coarse

summer blares via sunlight and heat but i'm quite frankly shocked at how quiet a street in the middle of new york city can be. it's saturday evening and all over the five boroughs people are getting dressed, patting their trousers to make sure they've remembered their keys, locking doors, pressing elevator buttons, coasting through toll booths.

i am sitting on a stoop on eckford street and there isn't a single sound--literal silence. a firefly floats upwards towards the swaying treetops, a shirtless teenage boy leans out of his window reading a magazine. the cars are parked as if abandoned forever, the sky is the lavender of a woman's silk slip, impossibly high up and pierced here and there with slowly moving pin pricks of light from the jfk or laguardia approach paths.

it's evening and i'm apprehensive about night. what else is new?

on occasion my thoughts will be so incongruent with what is happening around me that it really bothers me. i will be one second away from collision in a hydroplaning car and i will wonder if i need to pick up cereal from the supermarket. we will be bounding out of the metropolitan avenue bus in a flurry of emotion, ready to just let the words spill out as the sun begins to rise, and i'll wonder if i remembered to leave a check for my rent on the fridge door.

sometimes i'll sit and you'll talk for minutes and i haven't heard a thing. sometimes i'll sit on the train by myself. as it passes the dull, smudged skyline and you're off somewhere, i'll wonder just how far i will run for you, if it's bright there, if it's quiet there.

sarah's more important than a pizza

sleep paralysis was a new thing for me. i credit my voracity for trivia to my lack of panic. i opened my eyes and there was my room, there was my arm, there was the corner of my laptop. it was somewhere around quarter to two on the fourth of july. pancakes had put me to sleep. i was hearing the same sentences i'd heard on npr an hour ago, back in the dream. i could repeat them word for word. i thought i was in the machine, that i'd just got back, that the machine was hiccupping and honestly that worried me more than the possibility--scratch that, the reality--of paralysis. i calmly wondered if this was death; that in a cruel twist unlike the ending of a video game you spent eternity seeing life moving on around where your body fell, but unable to do or say anything. i calmly realized that this is what some people live their entire days, weeks, lives feeling like. i thought about my roommate finding me like this, how long that would take. then suddenly i could move again.

before i was in a house party in london. we'd set red lights up and down the walls, christmas lights. the room was bathed in red. we did a lot of drugs that afternoon, before the girls and the guys from the university showed up to drink our beer and half-heartedly cheer us on. we'd been chewing on a bunch of keys we'd found in a metal biscuit tin in the kitchen. each key tasted different. i don't know what the pills were that we'd taken but they made my head spin and i felt like foaming at the mouth. our fat black neighbor charles walked by the open front door and we made him come in and judge our key tasting contest. i told raoul that mine was by far the tastiest. charles must have been drunk; he proferred a plastic-nubbed one from the tin and speaking like some african dictator declared that to be the most delicious. i bit down on it and by jove, he was right.

at one point i spun around in circles and said to ryan, "we are completely fucking insane." he just nodded with a tight smile.

an hour later and we had our rig set up, loads of samplers and mixers and pre-amps and wires going this way and that and we were now drunk to boot and playing plastic electronic toys as MIDI triggers. i was playing max's guitar hero controller, as was raoul, and the room was a whirling frenzy of red light, girls' long hair whizzing by left and right, loud noise and pressing buttons. we were sounding good, albeit a bit disheveled. i was beating the crap out of the plastic guitar and the headstock was breaking in two. as raoul and our drummer syncopated into a tight solo i walked over to max, who was surly drunk and standing off to the back in blue oxford completely soaked in beer.

"sorry mate, i snapped this end off"

he glowered but was very civil. "no worries, it's only ten pounds at the shop."

for some reason i wanted to instigate him. "fuck all, ten pounds, i'll pay two."

his frown aimed directly at me. "it's okay, i'll take care of it. get the blue duct tape."

i picked up the tape gun. "i've half a mind to smash the bloody thing all to hell, why not. semper fi, right?"

i woke and couldn't move. the room was the opposite of the dream room. it was serene, angelic white, soft light from the sun shining behind the low layer of clouds. london was awake, it was the morning after.

the phone rang, it was sarah. i silenced it and set it back on the bedside table. i was still sort of coping with the temporary loss of function. it was invigorating. i had an erection. i wanted to look at porn and eat a pizza. that's how i'd spend my independence day.

the phone bleeped signaling a text. sarah again. 'call me'. i wondered if it was urgent. i listened to her voicemail. it sounded urgent. i swept pizza from my mind and rung her up.

she sounded lonesome. she never sounds lonesome to me. she wanted someone to hang out with on the holiday. we'll go watch the fireworks down by the river, i told her. she sounded disheartened.

in the bathroom i splashed water over my face. it is good to be able to move. it is good to be alive but oh how it wears on the mind.