the night before the morning on which i didn’t find an
airbrushed tee shirt of a crying clown smoking a blunt at coney island, i went
to the doctoral student’s place. he was still awake when i had finally made it
on foot to bedford and dean from the wythe hotel (where i’d succeeded in making
the portland transplant djing the rooftop party uncomfortable by my surprise
appearance), and his relationship was still open at just past midnight that
night. i don’t remember what he told me about what he’d done for pride weekend,
but i do remember him telling me that he wasn’t teaching any classes over the
summer. because he was studying for orals. then i remember there was some
really great rimming. like i told the man himself after i’d looked over his
bookshelves: i don’t know anything about poetry.
a couple of hours later, after i’d made my graceful (and
classical japanese-ly poetic) exit, i stopped to ask a couple of girls on the
street how many streets i had to go until i got to halsey, but they didn’t
know. (they were out of towners too.) and the man on the bicycle riding slowly
next to them trying to start up a conversation must not have known much of
anything, because he obviously couldn’t read that one of the girl’s shirts was
telling those of us back on bedford at two-thirty in the morning that she liked
vagina. the other girl should have probably been given away by all of her
rainbow swag.
the four of us must have seemed a funny little parade of our
own to the no one paying attention until i spotted a couple of cops and walked
ahead to have them tell me that i was already several blocks past my turn.
i hadn’t gone to the official parade earlier in the day
because it had been time for everyone to finally make it to the beach. the last
time i’d visited we’d all been too lazy, i think. so instead i’d just cut my
lip on an oyster shell and let it bleed over two bottles of wine and a heaping
sunday special plate of commiseration. this time, however, i was full
committed, because i’d already trekked all over midtown to find myself a
bathing suit that would be worthy of a hard femme towel fort. so we got on the
train, got off the train, got some provisions and a terrible chocolate muffin,
got back on the train, got off it, asked directions to the bus that was going
to the gay beach, got directions, got on the bus, and got off the bus to see
that you couldn’t even see the ocean from where the bus stopped at the beach
because the weather was so bad. but when we were settled at the encampment we took
of our clothes anyway. because we were at the gay pride beach party and we were
going to have fun. the fuzzy tall guy who had given us directions to the bus
stripped down too, but he and his friend were sitting too far away from the
fort for me to fully appreciate him. i swam, and the ocean was rough but
surprisingly uncold. i stumbled back up the beach, and the sparkling water back
at the fort was perfect.
then i saw someone. i hadn’t tried to get in touch, even
though i knew she was living in brooklyn, and it was probably unlikely that
we’d just run into each other on the cloudy beach that day, but i wasn’t
surprised that we did because we’d always just run into each other wherever we
were whenever we happened to be in the same place, the last time at a bookstore
on the other coast (maybe). before and after she’d gotten her graduate degree
in poetry in missoula. (we’d never run into each other there because i’d never
been to montana.)
she was one of the few topless queers at the party without a
surgical scar. i told her that i was finally doing something about those old
conversations, and she told me that she’d finally found someone to let her live
in that empty place in the hasidic part of williamsburg that she’d been after.
i should have gotten the address so that i could have gone to see her there
before i had to leave on the chinatown bus, but i told myself that i didn’t
need to just then because i’d probably talk to her again before we left the
beach. but that wasn’t how it happened. and i don’t think that i’ll ever get
her a copy of that spivak chapter on translation, probably so that we’d always
have reason to keep running into each other. a buildup to dirty looks. for the
moment, just eye rolling. the parade-goers could have their palatably planned
families, and we, we would occupy this swathe of unwanted cloudy beach in our
tiny swimsuits.
until the rain started. then we went back for the bus. and
then we caught a second one instead of retracing our earlier steps via the
train. but we should have dealt with the rain and waited for the express. the
local was something else, and there was an announcement about the streets that
had been closed in manhattan because of the parade. i didn’t want to hear about
it, and i wanted the bus to go faster: not so much away from that beach, but
definitely toward the promise of the evening, which wasn’t even anything very
provocative. people like poetry, but this slut just wanted to get laid.
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