Where I Am Now.

Now, several months after the end of my relationship with M, it’s easy to see all the things that may not have been perfect about us being together, to see how maybe we weren’t as absolutely compatible as I was convinced we were, as perfect for each other as I begged him to acknowledge, and to say, “Look at all these wonderful things that are happening in my life now that I’ve moved on,” to adopt an it’s all for the best attitude, because of course now I’m doing this, whatever it is I’m doing without him, and if we were still together I wouldn’t be doing this and what a shame so obviously it’s meant to be, or not to be. Whatever. I still go to bed at night and sometimes just ache because I want so badly to throw my arm over him, my palm against his chest. To kiss his neck. To fall asleep and wake up not alone.

Saturday night I made out in a bar with a young man for what seemed like hours and maybe was. Long enough for my lips to be chapped the next morning. He was shorter than me, and several times he stopped kissing me to rest his head against my shoulder, and with one hand I cradled his skull. Near closing time, he took my hand to lead me to an area of the bar where it was dark, where guys go if they want to do more than kiss. As we passed the stairway to the exit, I let go of his hand. He was swallowed by the crowd. I ducked down the stairs and out the door quickly and went home alone. We never said a word to each other.

The last week or more it’s been generally in the 50s at night and the 60s and 70s during the day. The heat has been turned on in T’s building and apparently, like the heat in all these old New York apartment buildings, can’t be regulated much. There’s no thermostat; it’s either on or off. Even with the radiators turned off, the steam pipes that run through the apartment to the upper floors are still blazing hot. So, we have the windows open, because of course you don’t need heat when it’s 65 degrees outside.