"And I can't decide which one I love the most
The flesh and blood or the pale, smiling ghost
My wife lies down on the beach
She's sucking a peach
She's out of reach
Of the waves that crash on the sand
Where my dead wife stands
Holding my hand
Now my wife can't swim but neither could she
And deep in the sea
She's waiting for me
She's waiting for me"
-My Wife and My Dead Wife by Robyn Hitchcock
It's late. Dark here. I'm alone. Did you hear that? *turns around and looks at the closet*
I thought I heard something, something moving. Something moving, in there.
I live in a crumbling block of luxury apartments. Behind the building you can barely see the outline of tiles and brick, a caved in fountain with 1923 carved into it. On sunny days I imagine welldressed gentlemen with ladies on their arms, enjoying the play of light on the sparkling water.
You could drive a car down the hallway of my building, past mirrors framed in dark wood and small identical niches with doors where the milkman used to leave bottles of milk as requested. We don't have peepholes in our apartment doors; we have full wrought grates. The grates are large and revealing: I shocked my 80 something year old neighbour answering my door naked once. Perhaps the expression was natural apoplexy.
Inside my apartment it's all hardwood and heavy closet doors, crystal doorknobs, quirky silver radiators looking as if they'd fit into a Flash Gordon scenario. Large doublehung windows which stick occasionally from the decades of frost they've endured.
My bathroom has a rounded porcelain sink with two taps: you must run both hot and cold and run your hands quickly under both. In winter, pretty frost patterns build up on the single long window in here. If you've ever experienced steam heat, it gets extremely hot and dry. In winter the static electricity is crazy, blue shocks in the darkness at night when I remove my clothes. I gain a not-quite- saintly winter corona of dark hair flying out around my face.
The kitchen is narrow, large windows opening onto the parking lot of a luxury restaurant next door. I hear drunken wellheeled frivolity in summer, echoing the people who lived here decades ago. Sometimes the restaurant patrons see me naked as I wander in to get something to cool off in the prairie summer heat. I have no airconditioning. It seems incongruous in this building.
If you walk to the back of my kitchen, you pass the ancient refrigerator which I'm constantly defrosting. I think an icebox would have been more honest. Next to it sits the surgical trolley I use as a pantry. And then, my stove and a broom closet, beside the door to the milkbottle niche.
The door to the broom closet is tricky: it has a second door nestled into it, with a latch heavily coated by years of white paint over dark wood. If you aren't careful, the inside door comes out revealing an ancient ironing board which would fold down if my stove wasn't in the way. I get a kick out of imagining a 1920s swinging bachelor ironing his shirts there before a night on the town.
There are tiny spatters of blood running down my cream plastered living room wall, stains dried dark brown. They were here when I arrived three years ago, and I left them. The previous tenant left in a big hurry with a sublet. I never asked.
I used to hear sounds of violence upstairs, and a child crying. I think they left because all I hear these days is a young couple fucking. Much more to my taste.
On occasion when I've taken myself off to my empty bed, I've felt not quite entirely alone. And that's when I think about where I live.
I wonder about the people who've lived here over the past eighty one years. Assuming a conservative estimate of three years per tenant, that's twenty seven people who've spent a portion of their lives in my hermitage. This place feels dark. And crowded.
The flesh and blood or the pale, smiling ghost
My wife lies down on the beach
She's sucking a peach
She's out of reach
Of the waves that crash on the sand
Where my dead wife stands
Holding my hand
Now my wife can't swim but neither could she
And deep in the sea
She's waiting for me
She's waiting for me"
-My Wife and My Dead Wife by Robyn Hitchcock
It's late. Dark here. I'm alone. Did you hear that? *turns around and looks at the closet*
I thought I heard something, something moving. Something moving, in there.
I live in a crumbling block of luxury apartments. Behind the building you can barely see the outline of tiles and brick, a caved in fountain with 1923 carved into it. On sunny days I imagine welldressed gentlemen with ladies on their arms, enjoying the play of light on the sparkling water.
You could drive a car down the hallway of my building, past mirrors framed in dark wood and small identical niches with doors where the milkman used to leave bottles of milk as requested. We don't have peepholes in our apartment doors; we have full wrought grates. The grates are large and revealing: I shocked my 80 something year old neighbour answering my door naked once. Perhaps the expression was natural apoplexy.
Inside my apartment it's all hardwood and heavy closet doors, crystal doorknobs, quirky silver radiators looking as if they'd fit into a Flash Gordon scenario. Large doublehung windows which stick occasionally from the decades of frost they've endured.
My bathroom has a rounded porcelain sink with two taps: you must run both hot and cold and run your hands quickly under both. In winter, pretty frost patterns build up on the single long window in here. If you've ever experienced steam heat, it gets extremely hot and dry. In winter the static electricity is crazy, blue shocks in the darkness at night when I remove my clothes. I gain a not-quite- saintly winter corona of dark hair flying out around my face.
The kitchen is narrow, large windows opening onto the parking lot of a luxury restaurant next door. I hear drunken wellheeled frivolity in summer, echoing the people who lived here decades ago. Sometimes the restaurant patrons see me naked as I wander in to get something to cool off in the prairie summer heat. I have no airconditioning. It seems incongruous in this building.
If you walk to the back of my kitchen, you pass the ancient refrigerator which I'm constantly defrosting. I think an icebox would have been more honest. Next to it sits the surgical trolley I use as a pantry. And then, my stove and a broom closet, beside the door to the milkbottle niche.
The door to the broom closet is tricky: it has a second door nestled into it, with a latch heavily coated by years of white paint over dark wood. If you aren't careful, the inside door comes out revealing an ancient ironing board which would fold down if my stove wasn't in the way. I get a kick out of imagining a 1920s swinging bachelor ironing his shirts there before a night on the town.
There are tiny spatters of blood running down my cream plastered living room wall, stains dried dark brown. They were here when I arrived three years ago, and I left them. The previous tenant left in a big hurry with a sublet. I never asked.
I used to hear sounds of violence upstairs, and a child crying. I think they left because all I hear these days is a young couple fucking. Much more to my taste.
On occasion when I've taken myself off to my empty bed, I've felt not quite entirely alone. And that's when I think about where I live.
I wonder about the people who've lived here over the past eighty one years. Assuming a conservative estimate of three years per tenant, that's twenty seven people who've spent a portion of their lives in my hermitage. This place feels dark. And crowded.
VIEW 25 of 43 COMMENTS
And regarding this lack of a bra you mentioned: prove it!