so many
things
almost
never
happen
and
so many
things
are just
shy
of impossible


so numerous
are these
things,
in fact,
that they
can be
relied
upon
to happen
every
day.

Percy, 39

I’m drinking gay coffee at Downtown when the woman at the next table announces that Percy died this morning.

She expects the waiter to be upset, but he doesn’t know who she is talking about. “But he was here all the time!”

Percy was a fashion designer, well on his way to being famous. He was only 39. He’d been found in his bathtub that afternoon. He slipped and hit his head and that was it.

The waiter, instead of being upset, tells the story of another man he knew who died in his bathtub. And he was only 32!

The waiter says that he is lucky, because he is poor and only has a shower. He says, “It’s always those big bathtubs where you have space to die.”

(Amsterdam, 10/09)

Size

Often it happens I am the wrong size. Walking down a picturesque bricked alley, I discover myself to be Godzilla with luggage. Except, unlike Godzilla, I am entirely ineffectual: just a big lizard in traffic.

Or I’m talking with someone, offering a little something about myself, and I think, “Wait. Did I just refer to myself as the Shah?”

More often I am trying to do something simple and important, such as buy a bus ticket, but when the man (impatient, bored) turns to me, I find myself unable to make a sound. At this crucial juncture I have transformed into an aphid. An above-average aphid--but still.

My job is to diagram the sentence but I am flimsy as a cumulonimbus, floating somewhere in the distance. How does a mustard seed get the attention of the waitress?

It gets so I am nostalgic for human male average. Five foot nine. Nostalgic for when I thought that it would be enough to be in the right place, and at the right time.

(Amsterdam, 10/08)

Talk

My problem is I’m unable to talk like a regular human being. Every sentence sounds like something I memorized the night before.

“Excuse me.” I said. “Could I please have a big cup of coffee?” Which seemed to me a natural and straight-forward sentence. I’d practiced it several times, waiting for the waiter. He has cheeks like a slapped baby’s ass and hair that looks warm and soft.

Because I have been a teacher, I also acted the sentence out, mimed holding a big cup of coffee.

Isn’t it considered polite to speak somewhat slower when speaking English in a foreign country?

Is it possible that I sometimes try too hard?

He paused and then he smiled at me, as if to say, “And here we have another one.”

This happens to me every time I open my mouth.

(Amsterdam, 10/08)

Fresh.

I shower in the morning but never feel entirely clean until night makes the city new and the British boys have had a few beers and the whores are gearing up, tapping at the glass, and laughing at us already. Terrible fried chicken is deliciously available for another seven hours! Not so bad I'm not, not overall, considering the miles. Crazy, not in a bad way, shifting my cock to the left, and staring without apology. I don't have to spend my whole life crawling on my belly! A big man with stubble's gonna lean across the bar and kiss me. He's gonna put his big pink tongue in my mouth, for starters.

(Amsterdam 10/08)