!
I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes,
People so lofty they **** marble!"
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis.

So, I mix paint in the hardware store by day.
I dance all night, near-great again by locomotion.
Join me in at least one of my verifiable nine lives.
Go with me across the Narrows,
Back to Lenape with the wild red men of Canarsee,
To Vlacke Bos, Boswijk & Nieuw Utrecht,
To Dutch treat Breuckelen, Red Hook & Bensonhurst,
To Bay Ridge and the Sheepshead.
Come with me to Coney Island’s Steeplechase & Luna Park, &
Dreamland (aka Brownsville) East New York, County of Kings.
If I’m lying, I’m dying.
And while we’re on the subject now,
Bwana Finch Hatton (pronounced FINCH HATTON),
Why not turn your focus to the rival for Karen’s heart,
To the guy who nursed her through the syphilis,
That old taciturn ******, Guru Farah?
Righto and Cheerio, Mr. Finch Hatton,
Denys George of that surname—
Why not visualize Imam Farah?
Farah: a Twisted Sister Mary Ignatius,
Explaining it all to your likes-the-dark-meat
Friend and ivory-trading business partner,
Berkeley (pronounced BARK-LEE) Cole.
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

Oh yeah, Tony Manero, the Bee Gees & me,
A marriage made in Brooklyn.
The Gibbs providing the sound track while
I took care of the local action.
I got more *** than a toilet seat, a Don Juan rep &
THE CLAP on more than one occasion.
Probably from a toilet seat.
Even my big brother–the failed priest,
Celibate too long and desperate now–
Even my defrocked, blue-balled brother,
Frankie, cashing in his chips at the Archdiocese,
Taking soave lessons from yours truly,
Taking notes, copying my slick moves with chicks.
It was the usual story with the usual suspects &
The usual character tests. All of which I flunk.
I choose Fitzgerald's “vast, ****** meretricious beauty,”
My jumpstart to the middle class.
I spurn the neighborhood puttana,
Mary Catherine Delvecchio: the community ****
With the proverbial heart of gold &
A backpack full of self-esteem deficits.
I opt out.  I’m hungry and leaping.
I morph again, grab *** the golden girl.
Now I’m Gatsby in a white suit,
Stalking Daisy Buchanan in East Egg,
Daisy: her voice full of money;
My green light flashing on the disco dance floor.
I, a fool for love; she, my faithless uptown girl,
Golden and delicious like the apple,
Capricious like a blue Persian cat.
My “orgiastic future” eluded me then.
It eludes me still. Time to go home again to the place
****-ant Prufrocks ponder their pathetic dying embers.
Time to assume the position:
Gazing out from some trapezoidal patch of green
At the foot of Roebling’s bridge,
Contemplating an alternative reality for myself,
A new life across the East River,
In the city that never sleeps.
I crave. I lust. I am a guinzo Eva Duarte.
I too must be a part of B.A., Buenos Aires:
THE BIG APPLE.
But I am ashamed of my luggage,
Not to mention my baggage.
It’s like that last thing Holden Caulfield said to me,
Just before he crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge,
Crossed over to Manhattan without me,
Leaving me alone again, searching for our kid sister,
Phoebe, the only one on earth we can relate to:
“It’s really hard to be roommates with people
If your suitcases are much better than theirs.”
Ow! That stung; that was a stinger.
I am smithereened by a self-guided drone,
A smart bomb full of snide antigravity,
Transformational and caustic.
My meager allotment of self-esteem
Metastasizes into something base,
Something heavy and vile.
I drop to earth like lead mozzarella.

I am unworthy, unworthy in the maximum mendicant,
Roman Catholic mea culpa sense of the word.
I am now Umberto Eco’s penitenziagite.
I am Salvatore, a demented hunchback
(Played flawlessly as a demented hunchback by Ron Perlman),
Spewing linguistic gibberish in a variety of vernaculars:
“Lord, I am not worthy to live anywhere west of the Gowanus Canal.”
By East River waters I weep bitter tears,
The promise of a promised land denied.
I am a garlic-eating Chuck Yeager,
Auguring in, burnt beyond recognition,
An ethnic trope, a defiant Private Maggio
From here and for eternity,
Forever a swarthy ethnic stereotype
Trying to escape thru a small but significant
Hole in the ozone layer above South Ozone Park,
New York, zip code 11420.
That’s right, Ozone Park.
If you don’t believe me, look it up.
GO ******* GOOGLE IT!

And I just don’t know when to quit.
So why quit there?
Work with me, fratello mio, mon lecteur.
Like you, I took the LSAT so long ago.
Why am I not a distinguished American jurist
Asking the one question that seems to be on
Everyone’s eugenic lips today:
“Aren’t three generations of imbeciles enough?”
I am Charly from Flowers for Algernon,
A slow learner with a push broom, swept up in
Some dust from Leonard Cohen’s cuff.
Lenny: a grey-beard loon himself now, singing
“Hallelujah” for fish & chips in London’s O2 Arena.
“Suzanne takes you down, Babaloo!”
At last, I am Jesus Quintana—
John Turturro stealing the movie as usual--
This time in a hair net and a jumpsuit,
"Made of a comfortable 65% polyester/35%
Cotton poplin, you can even add your own
Ribbon leg trim and monogramming
For just the right look to be one of
The Big Lebowski’s favorite characters.
Mouse-over the thumbnail below to see our actual style
(Color must be purple). Style #: 98P, Price: $55.95. On sale: $50.36.www.myjumpsuit.com."
Fortunately, I am a savvy marketeer:
I understand the artistic potential, the venal
Possibilities of product placement. Go with me
To that undiscovered country.
The humanities uncorrupted till now by
Crass gimcrack television ads. That’s right:
******* commercials smack dab in the
Middle of a ******* poem. Why not?
Great literature has always been about
Selling something, even if only an idea.
Hey, **** me, Herman Melville!
We both know the publication costs of
Moby **** were underwritten by the tattoo artists &
Harpoon manufacturers of New Bedford,
Matched by a small research grant from some
Proto-Greenpeace, Poseidon adventure in some
Great white whale-watching swinging soiree.
Murray the ******* K, pendejo!
At last, I am The Jesus, a pervert & pederast,
According to Walter Sobjak—another post-traumatic
Post Toasty, like me, still out there in the jungle,
Still in love with the smell of ****** in the morning.
My bowling buddy, Walter, comfortably far to the right of
The Dude, and Attila the *** for that matter,
But who gives a **** if Lenin was The Walrus?
(“Shut the **** up, Buscemi!”)
“Once you hang a right at Hubert Humphrey,”
Said the streets of 1968 Chicago,
"It’s all ******* fascism anyway.”
That creep could roll, though, and as we know so well:
“Nobody ***** with The Jesus.”
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

INCOMING!
I just heard from an old girlfriend who is miles away,
Teaching school in Navajo Land.
The Big Rez:  a long day’s interstate katzenjammer,
A Route 66 nightmare by car, but by email,
Just down the block and round the corner.
I had previously closed an email to her with a frivolous
“Say hello to my stinky friend.”
It was a total non-sequitur, an iconic-moronic,
Ace Ventura-mutant line from Scarface,
Which may have meant–in my herbal lunch delirium—
That she should say hi to some mutual acquaintance
We mutually loathe, Or, perhaps an acknowledgement that she–
My surrogate Cameron Diaz–has a new **** buddy,
Of whom I am insanely jealous.
Or maybe it was a simple Seinfeld “about nothing.”
Who knows what goes on in that twisted *****’s head?
She spends the next two hours in a flood of funk,
A deluge of insecurity.
A veritable Katrina ****** of self-consciousness,
Interpreting my inane nonsense in terms of vaginal health.

Hey, you want to ruin a woman’s day?
Tell her, her **** smells.

Night.
Day,
We fight
For everyone
Without
An Everyone.

Unity

Is a rare

Commodity.

Be apart of

Ours.

I don't know how to start
just like I don't know how I feel.
But that's the paradox of the woman, right?
Will anyone ever understand my brain?
My neurons and brain stem and cerebellum,
left and right brain,
and all the lobes:
frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal.
Will anyone ever make sense of it all?
No.
No.
But you try.
You skirt across my hippocampus.
Try to pitch your tent there.
Try to make a life there.
Try to dig up and excavate the things that will make me yours.
You're coming close.
Because I believe in tests.
Yes I am one of them.
Yes I do it to you.
I thrive on tests.
I pull them out of my ear drums and fingernails
and from in between the splits of my teeth.
I pull out the ACT, the SAT
the LSAT, the MCAT,
the Bacceleureat.
Everything is a test.
Every answer
every question
every "please come get me"
and jack in a Styrofoam cup.
The way you walk the way you look at me when I breath is a plus or a minus or a smudge on a scantron sheet.
Three and a half hours later
you can breathe clean air again
and your mind can clear.
Holy smokes, yes, but there is is nothing holy about it.
We wont go ring shopping
we've already been house hunting
and we all know the only thing you want.
Wide open spaces and a bed in the center
and me.
Isn't that right?
Isn't
that
right?

A dream to get into a good law school.
The pressure she places on herself,
To try her hardest and be the best,
More coffee and less sleep,
Less friends and more isolation.

A dream to graduate with honours.
The pressure she places on herself,
For perfect attendance and constant improvement,
Obsessed with GPA and the LSAT,
Nothing else is more important.

The dream to become debt free.
The pressure she places on herself,
Balancing work and school,
Continuous learning and growth.