...Underneath the Covers. NY, NY.

The blue looked a dullish yellow-green in the light of the dusty country laundromat.

Chan, the young-looking but probably old Chinese guy at the counter just pointed me to a machine, without looking up... which I guess saved us an awkward conversation about why I was wearing a beat-up burnished blue dress and matching heels into his place. I asked for quarters... I decided to drop the attempts at the voice at this point, he wasn't looking up from the glowing box he kept beneath the counter. I imagined some sort of fetish porn going on down there. I asked simply, how can I use the machine if I don't have change? He looked up at me, and then, without pause, he reached into his pocket and tossed me a round nosed key. Told me to bring it back once i'd finished. Sex pervert or not, Chan new how to run a laundromat.

I wasn't alone in the place, either. There was a smelly looking guy sitting in what might've been his boxers and a once-white shirt next to the oscillating fan in the corner. Behind him, creating an oddly dizzying effect, were a series of dryers, all spinning what seemed to be white sheets. He looked me over and, just like Chan had moments ago, just went back on with his business. It was kind of nice, not feeling judged in this place.

My makeup was running though, I could feel it splotching against my clavicle as the sweat maneuvered around the cliff of my jawbone and slid slowly down my neck. I opened the washing machine door and, out of habit, reached my hand inside. Nothing. I always check for change or lint or... I don't know... condoms. You never know what's going to make its way into the bowels of a washing machine.

Then I remembered the zipper.

I walked over to the man in the corner. Surprisingly, he didn't smell as bad as I thought he would... a mildly unpleasant aroma of peach schnapps and burning rubber. Without my asking, he just said... turn around. As he reached for the buckle at the crest of my back, he muttered something along the lines of 'happens to the best of us, son'. I really underestimated this fella.

Now, my chest exposed to the air, I immediately felt cooler. Even somewhat more free, my torso no lounger bound by the mesh of fabric. I slipped the whole thing down past my knees and finally stepped out of the dress.

Looking at it, lying there on the olive-colored tile, I wondered how I'd ever let myself into this predicament. I mean, there comes a time in every man's life when he finds himself alone... or at least practically alone... in an Alabama laundromat... wearing a frilly blue dress. And yet, it still surprised me... the way you can be surprised by a movie even when you know what's going to happen.

I picked up the now lifeless cloth and wedged it as best as I could through the opening of the machine. I closed the door and, looking through the glass portal, the whole thing looked like some beautiful flower caught in a bottle. The bleach went in next, clean and clear like water, or poison. Finally, I put the key in the round opening below the coin slot and turned. Nothing happened. I was about to go back and get Chan when suddenly, with a shake like an old man dancing, the machine started working.

I realized I should have probably brought a magazine. And pants. Pants would've been nice. I could have left, right then... my job was done. I had become whoever it was I was supposed to become by performing this awful deed.

Instead, I stood there... transfixed by the hypnotic motion of the machine. I watched as the deep hued blues began to peel from off the fabric. I watched the dress forget them in the rapturous embrace of the water and bleach. After a few minutes, I noticed, by the scent of things, that my friend was standing beside me. It never gets old... I think he said... where do they go? The colors? Somewhere... never gets old.

And then he walked out. He gave Chan a friendly nod, which I can't imagine drew his attention away, but was nice nonetheless, like tipping an invisible hat, and walked out the door... I think I should've been worried about him... but some part of me understood that maybe there are just people that hang around in their underwear... waiting for something to happen.

I waited long enough for a small puddle of sweat to form down by my feet before I walked over to the corner and took a seat by the fan. I closed my eyes for a minute and let the cool air wash over my skin. A shrill tone let me know it was time to get my clothes. I went to the machine and pulled out the sopping wet mass and walked it over the dryer beside the fan in the corner. I opened the door, put in the load, sealed it inside, and just as before, I turned the key and the machine began to turn. I stepped back for a moment and appreciated the effect. Now alone in the place, I couldn't quite understand why all the other machines were still drying... I assumed there were orders that Chan was taking care of.

Moments later, the series was interrupted when the machine second from the left finally dinged and stopped churning. This was followed by the one next to it, and then the one to the left of my own. The other four kept on turning, but nobody, not even Chan, seemed too interested in coming to retrieve their contents.

I took a seat in the chair by the fan and my thoughts drifted somewhere else. I thought about everything that had brought me here... and for a moment I felt especially alone. It was at this point that I awoke to the sound of another ding... but this time, it was the sound of the door chiming open. The clouds that had hovered overhead on my way there seemed to have given up all pretense and gone into full blown rain. Two more machines had stopped turning, not mine yet, so I couldn't have drifted off for very long, although my eyes had the foggy feeling of sleep.

I couldn't tell who had come in, but I saw a person, or a something, leaning against the counter as I had, presumably trying to talk to Chan. I then saw what was clearly a small Asian hand pointed in my general direction. Then, a face. A boy's face. I didn't know this kid, I didn't think so at least, but he looked at me with a great deal of purpose and a slight tinge of disgust as he walked towards my corner. As he cleared each row of washers, his body came into view.

And suddenly I knew.

His dress, a warm shade of scarlet, was much nicer than mine had been... I'd gone for the cheap stuff it seemed. As he stepped closer I saw the look in his face... don't see me... I don't exist. As he walked towards me, I saw his eyes roll across what must have looked like a series of white sheets spinning in the still working dryers. I sat there waiting for him to say something, but he seemed, for a moment at least, stunned by my general appearance... sitting there, covered in sweat, in nothing but a pair of gray boxers and a set of black heels.

Finally, he opened his mouth and said, Key.

And I smiled.

...the Lightness of a Hotel Bed. Quakertown, PA.

Sometimes I could be drowning.

Anchors haven't the will to float, I think. Not that they couldn't... if they really wanted it, the cool free air. They lost the will to rise past the sinking pull of the deep blue water.

There are days when I'm overcome by the feeling that I'm light on will and heavy on doubt and thus, I grow cumbersome metal arms and an overwhelmingly forceful base that sends me plummeting to the depths.

With you, though... I'm not somewhere on the bottom looking up. I am like a fleck of light along the water... a fallen leaf, floating along to kiss the hulls of passing ships.

We live together in an apartment that by human standards is small, but by New York standards is somewhat moderate... though oftentimes we're on top of each other. And I love you. So that helps things. And you love me... so that helps things. Too.

I sit, sometimes, on the bed and watch you type away your research papers, or something for one of your million jobs, and am lulled into a trance by the rhythm of your precocious typing. Your gentle movements on the chair, little adjustments, ever the dancer... you reach for your water glass and I'm awake suddenly, unaware I had drifted off.

Some nights, coming home late, I stand outside our door and press my ear to the crack between the frame and the hinge and try to picture what's going on inside. I can now reliably tell where you are in the apartment in a few moments. I like to think that I could surprise you, but our deadbolt makes such a heavy thud at opening that its bark announces any intruder. Some days, though, I get lucky and you're in the bathroom. You get so mad at being surprised, but I just find it funny. Because you make a cute face when you're notactuallymad the way you get. It's awfully endearing.

You're changing, though. Like everything changes... I suppose, but I was hoping your chance magic could stick to form long enough for the rest of the world to change around us. But, you're changing. You're growing. Beautiful, brilliant, brave... and I understand its a brave thing you're doing. Leaving.

Many things are easy to understand and difficult to accept. Your going certainly falls into that category. Perhaps I lack the imagination? experience? to adequately appreciate the benefits of two beds, two rooms, two addresses.

But I love you. So that helps things. And you love me. And that grows. Too.

Perhaps we'll meet again, as strangers, on a bench in central park. And I'll sit quietly, a skill I'll acquire with the practice of solitude, and wow you with an air guitar routine that will literal knock your socks off of your feet. We'll walk barefoot on the crunchy gravel and spell our names in the stones with our fingers. You'd fall head over heels for me and we'd never leave each other again.

But I could be drowning. Maybe your adventure in the big blue world will turn you into a charisma asteroid, but it might turn me into a crater. Or at least something deep down in the earth's mantle... and somewhere in yourself, you'll need to drag out a drill, a massive, meteoric drill to catch me where I've fallen. Maybe then, you'll stretch out a mile-long arm down the mile-long hole and slowly drag me up, back to the grassy outside of this graceful little rock planet. Maybe then, covered in dust and dirt, wiping the dried chunks of lava from my face, you'll tell me I am home and I'll nod and follow you anywhere.

Until we get there, I don't know how it'll all transfigure me. If I'm certain of one thing, though... it's that I want what I see here to be true there. For you and I to be together in that field. We'll spell things in the ground and roll around in the grass and lookers on will marvel at our timeless and endless love. I want to look back at a dark time with a smile and wonder at how remarkably bright the present feels in comparison. I want so many things. And I think we'll have them.

Because I love you. And that helps things. And you love me. Wow!

Like fireworks exploding.

...the Darkness of a Hotel Bed. Quakertown, PA.

I wish I had wings again.

There was a time when I could soar with the rest of the flying creatures, lifted to heights where things like dreams rest their heads. I had wings, and they were alive with beauty! Beauty akin to the first snow, or the sinking of great mysteries. Wings composed of simple things, like twigs and leaves, the stray feather here and there to make the framework whole and they would swing onto my shoulders and I would breathe them into being.

It wasn't always so easy. I began in the forest. Hidden away in a patchwork of trashcans and shrubs I collected the necessary pieces. Once they could support my weight, I began working to make them move. It's not as easy as walking, believe me. To compare flying to walking is to compare diamonds to doughnuts. It requires an inner harmony. I would begin a breathing exercise... first exhaling my doubts... everything holding me to the ground... exhale disbelief, depression, paranoia... then the big things... exhale reality... exhale certainty... exhale gravity... then, and only then, did I feel...

...taller. That's what it was at first. I grew an inch taller. And then days passed and I could grow three inches. It was another week before I realized I wasn't growing... I was floating. Just slightly. Inches above the ground. The outlines of shadows forming beneath my very own feet. I made markings with a rock against the trunk of an old elm tree beside my secret launchpad.

Weeks I spent, simply perfecting the art of floating, until eventually I could maneuver my way past the limbs of the trees and float above the treeline, and actually glimpse the surrounding houses in the distance. I saw parents pulling in to their driveways, through windows I could see kids fight over Super Nintendo... I had a key to the inside of the world. I still remember the warm breeze against my legs as the massive wings beat in time against my sides, like I was part of the wind... part of the sky.

I learned the language of other beings. The chirps of the sparrow, the calls of the proud hawk... even the thousand ways to decipher the hoots of the night owl... and let me tell you, if you let them... they will never shut up... all about mice this and rabbit that. It gets old.

I ascended to the clouds, which, if you've never been, will knock the wind out of you. I still remember colliding with a cumulus over Arlington Heights and plummeting towards the earth at a tremendous speed... don't mean to ruin the ending or anything, but I lived.

As much as I loved my life away from the boundaries that awaited me on land, I couldn't help but wonder why I was the only one like me aloft in the sky. I searched for others, even asked the birds that would speak slowly enough for me to understand... and I was apparently a unique occurrence.

I came down to the ground. Slowly. Unthinking, really. The way a child lets go of a ball without knowing. I lowered myself down, away from the sunlight, below the treetops, to where it all began.

I unstitched the wings from my teenage frame and set them down on the ground, where they became just nothings again. Just twigs and leaves and lost feathers. And I forgot the language of the flying things. I was so willing somehow to let it all go.

I stepped away, towards the western gape of the forest, towards the late afternoon sunlight, a path of trembling twigs and dead leaves in my wake. I headed out of the forest and, had I looked behind me right then, I would've seen it all changing form... trees changing direction, things that once were, being no longer... a world that I had unwittingly, though meticulously, crafted... becoming nothing more than a patch of barely suitable shelter from the seeing world.

And in the distance I could hear them... the boys of my neighborhood... their voices rattling like strung tin cans on dirt road. I wanted to join them... to live among my own kind. The unmistakable crack of a smooth round wooden bat against a smooth round rubber ball sent it gliding towards me, whistling with the speed against the current until it landed at my feet. I picked it up, and wiping it clear of dew I held it to my chest, hoping perhaps for a taste of its momentum, but it was clear that it had gone.

As I walked towards the baseball diamond, towards the pack of boys waiting to resume their game, a flight of ducks caught my eye. A part of me felt only admiration though, wonderment... as if, like all men, I had always admired them from this vantage... as if I had never traversed the northern corridor among their ranks... as if I hadn't known their names... as if I'd been human all along.

Every now and then, something in me hears the words in the birdsong... and something in me beats, once more, for wings.

That's all for now.

...Kat's Green, Art-Deco Futon. NY, NY.

I wonder what the musicians think... the ones who wrote these melodic, entrancing lines of trumpets, drums, and keys... I wonder what they think of their music being spewed forth this way... at obnoxious decibel levels... at all hours of the night... through car speakers and sub woofers so unregulated that they set of a car alarm with every chorus. I wonder if they hope one day that innocent residents of New York's Washington Heights will be awakened and step out into the streets and dance for joy.

As it stands, it makes me want to throw eggs.

A couple of moments have occasioned the throwing of eggs through my window. Both times involved overly loud vehicles. The first was a car whose owner was repeatedly activating the alarm with his wireless remote. That doesn't play well with me. In the acoustics of a crosstown block, noise spirals upwards, so any attempt of mine to interrupt their melee would more than likely just work to annoy the upstairs neighbors. Rather, I took action via ova and chucked an egg at the car. It was a pretty nice car too. Shiny and black. And then slimy along the hood with a bit of runny yellow yolk slinking towards the wheel well.

The second time was a truck double parked in such a fashion that a whole line of cars couldn't get past it. Now, look, this wasn't entirely the fault of the truck. Seriously, if you have such a big problem with it... back out of the damn block. But, since these are New Yorkers that'll much rather sit, honk, and yell for half an early morning hour rather than constructively back out, I had to take action... once again. This time I missed the first time and hit the street. Luckily nobody seemed to notice, the sound of the impact masked by the cacophonous chorus of car horns. The second one hit its mark... actually did better than I could've imagined. After landing on the roof, about half of it ran down the side and dripped nicely in through the passenger's side window. So they had a nice treat to return to when they got back from wherever they were vacationing at that moment.

I'm not a violent person by any means. I won't hit someone, unless I'm defending myself. But noise pollution is another matter entirely. I can't feel in balance in my home while boomboxes and trunk-housed speaker systems blast their way down the block. Maybe it's just me... but even if it is... I'm man enough to take action. At least... passive aggressively... from a good distance... with food.

That's all for now.

...My Own Bed, 10 p.m. NY, NY.

The first time I stole anything, I was in third grade. It wasn't a Playboy.

The object in question, if I remember correctly, was a chocolate bar, you know... big time larceny. My friend Martin and I walked into the corner store, having walked the mile from our houses along the main drag in our stretch of a town that seemed many miles wider at 9 years old. I remember the place was the sort of brown that encourages distraction. Everything looks better than that brown... the Klondike bars in the freezer that rattled like an overstuffed birdcage in the back, even the beers, which I knew were disgusting even at such a young age, looked great against the graveyard dirt brown of that place.

I think Martin actually did the getting... I made small talk with the man at the counter, really small... as I knew how to talk back then but not really how to make sense under any sort of pressure. That comes with time. Anyway, we stepped out of the place, our minor melting victory in Martin's back pocket, and just as we walked out, who came rolling around the corner? My Grandfather, in his rusty-since-it-was-new Grey Oldsmobile. I look at it now and it strikes me how bad a poker face I must have had back then. Somehow, he figured out we'd taken something... but couldn't quite figure what it was. He new figured it out. To this day, the way the story goes in my family is that when I was in third grade I tried to go to the corner store to steal Playboys. So maybe I was better under pressure than I give myself credit for. I had already learned the lesson that if you're going to get in trouble when you're young, if you can make your parents laugh, they won't ground you for nearly as long.

That's all for now.

...Atop a Blanket in the Living Room. NY, NY.

Winter is taking her final breaths tonight. She's flipping through her songbook and playing her way down the coastline towards the next hemispheres. And I, for one, couldn't be happier.

Tomorrow will mark a change in this city. The women will hit the streets in fresh skirts and short sleeves, sunglasses and sharp colors. Spring in New York City is a season of display. I, for one, will be out in Central Park enjoying my ritual 7-mile track in rollerblades.

But before tomorrow is tonight.

Tonight, the full moon's gleam sits like a glaze on the rooftops of Upper Manhattan.

And tonight I'm thinking about Lily.

Lillian, or Lily as she likes to be called, is the kind of girl who you never need to meet to know. Too young, perhaps, to hide her flaws, which are few, and too lovely for them to really matter. Though merely eight years old, she has the stance and strut of an eighteen year old, which scares the living bejeezus out of her father.

I don't know what makes her come to mind... something in the way the light passes through my murky window paints the mind a thousand different shades of curious. Maybe it's the thought of Spring.

Lily loves springtime. This she likely gets from her mother, as her father... more from birth than choice, loves the thought of a warm shelter in a cold climate, while her mother loves any excuse to shed her layers and, flower-like, lock lips with the midday sun. The girl runs away, though, and this is worrisome. Not away from home, not even away really, just... runs. As if the world were made of corners around which lie an even greater adventure.

And perhaps it is. I mean, in the eyes of an eight year old girl, everything has the potential for adventure. Some part of me misses that. I miss the days when there were more questions than answers... knowledge is a cruel neighbor.

Eight is a beautiful age. Long before the drama of judgmental 7th graders or the lascivious libidos of high school boys, she is this perfect innocent creature. I don't know how her father will deal with a thirteen year old Lily... I couldn't even imagine. I suppose one becomes the parent they need to be when they need to be it. Parents grow too, it would seem. I never thought about that. And Lily will have dreams of greater things, of real things. You see, when a child dreams, she dreams of fantastical things... castles and riches and handsome princes... but they don't have faces in dreams. They don't have names or addresses. But as she grows, she collects these things... she finds her real life princes and learns that princes can be villains and that castles aren't always on steady ground. And something in me already wants to shield her from such things.

I think of Lily and I wonder who she'll be when she grows into Lillian. It's amazing that we grow into anything at all, really. I'm daily inspired by the changes in people; how we think of ourselves as standing still, while the world evolves us all every minute. It's a beautiful and powerful thing, change. But for now, Lily remains changeless... or at least, unblemished by the world.

And just like that, she disappears. Nights like this, I can see her as clearly as I can see my own moonlit hands, and yet when she goes, no image remains. Just a feeling... and until I see her again, that feeling is enough to keep me wondering.

Lily is my daughter.

Maybe.

Someday.

For now, though, she's just a dream.

That's all for now.