The night before, Sunday in Chicago.  Christy’s house.  Spent the day with Wes, my lover from so many years ago.  It felt like he wanted to own me, touching my face, pulling me close.  I push him away; I feel different now, people change.

The night before I took off

on my early late life

adventure overseas, I spent

an evening in Chicago with a lover

from years ago, another

life. He was clingy and still

with his camera, snapping pictures as if

I were some young model, all handsy, talking of

lost opportunities.

Wes read the i Ching on the back patio of his mother’s house. Always looking for the answers. He wanted me. 

Things in my bag: laptop, tweezers, make-up remover wipes, bottles of medicine: Zanax and Zolpidem and pills for thyroid, and creams for something, books that I haven’t read, or might read.

Of all the ways a life can turn out, this is what mine is.

The men who have shaped me:

My father: I was invisible, an apparition, not there. 

Jackson, my high school teacher: I was 16.  

Sam: Distant, aloof, withholding. I could lose myself in him, pretend

Scott: We were drunk all the time.  I would go to the corner store and buy bottles of Tangueray, rum. We’d sit at home in front of the TV, Scott screaming at the screen.  On Friday or Saturday nights, we’d walk to Blueberry Hill where Bob made the burgers just the way I’d like them, and Scott would laugh drinking his White Russians.  He owned the room, high.

John: Emma.

Rob: We had great sex, but never talked. He was kinky. No.

           I was.

Jeff was after my father died. He used to get nosebleeds during sex. He was embarrassed about it. I didn’t care. He had a big dick. He ended up moving to California. I forget his last name. He was a photographer. Young, talented.

Ron was a psychopath, called into my answering machine to listen to my messages. This was in the 80’s. rumor has it he made his way to New York after being kicked out of California.

David was gay but didn’t know it yet when we did it. 

Everything changes.

Does it count as fucking if a guy stops in the middle and says: I can’t do this? He was a male model in Milan. He had a girlfriend. He told me he felt guilty and that was why. I didn’t really believe that one. 

The model manager’s brother. He was short and fat and wanted to seem important. Probably upset that it was just me. I never saw him after.

Louis was from the South. 

One guy I teased. Told him I would do it but changed my mind at my door. The guys at the green grocer’s got rid of him. 

Sean, the bartender at Balaban’s. He used to give me free drinks and plates of French fries.

Rick: Sam’s friend. I only did it because Sam cheated on me. It was stupid.

Some guy who drove a really fast car. I dated him for a while. We used to go to hotels but I forget why (Was he still living with his mother? Was I?)

It gets complicated.

Early morning, Emma crawls into my bed,

reminiscent of years gone by:

At two: Every night falling asleep, curled beside me, on me, covering me.   I gave up on pretending: it was never any other way.

Her room, where she lined up cupcake liners

in little rows on her bed, the pastel paper containers

filled with miniature items she had accumulated: toy cars,

rocks, her tiny dolls which rolled over –Pinky and Cocoa.

Her Binkies.  I have pictures of her –clutching a Binkie in each fist,

one popped into her mouth.  When I called from the living room–

a stone’s step away–she always responded: I’m busy now, I’m decorating.

At bedtime –so early–safely tucked away:

I want to sleep on Mama.

Eventually, I’d push her off.  For a while she could only

go to sleep with me facing her, her fist clutched in my hand sticky until we both fell

asleep; her hand felt like my own.

I close my eyes.  Years pass.  In the middle of the night, or the early morning hours before I leave, she crawls into my bed, her hand my own.

I am 56 years old.  Emma

gone: disappearing to Seattle, or Chicago, or someplace else where she will

find her way, or not, falling and failing or jumping into thin air, dissipating.

 

Another day passes and I trudge from my car to the doors

of OTHS.  20 years.  The building filled always with people

wanting something, kids who slump lethargically, trudging from place to place clutching phones in their hands, locking eyes, heads nodding as they pass their friends, lost.

Summer looms with all its promise: long and lazy days sitting in the backyard, one day fading into the next, and another, and again.

Walk or run out of this life into another.

Today I will drive five hours to Chicago, stay with my sister,

see a former lover, who so many years ago snapped pictures, told me I

was beautiful; we fucked in a room in his parents’ house.

Who was that?

Things I discovered after arriving:

My pillow from home isn’t necessary.  It could be ditched, should be ditched; the tote bag I am carrying weighs more than the items inside.

Everything is about direction.  I take a circuitous route, arriving here on a Wednesday morning that feels like Tuesday, dizzy with it.

At the hostel on the first night: a girl named Sierra, who is  full of life and energy at 21, traveling alone before returning to Santa Barbara.  I chop onions, tears forming in my eyes.  I question why I need someone else to tell me my worth.

Yesterday I walked everywhere, stopping to have a glass of wine.  A man walks by disheveled asking for coins.  I see him again, blocks later; he approaches.  “I got you,” I say, hands reaching, empty pockets.

This neighborhood is gritty and prosperous at the same time; most buildings graffiti-covered, the streets lined with expensive boutiques, clothing I could never afford but lust for, imagining another life.  I walk into a paper shop and pay too much for postcards, a notebook to fill with empty words.  I take pictures of people: a man wearing pale mint shorts, leaning against his book bag on a wall bordering a river in Berlin; a girl chasing pigeons in the dirty city street.  When I look later the pictures are blurred.