My Mother's Womb

{I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in the last two weeks. I was going to give an excuse involving school and illness and creative work of a more personal nature, but really we're all busy so I don't have a good reason. So I wrote this, which is a result of reading too much Virginia Woolf and trying to emulate a more Jordanotic content. Excuses for the length.}

Inside, the fumes from the shisha pipes create a dense, leaden atmosphere. It is warm. I inhale and exhale thick, odorous smoke, and drink cheap american beer, and I talk about high things like art and philosophy and base things like politics and jobs -- and also sex, which is in its own category. I feel light headed. It is so warm. The smoke is everywhere: it spews out of our mouths and into our brains and above our heads it swirls near the ceiling under the lights draped in crimson and purple shawls and carpets meant to make this bar on Saint-Laurent look like a café in Morocco. The owners are Lebanese immigrants. I steal a sip of mint tea from the friend to my right, it is made in china and tastes like grass. I'd rather my cheap beer.

It is cold, outside. I feel it near the window; an inch of cold air. Through the steamy windows I can see the calm, quiet night, the harsh glare of the city. Inside it is loud. You laugh loudly to signify you are happy and good humored and you talk emphatically to show you aren't bored, spitting apple-scented smoke into the eyes of others. We all lean on each other and tell stories from our lives. We know all our stories already; we share the same lives.

Kate is close to me, now. Thigh against thigh, she passes the long, hard end of the pipe to me. Our hands touch. I coil my fingers along the pipe's hose -- it is cold and covered in dew. The water in the pipe bubbles and steams milky eddies as I suck in the steam and push it down into my lungs. Kate is closer, her back rests against my arm. I am so tired. I don't push the smoke out, I let it drift out of me; a thick, white tendril that seeps out of my mouth and climbs up across my face, tickling my eyelashes. I feel the tension in Kate's muscles and remembers what it was like, before... I wonder for a moment what it would be like, now... What is she doing against me, in front of all the others? It is loneliness, perhaps, that pushes her back. All this loneliness. We are all desperate to rest our backs against someone we love.

Later, we wrap our scarves around our necks and pull on your downy, fur-lined coats and walk out of the bar, assessing how drunk and asphyxiated we are. Outside, I swallow great gulps of sharp, cold city air. The wind stirs my hair and stings my eyes. Passing cars blind and deafen me. Kate follows me into the taxi like a shadow and I don't say anything. I don't push her back and protest. I don't pull her in and accept. I don't do anything. I let her take my hand and whisper stupid things in my ear -- things about love and acceptance. Things about being independent. She whispers so loud even the Haitian taxi driver understands what her incessant blabber really means under all that goddamn hypocrisy, the bane of our society. I don't listen to her. I am so comfortable inside the taxi, despite her raspy voice and her clammy hand clinging to mine. The interior of the car is warm and lined with soft, creased leather, it smells sweet and vaguely familiar. It feels like I'm back in my mother's womb -- that last simile comes to my mind, and I try to remember it for the next day because it sounds so far-fetched and true.

Halfway through the cab ride Kate shoves her tongue down my throat and her hands down my pants while the cab driver hums a song by Lady Gaga. Po-po-po-po-po-po-po-po-po-ker face. Kate sucks on my mouth like a wet, salty sea creature, oyster against oyster; she doesn't need to breathe. Then we've arrived and I throw money at the cab driver and thank him and Kate follows me still: up to my front door, through the door, up the stairs to my apartment. Next thing I know I'm standing in the hallway with an erection and my pants off and my ex-girlfriend sucking my dick. Lady Gaga is still stuck in my head.

***

I wake to searing headache, a phlegmy cough, and an empty stomach. I'm lying in my cold, dead bed. Kate is still there, she's snoring quietly beside me. Why is she still there? I thought she was gone. She can only be back for one reason.

I roll out of bed and pull on some boxers and wrap myself in my old bathrobe. I head straight for the roof. It's cold as hell, outside, but the cold makes me feel better. It's almost day, in that uncertain hour before morning; the city is still sort of asleep. I am alone and hungover. I feel like shit. The inside of my boxers are sticky and my exposed legs are frozen. I search inside the pockets of the bathrobe and pull out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. I always leave a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in my bathrobe. For emergencies. I light myself a fag and watch the winter sun slowly stretch across the roofs and windows and the barren tips of trees. Still sucking on my cigarette, I open up my bathrobe and let my penis peak out of the little buttoned flap at the front of my boxers. The cold tickles the tip of my dick. I relieve myself in an icy snowbank, etching my name in steaming yellow piss. I get to the fifth letter.

When I'm done I wrap myself in the warmth of the bathrobe and look down at the street. The newspaper delivery guy is out, now. He's zigzagging on the sidewalk, throwing hard rolls of newspapers at each door. Whack, thump. Whack, thump. Soon I'll have to go in and make coffee and Kate will wake up and I'm going to wish she were already gone. I don't even remember if we had sex or not last night. I should've checked before to see if she still had her underwear on. Not that it matters. Just a minute, just one more minute out in the crisp, clear morning. Just so my head can clear up a bit.

My cigarette is almost finished and I feel the warmth of the burning end against my fingers. Smoke spills out of it in a dense ribbon. It shoots upward and curls into a question mark. I have so many questions... And no answers. I shout my questions at the snow and the rooftops and the newspaper guy, but the burning cold morning absorbs my voice and stays mute. Only a dog, out for his morning shit, barks in response.