by rockemsockem999
I saw Julia at a bar deep in the city yesterday. She had changed her hair color again and now it was pink instead of red. The bartender called her Sir and Julia did not correct him.
She ordered a club soda with lime which is unusual for Julia because the Julia I know will not have a liver in ten years. I got a rum and coke because I am a man, and I am going to drink a man's drink. Julia told me she did not think she was going to make it this time. She has said that five times this month and I am starting to ignore everything she says. She said some more but I forgot it because I walked away while she was speaking.
I walked out to the bar patio and it was windy. I stood facing the pond and I smoked two cigarettes even though I said I would quit three months ago. I am a man and I can quit anytime I want. Jordan is leaning on the railing and I walk up to him because he is the only yuppie on this patio that I can remember.
Jordan has sunglasses on which is strange because it's two o'clock in the morning and there are no outside lights at the bar. He leans close and reveals a small bag of cocaine and we go to the bathroom with a razor blade and two dollar bills to do the cocaine. My nose is clogged because I am back in the city and I am still adjusting to the pollen here. I manage two lines before my snot becomes red and I call it quits.
I take the razor blade back home with me because I want to. We are men and men lose things all the time which means that Jordan is not going to notice that the razor blade is gone.
I am in a taxi on the way back to a woman's apartment. I have spent twenty-four minutes speaking with her and I am convinced she is taking me back to her place to have sex with me. I am a man and this is what men do.
I see the city as it should be for the first time in several months because I have been away for several months. I see homeless people keeled over. I see pristine less-than-two-years-old modern apartment buildings all the way down the left or right or left and right side of each crossroad. I see blood in the puddles and then I realize the puddles are actually sewage. I see cigarette cartons and cigarette butts in the back of the taxi.
We arrive after a long ride to the woman's apartment and she spends ten minutes trying to buzz us in before her neighbor has to open the door for us. She walks into her bathroom as I sit on the couch and flip through a book on her table and she walks out of her bathroom in the exact same clothes.
We sit on her couch and I sip on a beer as she tells me things for almost an hour. I tell her I am tired and that I will call her tomorrow morning to meet for coffee and she walks me down to the taxi that she has called for me despite my objections. As I ride back to my place I realize that I never gave her my number and I do not remember enough details about her appearance to recognize her again.
I wake up with a pain in my heart on Saturday. My hair is greasy and I stink. I smell Vaseline and body odor on my fingers. I know that because I bite my fingernails that this scent will probably last for days. I walk into the bathroom to wash my hair.
I am taking my jacket from last night off and going through my pockets to find my cigarettes but instead I find Jordan's razor blade. I hold it between my teeth while I rinse my hair and apply shampoo. I feel the newly formed cuts on my tongue as I gargle mouthwash. I wash the shampoo out and pull my phone out to check my notifications. I scroll for a little while before seeing that Julia has posted a fundraiser for supplies for the refugees of a war overseas. Julia is probably on the right side of history which is a shame because I do not think Julia is going to be around for much more history.
I put my razor blade into my sink drawer and change my shirt. I am a man and I own things. I do not borrow or rent things. My face is becoming more defined and so I decide to shave today.
I have been invited to brunch and I show up ten minutes late. The table gives me a little shit but accepts me regardless because they know I am a man and I work on my own time. Eduard has changed his name back to Samson. I sip on a coffee as Jordan talks about his new girlfriend. His new girlfriend is a Pisces and Jordan is a Scorpio so they will get along well. Or so I hear.
Samson's boyfriend of four weeks arrives twenty minutes late. The table does not mind. I stare at Samson's boyfriend of four weeks for an extended period of time because I want him to know not to speak about the fact that him and I had sex three weeks ago. Men can do what they want with each other and expect it to be private business.
Yuki announces she is moving to Astoria. This elicits words of both encouragement and sadness from the table. The only people I know from Astoria are idiots and so Yuki will fit right in. I keep my mouth shut because it will keep the peace and that is my job. After two hours the brunch dissolves and I pull Samson's boyfriend of four weeks aside to tell him that I know his shoes are fakes to which he says he knows and then I say if he has any respect he will throw them away. He says okay and runs to catch Samson.
It is sunset and as I walk into dinner Julia leaves the bathroom and I see her wiping her mouth with her sleeve. I think her hair is now light blue. I sit at a table for four but tonight there will only be three. Jordan and his friend Pierce arrive and Jordan once again goes on about his new girlfriend. Pierce and I nod politely and look at each other hesitantly before taking pieces of naan from the center bowl. I am a man and I have no reason to nod hesitantly. I will not do that again.
Pierce tells us about his new position with Lockheed Martin and I remain stone-faced until he reveals his salary and prospects for promotion. I realize that Jordan is deeply impressed with the entire revelation and now I am too. Power is respect. Jordan reveals he just got a raise. I cannot recall where he works but I know it is in private equity. As men we hold serious positions. Positions of power.
My plate arrives and I poke at it as Jordan and Pierce converse with each other about some sort of hot-button news item. Julia's hair is more of a cerulean or so I think. I wonder if Julia is going to make it this time. Pierce throws his credit card down just after Jordan and I fumble for my wallet before throwing my credit card down. This dinner cost me 212 dollars.
I go to the bathroom with Jordan to do more cocaine and I realize my nose is not clogged anymore. I do four quick lines before heading to the club with Jordan and Pierce. Julia is standing in line with her friend Amelie. I ignore them and push myself past the bouncers.
I enter the club with Jordan and Pierce and immediately am hit with flashing neon lights and deafening music. The cover charge was 100 dollars. We find a booth and Jordan talks more about his girlfriend as women come and go except this time he is complaining. Pierce is also complaining about his fiancée and especially work. I am trying my hardest to understand or care and I am coming up short but I am a man and so I relate to the men by complaining about my time with that girl last night. Neither Jordan nor Pierce are listening.
There are at least eighty people in this club and more than half are women. Some of them pass by the booth and chat it up with us men. The lights are very bright and the music is very loud. I can see our reflection in the glass on the tabletop and we are all clearly not wasted enough so I lead our group into the bathroom to do more cocaine. I pull out a small bag and split it between the three of us and snort three lines and I feel nothing. I do two more and I feel very little. I am a man and it takes a lot for me to feel. I think I see Julia in the stall beside mine with a pair of scissors. I cannot tell for certain. She had green hair. Pierce finishes his ration of powder and Jordan is nowhere to be seen.
I find Jordan hunched over a barstool and yelling about politics to the bartender. I pull him with me because men get fucked up and he would do the same for me. I think I see Pierce walking hand-in-hand with one of the bottle girls but Pierce is gone before I can get back to our booth. I drag the arm in my hand into a booth and place a cup of water in the hand before realizing that I cannot see Jordan.
I see Pierce angrily return to the booth with Jordan and scold him about infidelity but I know that men have desires they cannot quell and so I side with Jordan. As I start to defend Jordan I realize that these two are entirely too short to be Pierce or Jordan and excuse myself to the bathroom. I see Pierce making out with a girl with green hair but as I look at her face I realize I do not know the woman. I find the real Jordan and drag him with me back to the booth only to find two janitors cleaning out our booth. The lights in the club are back on and one of them tells me the club is now closed.
I wake up with snot and blood on my lip on what I believe to be a Sunday. I reach over for my phone and grasp nothing and as I feel about the bed I realize my phone is still in my pocket. I pull it out and it is at 3% battery and so I scramble for a charging cord and plug it in. My apartment is entirely silent save for the dripping of my bathroom faucet which I will turn off soon. I open up my phone to find several notifications and none of them involve Jordan or Pierce. I grab a bottle of water from my dresser and take two big gulps and realize the water tastes metallic. I am a man and I do not have to drink water if it bothers me. I scroll through my notifications and see that Julia posted a fundraiser for an animal shelter. I see that Julia reposted a fundraiser for refugees. I see that two other people reposted Julia posting a fundraiser for an animal shelter and three people reposted Julia reposting a fundraiser for refugees. I tap onto the profile and see that the woman in the profile picture now has red hair again.
There are a handful of posts and they are all group photos. One of them has four women hugging each other. I think the leftmost woman is Julia except she does not have colored hair. And then the rightmost woman does not have a nose ring like Julia does. I know that Julia is in the photograph because Julia posted it but I cannot tell which one she is and so I close my phone and leave my apartment to get cigarettes. I am a man and social media is not my frontier.
I call for the elevator and the doors open immediately. There is a television in the lobby playing CNN with the sound turned off and a woman in athleisure is standing beside the water cooler scrolling through her phone and I think she is panicking until I realize she is laughing. The front door opens automatically. The city is functioning as normal outside and I take the stairs down into the train station and ride the train for two stops north until I get to the bodega where I always get my cigarettes. The coffee shop beside the bodega is open. The dance studio above the coffee shop is open. The bench outside of the bodega has an advertisement on it for luxury apartments. The billboard right beside the bodega has an advertisement on it for luxury apartments. The radio in the bodega is advertising luxury apartments. The city would like me to know that luxury apartments are available for rent starting at 4000 dollars a month.
I buy two packs of cigarettes and the cashier tells me to have a nice day. I tell him nothing in response and I walk back without looking at my phone. I am a man and I can navigate myself perfectly fine without a helper. I walk back down into the train station and ride four stops south.
I am a man and I can fix this. I am not where I am supposed to be and I am fixing this by running. I am trying my hardest not to run into anybody because running into somebody would slow me down a lot. I am in a rhythm. My legs are carrying my body and my body is carrying my heart. I am a man and my brain matters more than my heart. My body is carrying my brain.
My brain and my heart and my body and my legs are halted by a shout. I am a man and this is a provoking shout. I am ready to fight and I am ready to win when the shout becomes a shout again and beckons me over to the table outside of the coffee shop. A chair is pulled out for me and I sit down in it. There are four people at the table and they are all looking at me and speaking to me and the expressions on their faces are all different and they all blend together and so do the words coming out of the mouths that are on the faces. I am bombarded with questions and a girl asks me what my rush is and another girl asks me how dinner with someone was and I realize that I do not remember the names of any of these people. I am waiting for one of them to say a name and none of them say a name. I am going through the rolodex in my brain and I am coming up empty. I pull out my phone and there are zero notifications and so I put my phone back in my jacket pocket and I continue to be bombarded with questions because I am a man and I am the center of attention here at this table. I am the center of attention here at this table.
I answer questions carefully. I am a man and men answer questions carefully. Men hold their cards close to their chest. One of the girls asks me if I am still working at the same job and I tell her yes because whether or not I am working that same job is none of her business. One of the men asks me if I ever called that girl from a bar back and I tell him no because that is not something a man would do. People at the table begin to laugh and I join them in laughing because I am a man and I understand jokes. I understand humor as a tool for conversation. I am a man and I understand things. Another man with a watch on his wrist that looks very expensive asks me if I have spoken to Jordan recently. Or maybe he asked if I had spoken to Pierce recently. I tell him yes. This counts as truth. The conversation continues.
A cup of coffee is placed in front of me. A menu is placed in front of me. I order the fourth thing I see on the menu because I am a man and ordering the first or last thing on the menu would look like I am not trying hard enough. The man ordering before me also ordered the fourth thing on the menu and as men we eat similar things and so I am eating what he is eating. As we are waiting for our food the conversation begins again. More questions are darted around the table and then one of the girls asks if anybody has seen Julia recently. I say yes and that her new hair color is and then I realize I do not know what color Julia has dyed her hair this time. One of the men says red hair. One of the girls says she shaved her head. Somebody at the table says she moved. Somebody at the table says she is on vacation with her parents in Cape Cod. Somebody at the table says something else. Somebody at the table says something about a job. Somebody at the table says she quit her job and crawls the bars in Hudson Yards all evening. One of these people is correct and the rest are not correct. The food arrives and people begin to eat and continue to say things about Julia and so I start to eat but I do not say anything about Julia because I do not know anything to say about Julia. The check comes and I pay 25 dollars for a coffee and what ended up being a sandwich and the table empties out but I remain seated. I know that I did not know their names.
I am a man and I can still figure this out. I get up from my seat at the table and I walk away. I walk fast because I need to get away from that situation very very fast. Deep inside of me inside of my heart my current condition bothers me. To my core it bothers me. My brain remains unaffected. I am a man and I listen to my brain instead of my heart. I pull my phone out of my pocket and it falls out of my hand and lands face-first onto the dirty sidewalk. I pick the phone up and the phone is dirty and cracked because I did not put a case on it because I am a man and I do not need to secure myself. I open my phone up and I swipe frantically at my notifications and I am looking for statuses and information. I am looking for facts because I am a man and facts matter. I am scrolling through my feed and I see photos of women. I am looking into the photos. Julia may be in one of the photos. I cannot be certain and so I move on. I look through reposts. I see political causes and I see calls for action and I see drinks at the bar and Julia might have posted one of these or all of these or maybe even none of these and I cannot be certain anymore and so I move on and I move on to more posts and Julia is tagged in a post and I cannot make out which person in the photo is Julia even though it should be obvious to me and so I open up the comments and one person is saying Miss You In Boston and one person is saying See You Tonight Babe and one person is saying Congratulations On One Year At Work and one person is saying Congratulations on Quitting and as I learn more and more my certainty lessens and so I say fuck it and I put my phone in my pocket again and I make sure to shut it all the way off and I say fuck all of this and I throw my phone into the trash and run because I am a man and I do not need devices I can navigate just fine god dammit.
I am a man and I immediately regret throwing my phone away but I am a man and regret is useful as a man because regret is going to help me figure this out and fix this. I backtrack and pull my cracked and chipped and disgusting phone out of the trash can and I wipe off the cigarette ash and the coffee grounds with my sleeve. I decide that Julia is too much and too complex and I will get myself together with something simpler because I am a man and I need to have myself together but I am a man and a man does not have to do things he finds difficult. Jordan works in finance. I know this because I worked with Jordan and Jordan said this a lot. He works in investment banking. Actually it is private equity. See I have my shit together fuck I have my shit together I am a man and I have my shit together. I think the firm was I have no idea what the firm he works at is called and I cannot remember where the office is and I cannot even remember the neighborhood I cannot even remember the borough. I cannot remember a single thing Jordan or I did at work. Fuck it move on I am a man and I quit when things get hard. I am scrolling frantically and my fingers are getting sliced and I am looking at photos and I find us in the club and who was Pierce again let me figure that out. Pierce works at Raytheon. Or was it Palantir. Or did he sell bathtubs in Hells Kitchen or did he work at fuck I cannot recall where Pierce works at he works something evil and that is good because men do evil things and men get power and I remember power is respect because I am a man and a man has Power Is Respect as his mantra and so I have Power Is Respect as my mantra. I remember that Pierce works at Lockheed. Lockheed Martin. I know this now. I remember this because Pierce told me sixteen or so hours ago. I cannot remember his salary but I know Jordan was impressed. I cannot remember his title or why Jordan was so impressed by Pierce. I continue walking.
That lady from my apartment complex should be easy and I am a man and I take the easiest route because I want to. That lady is not complicated. She is not Julia. She does not work in finance and she does not work at Lockheed Martin and she does not have any weird non-natural hair color. I am a man and my hair is normal too thank you very much. She lives in the apartment I live in. We live in the same building in separate apartments. This I remember. She took me back to her apartment last week. She was the girl who wasted hours of my night and did not give me any reason to be there she went into and out of the bathroom in the same clothes nothing on or off and I am a man and I deserve so much more than that and I remember that she could not even get into her own apartment because apparently that is some sort of grand feat and her neighbor had to let her in and he looked at me funny. He looked at me funny because he did not know me because he is not my neighbor. Fuck these are two different people. I scroll through my notes app and my screen is covered in blood and I say fuck it and I run again and I stop to look at my phone and wipe my fingers onto my pant leg so the blood will not get in the way of me scrolling and I scroll again.
I swipe through the notes app and onto photos again and onto Gmail and onto other apps and nothing holds. Nothing comes as more than a blur and a spurt. My screen has too much blood and dirt and sweat on it to make much of anything out and I say fuck it and I run again because I am a man and if I run fast enough my problems go away and I stop to look at my phone and wipe my fingers again and I decide I am a man and I will take action and I go to my contacts and there are so many phone numbers that I do not recognize and I click onto one of them and go into my messages with them and there are messages there. I spoke to them. And they replied back. And I am a man and so I finished the conversation and nothing else came out of it. I remember sending the messages and I remember receiving the messages and I do not remember who sent them to me. I lock my phone and wipe the sweat from my forehead and I run.
I stop running because I cannot breathe and I am a man who can stop anytime he wants. My chest hurts and I lean against the wall of a building and I look at my reflection in the glass. I am a man and I know who I am and that is a man. I stare at my reflection for a long time because I am a man and I am making sure that everything is still where it is. A train passes overhead and I look away. When I look back I see the blood on my forehead and the tears in my eyes and the curves of my face and I am not in control of anything anymore.
I am wiping my face off with my jacket and smearing everything everywhere now. I am a man and I can do what I want. I just need to keep moving and everything is going to be alright. I make it to the other side of the street. I waited for the light to turn green I did not jaywalk because a man has to compose himself and I am very composed right now I promise. I move forward and every face I see is a blur and every word I hear is a blur and I trudge along and I bump into an old man.
"Oh! Excuse me, miss, I'm terribly sorry. Are you alright? You don't look so well."
I say nothing I have to keep moving I am a man. I am a man and I have to keep moving. I can control this. I am a man. I can control this. Everything is okay. Everything is fine. I am a man. I am alright. I am not who I once was. I am not here anymore. I cannot look at myself in the glass windows I lean on to stay upright. Everybody walks right past me and this is okay I am a man and everything is okay. I am a man.
I am a man.
I am a man.
I am a man and I do not think I am going to make it this time.
