Chapter One ONE
This was a peculiar time. I had to bathe often. I was acting like a child with an affliction. But I was certain that the future would show itself if only my spirit became clean. I needed to have a clean spirit. It needed to be cleansed. The dirty spirit. Cholera of the mind. And Emil’s tub was the place to do this—to cleanse.

I was at Emil’s house floating in his bathtub while he read to me. Emil was my friend because he was a marijuana merchant. Again: similar to bathing, I smoked the pot to cleanse my soul of any sort of negative properties. There were a lot of negative properties in my soul at this time.

Emil and I met on the train. We were the only two people who were not Hasidic Jews who got off at our stop. Emil looked like a classic punk rock type of guy: jeans with holes, T-shirt featuring a skateboarder clown, music playing at deafening tones. I was wearing an elegant floral chemise that I found in a box that said: FREE! PLEASE TAKE! NO BED BUGS!!!! I was listening to classical music of the most stunning variety at a loud volume on some earbuds I had slipped into a silk purse without anyone knowing, in a deli in one of those neighborhoods where all the babies are named something romantic and esteemed.

• Example: Rebecca Stern
• Example: Bunny Rabbit Jones
• Example: Quanta Contra

As we were getting off the train he said: “Get a drink with me.”

And I responded: “I will accompany you to the local watering hole for the purpose of companionship and possibly sexual intercourse.”

Emil lived in an old Tudor that was falling apart. It was right next to an overpass, which was above a highway called the Prospect Expressway. This is known to be one of our greatest routes. This is known to be the Wall of Hadrian of the 21st c. There was a big wraparound porch. It had Tibetan prayer flags and big plants and hand-painted signs that said everyone’s political beliefs: Peace Love Unity Respect. All Are Welcome Here. Emil had eight to twelve roommates. It was a cooperative living situation where they all purchased nutritional yeast powder in four-pound bags and all the girls had one long braid and armpit hair, and all the boys had tattoos of iconography like a hippo playing basketball. It was, I guess, Eastern Symbolism. Aesthetically, it was a bit confused.

No one minded that Emil was dealing drugs from the house. Even though it was getting Faustian. Even though there was a severity to the exchanges of goods & services. They gave him reduced rent, on account of the fact that he gave everybody a little bit for free.

What Emil and I usually did is I would send him a correspondence via cell phone informing him that I would like to purchase some drugs, and then I would come over and he would read me magazines while I sat in the bathtub on the second floor. The bathtub was luxurious and claw-footed. This was decadence façon Reality. I would sit there in goggles and a Speedo racing suit. If the tub had been bigger then I certainly would have tried to do some strokes to promote health. Like the front crawl.

We did not have a tub in my apartment. We just had a shower and it always smelled like beans mixed with sulfur. Emil understood these horrors and was merciful. I was depressed by the tenement nature of my residence, but I guess a shower was better than if my only option was to crouch in the sink and let the water turn black. I had seen that happen in some literature. Everyone in the literature was sad.

Emil’s reading today was about a famous pop star who was under arrest because of what had happened at cheer camp for incoming college freshmen. He was there as the guest of honor. He was there to perform his famous songs, the very best ones. The girls were there to hone their skills. He invited a few of them—the prettiest and bestest ones—to do something really fun. A motel room with a bright pink divan. A tattoo gun that the pop star used to ink his signature above the anal cleft of a girl they all called One of The Twins. Bottles of fine alcohols and baggies of even finer white powdery drugs. The girls got wasted. The girls took off their little white tops and their little blue skirts. The girls all got into bed with the pop star. The girls noticed that the pop star had fallen unconscious in the motel room, this pleasure dome. The girls noticed that the pop star wouldn’t wake up. The girls checked his pulse. The girls touched his dick. The girls worried that maybe he had overdosed on the fine alcohols and the even finer white powdery drugs.

After all, a heart can stop just like that.

The girls called the cops, but when they arrived everyone initially was like: we don’t want to press charges. The police said furnishing such fine alcohols and even finer white powdery drugs was a criminal offense. But then one of them, who came from a small Southern town where litigious retribution was a local sport, decided the police were right, and besides, she wanted to become so rich. A messy court battle ensued. The pop star pleaded mentally insane and was checked into a small regional rehabilitation center for famous guys who get all coked up, thereby endangering several beloved barely-of-age cheerleaders who went to state school and drove pink Jeeps and gave sloppy blow jobs. Slurp.

“Did they really include the details about the Jeeps in the article?” I asked Emil.

“Nah, girl,” said Emil, shaking his head. “I’m just extrapolating. Storytelling. You know. Like, I’m adding extra details because I know how it really went down. Intuition.”

I submerged my head in the tub water. I did an underwater breathing contest with just me. I wondered how long I could stay down there. Ten… twelve… a hundred and eighty-seven squared. I wish I could’ve been the first girl to get her own set of gills. I stroked my very own neck and imagined it all opalescent and algae-covered.

Isn’t it marvelous, Reality? Isn’t it marvelous in the tub deep blau? That’s what I said to the version of myself that was out there on the calmest seas becoming a fish. La mer Méditerranée. I was dreaming, of course, of the island known as Crete—coming up for air only when it was time for, like, some kind of medicinal amaro—letting the diet of these Europeans take its course on my flesh.

I started to asphyxiate because I actually wasn’t about to grow some gills. I bobbed back up like an apple in bobbing for apples. It was not time to die yet. I had errands to run. My schedule was packed actually.

“Yo, girl, ok listen,” said Emil when I surfaced. “I love hanging out with you and having you take a bath here and all, but you need other hobbies. You have to stop calling me up on your cell phone being, like, ‘I wanna use your bath like a mineral spa for tubercular cases.’?”

“I need to bathe so my spirit can be clean. My spirit is covered in soot. It is a dirty spirit. And besides, I do have hobbies.”

“No, I mean like. You need to like. Go out more in the world. Girl, you know what you need? You need a boyfriend.”

“A boyfriend?”

“Yeah, girl. I mean. I think it could be really fun for you,” he continued. Emil was talking a million miles a minute! He was in Emil Has An Idea Mode—that’s for sure. “Seriously. Yeah. Ok. That’s what you need. You need to start letting a guy go take you out for—what’s that cocktail you’re always drinking?”

“Vodka with egg,” I responded.

“Disgusting,” said Emil. He was now stroking my thigh.

I had really not given the concept of the boyfriend much thought. It was not a priority for me. I was considered to be highly unusual and extremely sexual. I have to admit that I liked to have a good time. Pleasantries were a favorite activity of mine. I have to be honest and say that the operative at this point in time was getting my rocks off, albeit nomadically. I was pretty content with the current situation. Only occasionally was I the Apostle Paul, suffahring just like that.

I pressed my hands to my temples. A boyfriend could, I guess, add color to my life as well as provide intrigue. It would certainly be a hobby. It would not be as satisfying as one day being some kind of siren bornth of the global north.

“Ok, well. I guess I’m interested in hearing more,” I said. “Where do boyfriends like to hang out?”

“Where do they hang out? Girl, I think you’re sexy as fuck and fun, but for serious, you are on some sort of insane-ass trip these days. They’re not a pack of wildebeests in the plains.”

“Yes,” I said, furrowing my brow, “I’m going to need some more intel, about where boyfriends hang out, please.”

“Dunno,” said Emil, taking the hand that was on my thigh and putting it into my one-piece Speedo racing suit. “Wow, you’re so wet. Ha ha. Not just because you’re in the tub. I mean your pussy.”

“Well, where have you found girlfriends in the past?” I asked, clenching my teeth because of the foreign intruder inside of my one-piece Speedo racing suit. I began to think of Lexy, an ex-girlfriend of Emil’s. If I recall correctly, it was on a website where they met. Emil had invited her to see a movie about a world-famous rapist who enchants the world with song, Lexy accepted, and then it was true love for the next three years.

“Well, I mean. It just kind of happens,” he said. “Get out of the tub and get naked.”

“Happens?” I responded, pulling off my one-piece Speedo racing suit.

“Yeah. Like, you can’t make one appear out of thin air. It’s called chemistry, Reality,” said Emil, taking one of my supple rose-colored areolas and squeezing it like a delightful piece of Bubble Wrap. “Fuck. Get on the ground on your hands and knees like a dog who needs to have a penis in its tiny little pussy. Yeah. Exactly.”

I got on the ground like a beloved fido and looked at Emil with googly eyes. Seeing that I had done an amazing job, he spit on his hand and put his penis into the organ, vigorously jamming his wonderful member as far as it could possibly go, which was actually pretty far. He grabbed my hair and said stuff like, “You want this so bad, Reality.” And, “You’re fucking disgusting. You love being fucked by my cock. I bet you had a fucking lisp as a child. I bet you had occupational issues that made it hard for you to hold a pencil.” Fido, fido, be a fido, my brain yelped. “Bowwow wow, bowwow. I am a fido as well as a small child,” I responded as Emil’s cock thrust further inside Reality’s organ. “That’s so fucked up,” said Emil. Then he immediately became Mr. Firehose about the whole thing.

“Did you come?” asked Emil.

“I have had an orgasm every time I have ever had sex,” I responded confidently.

But I didn’t!!!!! The word boyfriend was glowing inside of my head via an impressive vaudevillian light display, making it difficult for me to focus.

We got dressed and decided to smoke from Emil’s grav bong, which he had been gifted by a Sikh guy he played “high-stakes poker” with in Astoria. He and the guy were always sending each other marijuana videos on their cell phones. When I looked down at Emil’s cell phone I would always see a message that said: LOL JUST RIPPED A FAT 1. And then Emil would respond by saying: “Mashallah, my brother,” even though Sikh is not the same as Muslim and also Emil was a Filipino atheist.

Emil took a big hit and then I took a big hit. In a matter of seconds, my brain was cloudy with marijuana and I could not think straight. Emil asked if I was “stoney baloney,” and when I said yes, he told me that I was a “good girl.” He also told me I needed to stop hanging out in a wet bathing suit 24/7 because it was making the organ “smell nasty, like an onion in a dumpster.” I got up and left. I was pretty sure I had negated any soul-cleansing properties by having intercourse and doing bong rips.

I walked out of Emil’s house with wet hair and in a bit of a daze. I was feeling really high on the weed. It was like I had marbles rolling around in there. Click click click. This is how I imagined the marbles bumping into each other.

The walk was quite short. As I mentioned before, me and Emil lived more or less in the same neighborhood. It was a place that was just a quick bike ride away from Coney Island. To get home, I had to go down Ocean Parkway, past car washes and oil-slick puddles that appeared to have rainbows on the surface. I stopped for a minute to gaze upon my reflection. I liked seeing my face in the puddle, all varicolored. I smiled. It would be cool to one day have a head that is a rainbow. The Rainbow Girl is what I would be called. The Rainbow Girl of Ocean Parkway.

I continued on. I felt bothered by this question of a boyfriend. Would having a special guy around really make me happier? Was this the life purpose I was looking for? What would we even do together? Go to the baseball game? Would he give me a prion disease? Would I wake up in the middle of the night giggling like some kind of afflicted madman?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha ha ha ha

etc.

The idea of a 2 a.m. witticism felt loathsome, honestly. I was trying to get my eight hours in. I was becoming well. I had some fears about what would happen when I found him. This boyfriend. It was true that I liked my life. I liked living in my apartment with my roommates above the Benchers store where they sold yarmulkes and other Jewish toys. I didn’t have many needs. The main meal I ate was tomato soup and grilled cheese. I made my little zines. I called my parents and said I love you to them and they’d say it back. Then they would ask about City Life and they would tell me that I seemed happy and well-adjusted and I would respond by saying thank you, thank you.

I’m getting off topic and repeating myself. No one cares that I have awesome parents that love me. I’m just some foolish broad with brown hair who just walked out of her friend Emil’s apartment. But maybe Emil was right. Maybe I needed a life upgrade. My life was fabulous, but also how long could I go on living a life where I dress like some kind of hobo in 1931? It was romance to be a boxcar gamine but that couldn’t be It. I didn’t even know how to play the accordion or weave.

I started to imagine this future where I was a boxcar gamine, sitting on a boxcar playing a small ditty on a navy blue accordion, then taking a break from my accordion playing to tend to my loom where a scarf was being made courtesy of my fair hands and fey constitution.

I think part of me wanted more in life than to be itinerant. If I wanted to be a hobo this would be good for me financially. It would solve many of those kinds of problems.

It would be bad because I would seriously get raped by a band of knaves.

This was something I was trying to avoid: getting raped so much. It was hard to avoid this fate. New York City was a place where nefarious individuals got ideas.

Maybe finding a boyfriend would change that. I wasn’t sure. I needed a protector from the elements, which more often than not were dastardly. In this situation he’d have to be heavily armed, and I wasn’t sure that was realistic given the populace I was drawn to. Guys like Emil had weapons they did not know how to use. I think in general I needed more structure. I wasn’t about to get a nine-to-five because it didn’t make sense, politically. Also I didn’t have any skills? Besides the fact that I was the greatest actress for water park commercials on the Eastern Seaboard. Another skill I guess was being Emil’s “cum dumpster.”

I had a moment of clarity: Join a league. Take up Mahjong. Consider the lilies. Learn about the Brutalist art form. Look at the Louise Bourgeois in the museum and have a moment of genius. Appreciate free jazz. Play the game badminton. Batter up, girlie girl. *Suh-wing battah battah* But then I remembered I was not coordinated. But then I remembered I did not have much follow-through. I had tunnel vision. My vision was marred by elements.

Here was another problem: What would I even do if I found a suitable candidate? Make goo-goo gah-gah eyes and suck their cock? I knew all too well that in true-love situations like Emil and Lexy, the rules were different from when you do casual sexual intercourse.

It is not the same with boyfriends. Just because New York was a city of gentlemen intent on pounding the organ into a fine steak did not mean that they wanted to be my boyfriend. They had a sexual way of looking at me. Crazed eyes. Wagging tongues like a pack of wild, leashless dogs. Dogs running through the night. With boyfriends, there’s history there. This is way different from a triumvirate of canine terrorists. You’re making a commitment. A boyfriend I have heard is a lifelong commitment. Once you have one you’re never the same. You become a girlfriend. This is a fixed identity. I didn’t have one of those yet. Being a girlfriend is similar to joining the Franciscans or the Freemasons. Better than badminton, I guess.

I was going to do it. I was going to find a boyfriend.