Loss

Biking is the only way I can get anywhere without real pain. In a week they replace the first knee.

P doesn’t text back, and I’ve discovered that I can’t do this. No hard feelings – just sad.

Two knee replacements coming, and I can barely walk fifty yards to the bike share without crying.

I should have gone there first. By the time the bar called my name, it was too late.

Three small scotches in, sad and tipsy at the bar, cataloguing the women on either side of me.

P emailed again, and my heart leapt again – like it always does, like an idiot.

I used to check my answering machine ten times a day. It was never about being important.

I experience connections as deep and real, but they end not in intentional closure but in disappearance. This is my compulsive repetition of courting and failing to avoid abandonment.

I’m writing about Isabella, one of two women who taught me the most about my sexuality. She showed me my cock could be an object of desire, while the Secretary taught me my desire itself could be desired. I miss them both — not just for sex, but for the intimacy we shared.

Two years of biking to work instead of riding the subway, and this morning I finally saw an ass worth writing about.