Ken’s apartment was on 8th Avenue. A 5-story walk-up across from a Salvation Army and a gay bar, we always referred to it as Ken’s apartment even though we had taken it over after he moved. At the time, Chelsea was a wonderful mix of a neighborhood. On late summer nights, the guys would linger outside the bar, tight pants and t-shirts, next to old men at card tables playing dominoes. Our windows opened wide to capture any slight breeze, their laughter and arguments hung in the heavy air.
The apartment was so slanted that if you dropped a pen, it would roll to the opposite side of the room. We loved Sundays. Our neighbors opened their front doors as they cooked huge pots of paella or rice and beans. The smells wafted through the narrow halls, up and down the crooked stairs. Most of the people had lived in the building for decades, parents, children, grandparents; we were temporary inhabitants.
All these years later, I am scratching a message into the hideously beautiful, pink sponge-painted walls of the tiny kitchen on 8th Avenue for Bart to read when he gets there.
You and I.
Metaphor and memory.
Lifted up by the sovereign wind,
The first time,
Everything right there,
On the table, a bounty of possibility.
At every juncture, another chance.
Crossroads, corners, pauses in the forward motion.
No, yes, no, well, yes.
Longing has a taste and smell.
It reaches the senses,
Engages them beyond reason.
Real as sleep and hunger.
We are the metaphor, love.
We were here.