jedi mind tricks
I prefer bars with a mirror as a backdrop behind the alcohol so I can look at myself and feel at ease, or happy. The best was Southwark, its mirrored wall bare, open, in direct line of sight through which I batted my eyelashes, reveling in my image, eyeliner and mascara for the first time in weeks and it felt like looking at someone else, someone who might have intimidated me, someone I had a crush on. Southwark has since been redone by its new owners and I'm nervous to re-enter. What if the mirror is gone and the lights are a touch higher? Where will I take my done up eyes, my narcissism?
I do wonder if Philly will become too small for me, if I'll fuck my way out of here, no more new guys to find and too many to nod at or skirt in the street. Exacerbated by the fact that I can't seem to forget a face. Guy at the bar reading Baldwin, "Just Above My Head," paperback. Mine is in my backpack, in danger of grease stains for my half-eaten burrito.
At 2:30 a.m., the night of my birthday party, I know enough to put myself to bed so I tell Michael, who by some stroke of weirdness is freestyling while the boys play music. Come up whenever, I tell him, and I probably kiss him on the cheek but I can't remember. In my drunkenness, I am still aware of the pleasure of knowing that someone will follow you to bed later. Before I go up, I grab my book -- Baldwin's Another Country, paperback -- which I had been reading on the couch earlier that day, before the chaos of the party invaded our home -- and Michael says, I love that you just grabbed that book. Which is funny because I've been reading it next to him in bed as he sleeps, every morning after he stays over, me, restless, unable to fall back asleep. And he's never commented, I didn't think he even realized. But I learn that I don't know what he notices, don't know what he knows.
I sent him something I wrote about him a few weeks ago in a gesture equally sweet and ugly. He had been cold to me all weekend, after I asked him for some space, and I wanted to be back in his good graces. I congratulated myself on such a grand idea, to send him the piece I had written about our second night together.
"Michael drives me home 'after hours,'" it begins. Something weird happened, where I wrote this piece when I was over the moon about him and when I remembered it a week or two later, I believed in those feelings, even if maybe I had changed my mind. Michael loved it. "You are super talented," he texted me. "No one's ever written about me before," he said. He later reveals, shamelessly, that he shared it with all six of his best friends. "It's a group text," he said. "One of them wants you to ghost write his memoir." I am shocked and flattered -- I'll take any readers I can get -- and when he tells me, it's daybreak, after a long week of hedonism and I don't think until later, what have I done?
I do wonder if Philly will become too small for me, if I'll fuck my way out of here, no more new guys to find and too many to nod at or skirt in the street. Exacerbated by the fact that I can't seem to forget a face. Guy at the bar reading Baldwin, "Just Above My Head," paperback. Mine is in my backpack, in danger of grease stains for my half-eaten burrito.
At 2:30 a.m., the night of my birthday party, I know enough to put myself to bed so I tell Michael, who by some stroke of weirdness is freestyling while the boys play music. Come up whenever, I tell him, and I probably kiss him on the cheek but I can't remember. In my drunkenness, I am still aware of the pleasure of knowing that someone will follow you to bed later. Before I go up, I grab my book -- Baldwin's Another Country, paperback -- which I had been reading on the couch earlier that day, before the chaos of the party invaded our home -- and Michael says, I love that you just grabbed that book. Which is funny because I've been reading it next to him in bed as he sleeps, every morning after he stays over, me, restless, unable to fall back asleep. And he's never commented, I didn't think he even realized. But I learn that I don't know what he notices, don't know what he knows.
I sent him something I wrote about him a few weeks ago in a gesture equally sweet and ugly. He had been cold to me all weekend, after I asked him for some space, and I wanted to be back in his good graces. I congratulated myself on such a grand idea, to send him the piece I had written about our second night together.
"Michael drives me home 'after hours,'" it begins. Something weird happened, where I wrote this piece when I was over the moon about him and when I remembered it a week or two later, I believed in those feelings, even if maybe I had changed my mind. Michael loved it. "You are super talented," he texted me. "No one's ever written about me before," he said. He later reveals, shamelessly, that he shared it with all six of his best friends. "It's a group text," he said. "One of them wants you to ghost write his memoir." I am shocked and flattered -- I'll take any readers I can get -- and when he tells me, it's daybreak, after a long week of hedonism and I don't think until later, what have I done?