01
(the facts and the ruling don’t agree)
02
I. PIRATES
For years I have been
585
in his phone
03
not Austin,
not anything with roses,
just area code,
lake-effect,
little upstate weather
filed under digits.
04
Our history had already been
smoke / records / Degenerates / almosts.
05
One year ago:
weed and talking and nothing.
06
Four weeks ago:
fifteen hours on my couch,
Call Me By Your Name for his first time,
his shirt quietly resigning,
dawn catching us like a landlord.
07
Then back to almost no texts.
08
Fine.
Not fine.
Weather pattern.
09
So when he asked me
to come to PIRATES
I became
a bodega with feelings.
10
White Claws.
Oreos.
My idiot liturgy.
11
Do not ask me
why Oreos.
12
I guess I thought
a beautiful man in technical distress
might need cream filling.
13
I was too excited.
Adult man / area code / PhD / nice sweater /
still basically a golden retriever
ringing the gate.
14
Because the invitation
had been mine.
15
Petty little permitting office
inside my chest
stamping APPROVED
on the fact of being asked.
16
PIRATES:
17
black foam,
aquarium law,
every cable in Brooklyn
trying to molt.
18
He was already bent
over the laptop,
all curls and static,
that gorgeous posture
people do
when the body says I’m fine
and the eyes file an appeal.
19
Red LEDs
blinking like tiny ambulance tongues.
20
Nate arrived first
as a voice in the machine.
21
Then the machine
grew legs.
22
There he was
ex / friend / firmware update.
23
This is not jealousy.
This is backend dependency.
24
And because Nate is my friend too
it got worse
by staying reasonable.
25
Nobody screaming.
Nobody evil.
Nobody giving me
the good hard clean drama
required for righteous exit.
26
I stood there
holding warm White Claws
like junior clergy
assigned to bless an outage.
27
The Oreos.
Please retain the Oreos.
28
I bought another hour
as if privacy took quarters.
As if enough minutes
could turn a city
into two men.
29
Instead the hour
grew limbs.
30
Laptop illness.
Cables.
Apology.
His little spiral.
My little hope
trying not to look fluorescent.
31
Then we left for the rave
32
and history came too,
still loading.
33
II. RAVE
The bass was not a metaphor.
34
It had a lease
in my molars.
35
Fog thick enough
to pet back.
Purple light not landing anywhere,
just hanging in the air
like the inside of a bruise,
or a lung,
or a church
left running overnight
for nobody.
36
Wet denim.
Mint gum.
Vape sugar.
Cigarettes.
Somebody’s jaw
writing a sequel to itself.
Somebody kissing
like it was cardio.
Pupils like nickels.
Mesh.
Leather.
A wrist with powder on it
like fresh weather.
37
Everybody silhouette.
38
That was the democracy:
my PhD evaporated on contact.
My day job.
My one clean dinner-party self.
39
Shape only.
Beat only.
For a little while
that felt like salvation.
40
Nate there too,
because a tech emergency,
once admitted,
always wants a wristband.
41
Elias about to play.
The room going harder
less flirt,
more factory,
more chain-link choir,
more radiator,
more iron filing in the mouth.
42
Then Marco.
Then Vale.
43
Brooklyn filing amended paperwork.
44
I thought Marco was in Miami.
Instead he was in the doorway
and I was in his sweater,
45
which is the kind of detail
God only writes
when He is feeling camp.
46
The sweater didn’t even smell like him anymore.
It smelled like me,
laundry detergent,
fog machine,
Friday.
47
Still
my shoulders knew.
48
Once he texted like weather.
Then we finally did
the body thing.
Then boyfriend.
Then museum.
49
Fine.
50
Democratic neglect
still lands
like a specific bird.
51
And the room kept hardening.
Elias got smaller around the eyes.
52
Not just nervous about the music
nervous about the room
becoming meaner than the set,
nervous about Marco standing there
in his successful little aura,
nervous in that very specific way
artists get
when the problem is suddenly public.
53
strobe
54
his shoulders
55
strobe
56
Marco in the doorway
57
strobe
58
my own body
in somebody else’s sweater
59
strobe
60
the set list
no longer matching the room
61
strobe
62
too many inputs / process hanging
63
strobe
64
So I said
65
hey
grab your bag.
let’s go fix it.
66
As if I had authority.
As if being drunk
does not sometimes make me
briefly excellent.
67
So we left the rave
to fix the rave.
68
Out into East Williamsburg,
which at that hour
is not a neighborhood
so much as a surface
trying very hard
not to admit it’s wet.
69
Black gum fossils.
A puddle doing oil rainbow.
Freezer runoff.
Chain-link.
Loading dock.
A dumpster lid
vibrating with the bass
through the wall
like a bad second heart.
70
We sat in a dark corner
that had fully given up
on being a sidewalk.
71
The laptop open
on his knees,
ghost-light blue,
making both of us look
slightly interrogated.
72
And it was funny.
73
That is what I keep forgetting.
It was so funny.
74
Me,
who had been on calls
about missing computers
for Microsoft Sweden,
now drunk on filthy concrete
next to a loading dock,
helping a beautiful panicking man
convince a playlist
to grow teeth.
75
He scrolled.
I pointed.
76
No, keep the ugly one.
77
Yes, the one that sounds
like a radiator
giving legal advice.
78
Meaner than that.
79
No, meaner.
80
Perfect.
81
He swore at a file.
I laughed.
I rubbed his shoulders.
He laughed too.
82
The whole city shrank
to one manageable problem:
83
make it darker,
make it harder,
make it fit the room,
make him stop spiraling,
make the set survive.
84
A truck went by.
The streetlight made a puddle
look briefly alive.
85
Some rat somewhere
declined to comment.
86
Then back in.
87
He played.
88
And for a while
the room took his side.
89
Smoke learning arithmetic.
Bass in steel-toed boots.
His body up there
half outline,
half command.
90
Not hot exactly.
Not only hot.
91
Beautiful in the stupid old sense:
making the air
agree to reorganize itself.
92
Then the set ended.
Then he vanished
bathroom / darkness / boy republic,
who knows.
93
And there it was again:
94
Marco
Nate
Adrian
Vale
me
95
Brooklyn,
where even the side quests
have slept together.
96
If you were stupid
it looked like nightlife.
97
If you were me
it looked like
a cursed little committee.
98
The only way
I could keep standing there
was under the legal fiction
that I was there with Elias.
99
And maybe I was.
That is what made it unbearable.
100
The fog got thicker
or I got thinner.
Same visible result.
101
My body began
rehearsing exits
with real professionalism.
102
So I left.
103
No speech.
No blaze.
No plot.
104
Just peeled myself
out of the room
like a sticker
realizing too late
it had been placed
on the wrong bottle.
105
Uber.
106
Lana doing drywall work
inside my ribcage.
107
Home.
III. MEADOWS
108
At home
I put the jeans on the floor,
left the room dark,
opened the glowing machine,
and started litigating.
109
Very elegant sadness.
Very good theory.
All my little zoning concerns.
110
I was in bed
turning fog into prose
for the polite oracle
111
when the phone lit up
with bad grammar
and perfect timing:
112
Did you left??
113
yes, i said.
couldn’t find you
to say bye
114
Aw i was looking for you!
115
There went
my clean little ruling.
116
Then:
117
i came to an afters
118
come hahaha
119
it’s a sick afters
120
At eight in the morning
I got into another Uber
and returned
to the weather.
121
No meadows
on Meadow Street.
122
Only chain-link,
loading docks,
truck breath,
industrial refrigerator light,
the city forgetting
to rinse the night off.
123
He was upstairs
when my Uber pulled in.
124
From the balcony
125
AUSTIN!!
126
Like my name
had done something right.
127
I have had more elegant romance.
I have not had hotter romance.
128
Inside:
129
not comedown.
130
The opposite.
131
The rave had simply survived the sun.
132
Harder, actually.
Faster.
Dumber.
More exact.
133
The sun was just a rumor
happening to other people,
people with brunch,
people with plans,
people who did not currently need
to watch a woman in a black corset
in what I can only describe as
beta testing the body.
134
Old men in pink suits
running public works.
135
Women in their fifties or older
on acid
making bird calls
with such commitment
I briefly believed
they had invented birds
and were now checking on them.
136
A guy passing out fairy wands
like a deranged municipal employee.
137
Someone dancing on something
absolutely not zoned
for dancing.
138
Everything filthy.
Everything chemical.
Everything weirdly well-administered.
139
K-holes with bylaws.
Cigarettes with institutional memory.
A whole queer republic
held together by eyeliner,
electrical tape,
electrolytes,
and underground legend.
140
They looked at me
and kind of giggled
141
not mean,
more like:
142
you absolutely do not belong here,
this is adorable,
we all freakin love it.
143
Golden retriever at the dungeon.
585 in a room full of older codes.
144
And then,
horrible news
145
they loved me.
146
Everybody telling him
I was hilarious.
Everybody telling me too.
That they loved me.
That I was fun.
That I was hysterical,
which I chose to hear
as praise
and not diagnosis.
147
People texting me
from ten feet away.
My own phone turning
into a tiny applause machine.
148
Someone asked what I did.
149
Only once.
150
The only time
the old world
even tried.
151
I said
152
I forgot.
153
Which was true.
154
I had forgotten the job.
The servers.
The nice sweater.
The careful boy.
The whole well-lit paragraph of myself.
155
I had a fairy wand
in my pocket
like a pen.
156
At 11am
I was shaking my ass
in front of a room full of strangers
and legends
and corset women
and bird-call aunties
and a man in pink
who might have been the mayor
of whatever country this was.
157
Everybody silly.
Everybody wrecked.
Everybody somehow
more themselves for it.
158
The room kept voting yes on me.
159
Not because I understood it.
Because I didn’t.
Because I walked in open.
Because I showed up
with Oreos to a systems failure.
Because I was loose enough
to let the room
mispronounce me into joy.
160
And through all of it
Elias kept finding me.
161
Not grabby.
Not performance.
Not nightlife-boy theater.
162
Just
163
backpack
shoulder
face
check-in
orbit
reappearing
like weather.
164
A glance from across the room.
A hand near my elbow.
A tiny census:
165
you good / still here / still having a body
166
no spotlight on it.
167
That low little register.
That private frequency.
168
Sometimes I found him
by backpack.
169
Sometimes he found me
by being exactly
where my nervous system
wanted him to be.
170
Around us
the republic kept escalating.
171
Bird calls.
Corsets.
Fairy-wand bureaucracy.
Acid aunties.
Pink-suit public works.
Someone laughing so hard
it sounded like my own chest.
Music still chewing metal.
Everyone more outline than citizen.
172
And I
somehow
could talk to anyone.
173
Not careful funny.
Not dinner-party funny.
Not PhD funny.
174
Funny with my whole body.
Loose.
Feral at the edges.
The kind of funny
that makes underground legends
pass your number around
like contraband.
175
Turns out
I can enter the republic
unescorted.
176
Useful information.
177
Still
whenever his backpack
crossed the room
my whole little area code relaxed.
178
At noon
he wanted Nowadays.
179
The phone became a seagull:
180
whaaaat. come to nowies
181
comeee
182
i’m on my way to nowies
183
I wanted my bed,
my face washed off,
a small domestic government
of blankets.
184
So I said no
in a tone
that kept dressing refusal
in lip gloss.
185
He kept leaning
on the screen door
a little.
186
Then later
187
hey sorry i was on the dancefloor
and didn’t check my phone!
but left already
are you still awake?
come thru
188
We do not really text.
189
I am still 585
in his phone
area code,
little upstate weather,
a number trying to become
somebody’s actual name.
190
Our history prefers
other media:
191
fog
couch
USB
fifteen-hour eclipse
fairy wand
balcony
bird call
loading dock
his shoulders under my hands
my name shouted into morning
the exact moment we met
remembered years later
with disgusting precision
192
and then,
in ordinary daylight,
the messages that sound
almost too simple
to be dangerous:
193
thanks for your great vibes
and for being there
during my spirals this weekend
194
let’s hang soon
195
when are you usually free
196
IV. ROOFS
Apparently
when are you usually free
was load-bearing.
197
Boxers. Ninth Avenue.
Six o'clock. Men in tank tops.
Sports on mute.
The avenue pretending
it had never met us
in the fog.
198
I heard his grandmother's name
before I finished my first drink.
199
That's how fast
the evening left the building.
200
We debriefed the hallucination
Marco, annoying.
Afters, unbelievable.
Bird calls, confirmed real.
Fairy wand, still in my jacket.
The curb, still in my body.
201
Every sentence
a tiny land survey
of the same feral country
we had not yet left.
202
He said he wanted
to play that party.
203
I said
message the promoter.
204
He picked up his phone
and because
his entire operating system
runs on beauty and miscalculation
he sent it
as a disappearing message.
205
Ambition
with a thirty-second half-life.
206
Gorgeous.
Talented.
A little shy
about asking the world
for anything permanent.
207
The bar got too loud
or we got too quiet
same acoustic result
208
and what I need you to understand
is that we did not go home.
209
We went up.
210
His roof.
Cracked concrete.
Wires no one claimed.
Puddles doing nothing artistic.
A satellite dish
that stopped receiving signal
before either of us
had an area code.
211
The skyline burning overtime
in every window,
and the sky that purple-almost-black
New York does
when it is about to let you
make a terrible decision
with beautiful clarity.
212
White Claws on the ledge.
Always White Claws.
The sacrament.
213
Something on the roof
between us
making every sentence
feel like it mattered
because for once
for once
it did.
214
We sat close enough
for warmth to become
a sentence.
215
We started talking.
216
We did not stop.
217
airplane
218
his dad my dad
completely different gravities
219
airplane
220
his grandmother's hands
I can't remember what he said,
only the way his face
became a room
going tender without warning
221
airplane
222
Mexico City
described with such heat
the altitude changed
on a roof in Hell's Kitchen
and suddenly I was nowhere
I recognized
and did not want to come back
223
airplane airplane
224
COVID as a room not a year
a room they survived
and still sometimes
check for cracks
225
sobriety as weather
that already passed
226
airplane airplane airplane
227
joy and where it hides
how it comes back
when you stop organizing its arrival
peace not the concept the temperature
the thing that happens
when two people stop performing
and just
228
airplane airplane airplane airplane
229
our knees one inch apart
230
Everyone stop.
231
He has an engineering degree.
232
All this time.
233
All curls. All fog. All USB.
All panic. All backpack. All playlist.
All nervous beautiful
black-clothing energy.
234
And the whole time
an entire other citizen
of the machine
living inside the DJ.
235
He wants AI.
Robotics.
Some future with metal in it.
236
I build cloud infrastructure
for a living.
I have been circling this man
for years
and his brain speaks
my brain's first language
and he told me this
on a cracked roof
in Hell's Kitchen
with a plane crossing
behind his head
like an exhibit
entering the record
237
and I was expected
to remain
a functional human being.
238
I did not.
239
Our shoulders signed something.
Not a treaty.
A memo.
Internal use only.
240
Half snuggling
under the flight path.
Half pretending
the English language
had a better word
for this
than *this.*
241
Then someone checked a phone
and it was 2:30 AM
242
which was fraud,
actual administrative fraud
243
I was certain
it had been forty minutes,
maybe an hour
if the skyline was lying
244
instead:
eight hours
eaten
by a conversation
I will not try to reconstruct
because the reconstruction
would be smaller than the thing
245
so I will just say:
246
we talked
until the city
ran out of lights to turn off
and then we kept talking
and the planes kept crossing
and neither of us
said the word *home*
and neither of us
performed a single act
of leaving
247
until our bodies
the ones we had briefly forgotten
we were operating
248
filed a complaint.
249
Starving.
250
India Delight.
Butter chicken wraps
under fluorescent mercy.
251
Mexican country music
from a speaker
the size of a fist.
252
The whole city
finally admitting
it is one long
beautiful
clerical error
253
and we are
two more
mistranslated entries
laughing
inside it.
254
On the sidewalk
I said I should go.
255
He said
his room was too messy
for me anyway
256
but not before floating
several logistical architectures
in which I stayed
257
door open
door not opened
the zoning hearing
that will not
adjourn
258
We hugged
like something in us
had been standing
for years.
259
Then
260
lean
261
lean
262
and
263
pull
264
PULL
265
*fuck offfff*
266
laughing
on the concrete
at 3 AM
the ancient
municipal
choreography
of two people
who want to file
and are so terrified
of the paperwork
they turn the yes
into slapstick
267
because the funniest thing
you can do with a yes
is pretend
it was an accident.
268
Both of us
in the streetlight
knowing
and performing
not knowing
269
the oldest
form of knowing
there is.
270
Then
because this night
required one last exhibit
271
he checked his phone.
272
*Absolutely.*
*January.*
*Booked.*
273
The disappearing message
had refused
to disappear.
274
Something had been built
on that roof
that could not be unsent
or formatted as ephemera
no matter how hard
either of us
reached for the option.
275
Morning.
276
No fog.
No fairy wand.
No bass.
No republic.
No strobe.
No airplane.
277
Just daylight
in its plain clothes:
278
*did you make it home alright?*
*was fun hanging out last night!*
279
Two sentences.
No disappearing ink.
280
The most ordinary census:
281
still here?
282
Still here.
283
Still 585
284
but the five
the eight
the five
285
keep rearranging themselves
on the screen
286
trying to spell
something
they are not
yet
authorized
to become.