Romance
New York, NY — 6/12/2024 — 8:25PM. . .
You say I’m crazy — I say if I were crazy I would not be able to talk to you now; I say I would not be able to sit in front of and listen to you, now, and discuss different perspectives different points of view that not were mine but which I had the ability to hear out + then internalize with relation to my erratic behavior — quote unquote “erratic behavior” — I exhibited online and in person last weekend and the week before on our last few dates and all this to say, (pause) here is a rather boring and desperate story about a stretch of my life where I was not able to be alone and sought out others as a way to numb the chatter within myself and project it outwards with dates to movies dates to wine bars dates to a specific café in the East Village where I would listen and ask questions but also try to explain my life and my work in a way that I could sell myself to myself and the other person who, it should be known, I always made earnest attempts to connect with and establish a relationship with but who I was all the more happy to burn a few hours in the meanwhile. She is Y. Y has lived in Paris, Berlin, and London but was born and raised in a neighborhood on the Upper East Side; recently she moved back to Brooklyn where she lives with her aunt and her aunt’s fiancé. She is the first of what will be five dates that week. We are in a restaurant. We are in Nolita. Y talks about Buddhism. She sips a cranberry cocktail. Y teaches me the concept of Hungry Ghosts ( 餓鬼) found in Buddhism — a term that refers less to any supernatural entity but rather entities who exist among us and are us to the extent we mimic their image: those of us who have been so consumed by the pursuit of carnal or material or of emotional experience ‘til we are empty and shells of ourselves and move through life as a slave to our individual cravings eventually losing the parts of ourselves that makes us human and whole. . . and later in the bathroom I drunkenly piss into the toilet and squint at myself in the mirror and analyze my face and my bone structure and the way my bones protrude out from my face in a way that looks skeletal and pointy; I know I’ve lost weight. I know this is a symptom of this phase in my life. I know once I leave the bathroom I will find a way to touch Y’s hand or play flash footsie under the table and when it feels correct I’ll say, “I’m so turned turned right now,” and I know we’ll take the F or the M back to Queens to my apartment where we will have sex1 and lie there afterwards in silence. I’ll say I have to be up early for work, and then I’ll make a flaccid offer to call them a car, which they will politely refuse. I will watch as they put their clothes back on in front of me. After they leave I’ll continue to lie there with the buzz of adrenaline and clarity of post orgasm and think of nothing in particular. So committed was I back then to the approach of a numb and broken heart. So comfortable was I to play the role of a man incapable of love and intimacy; one of those deplorable types who were worse people to be involved with. I stare at the ceiling until I’m bored. I play a podcast on my phone until I am asleep. We don’t text each other back in the morning.
Sex during this period took on a different dimension: driven less by mammalian desire but rather an urge to validate myself as someone who was attractive and worthy; if I made love three times with three different people within the week, it was mostly to soothe the self loathing in my head and my heart and all over my body during this phase of my life.