Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(14)
- H. G. Wells or Somerset Maugham short stories - Talking watch—@ Lighthouse for Blind - Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs - Leather gloves
- Copy of the Koran
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7-11-11:
Evening
Horse hooves on the avenue
Bring me to the window
Taxicabs lined up for gas
Pedestrians in a Merce Cunningham dance And a woman, clearly lost
iPhone aloft
Stops the mounted policeman for directions She listens as he talks
And points her the right way
The horse nods and trots off
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8-24-11: A long soak in a very hot bath:
“What’s the temperature?” O asks.
I check his bathtub thermometer—a comically large contraption: “106.”
He approves. “I’ve gone as high as 110,” he says. “112, that’s the limit, and 102 is too cool. It’s interesting, isn’t it, there’s a very slim margin …”
I soak for half an hour, O at the side of the tub stroking my leg. I feel drugged, tranquil. At one point, I feel him watching me quizzically: “Why does one close one’s eyes with pleasure …?” he wonders aloud.
After, I lie on a towel on the bed, naked.
He lies next to me, clothed. Only our hands, fingers, touching. The AC is on. I am glistening and wet with sweat, cooling down, which takes a very long time. We drowse and talk and look at the salmon-colored sky, but mostly don’t talk, just touch.
“I feel like I’m always rushing,” I say at one point.
O lets it sink in. “That you are,” he says, then more quietly, “that you are …”
He runs a hand over my body. “You are so warm. Even a rattlesnake could find you.”
“Yeah?” I look at him. He is staring at the ceiling as he speaks.
“They have infrared sensors in little pockets behind their eyes.”
I smile. “Imagine that …”
“They’re not in the lenses, I don’t believe, but they can sense the warm blood of poor little mammals—no chance against those vipers …”
Now, he’s off on another thought, as if on his psychoanalyst’s couch, free-associating: “In England, there were motorbikes called the Viper and the Venom. Beautiful machines …”
O turns to me, puts a hand on my belly. “Yes,” he purrs, “a beautiful machine.”
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8-26-11:
We are at the Brazilian restaurant when O suddenly asks: “Have you ever felt that a part of your body was not yours?”
I laugh. “This is why I love you.”
He smiles. “Well?”
“A part of my body not mine: Uh, I’m not sure, I don’t think so.”
“If one did, one would know,” he responds drily.
After eating, we rush back to listen to a live broadcast of Mozart’s Requiem on the radio. Or, what we thought would be. It was Schubert instead. Ah, but Schubert—so romantic and grand: Lying on the bed in the dark, listening to his eighth symphony, in our underwear.
The radio announcer says that Schubert died at thirty-one.
O: “Do you think it makes it easier to die young, knowing that you have already created enough masterpieces for a lifetime?”
“No,” I answer, “no I don’t.”
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9-15-11:
7:15 P.M., O on the phone, without even saying hello: “Billy! Shouldn’t one be on the roof? The sun is setting!”
I: “Yes, one should!”
O: “I will meet you there!”
I: “I will bring a bottle!”
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11-20-11:
We got stoned in what I call O’s “opium den”—it’s just his den, but it’s now been christened with weed. We only take a puff or two, nothing crazy. To get stoned with him is to get a glimpse inside that incredible brain. Because of his blindness in one eye and poor vision in the other, his visual cortex—“almost out of boredom,” as he puts it—becomes hyperstimulated by cannabis, and he greatly enjoys this visual fantasia.
I sat in the chair by the window, watching Eighth Avenue; he lay on the couch.
His eyes were closed, and I asked him what he saw behind his lids: “A Chinese baby.” Pause. “A seal balancing something on his nose … A sort of science fiction flying machine above a medieval forest …” Pause. “And you? What do you see?”
I closed my eyes, waiting.
“Nothing of the kind. I see patterns—black and a kind of dim yellow. A negative image of the Empire State and other buildings I’ve been looking at out the window. And then, a kind of kaleidoscope, but not colored.”
“A negative image?” he inquired. “That’s very interesting.”
Several minutes of silence passed.
Suddenly he said: “Can one ever experience pleasure that is not attached to an object? Pure pleasure?”
I thought about this for a moment, marveling mostly that he had suddenly had this thought and voiced it. But I was not sure I understood. “What do you mean by ‘attached to an object?’”
“Well, one can say, a piece of music gave you pleasure, or seeing a handsome face, or smelling something delicious. But can pleasure be independent of any influences?”