With the warmth comes the drunk neighbors outside of the bar, saying to me “Don’t smoke that cigarette, it’s bad for you. Smoke me instead.” The small, flashing neon sign advertises “Chicas Exoticas,” and the pool hall is alit. Men wearing khaki pants and wristwatches and flannel shirts take shots at cue balls and wipe the sweat from their glasses onto their thin sleeves. The music and the conversation escape through the windowpanes, not thick enough to hold it in, still not as thin as my own skin.
I am walking past and my eyes are searching the sidewalks for the community cat and she is no where to be found in the rain, I recall: Cats dislike water. A sign above a bodega advertises “A dozen roses, $10.00″ and I think to myself, jokingly, ‘well hot tamale!’ and then think, ‘yes, they probably serve hot tamales there as well.’
Little speckles of rain coat the cars parked on the side of the road. My face. My jacket. Another man says, “So beautiful,” and after a pause, “I swear!” I fought with this man a week ago outside of the laundromat. He was angry that I sat down to have a cigarette. He began shouting at me. I pleaded with him, “Porque no me dijo? Porque?” The alcohol and the exotic women must have helped him to forget this incident.
Inside of my building I notice a new emergency exit sign in the lobby. I wish it led to some place that felt like escape. Later, in my bedroom, I think ‘all of this space is mine, it isn’t much but it’s enough of a place for me to think in and work in and exist.’ Compared to the home I grew up in, it should be written off. I should be written off? Sometimes my head writes poetry and it does not make sense. It is how I exist.
Sometimes when I walk I pay attention to the trash, what does it say about anything? An empty, plastic, purified water jug, a styrofoam cup, an opened condom (used?), a pin that reads ‘Tell Dem Slavery Done!’, a very large hairpin, candy wrappers, a tumbleweed made from fake hair, and all of the etcetera’s you could ever imagine. Does it say anything about anything? Have I ever said anything about anything?
No, no. Of course not. It’s only in me to create and to keep the substance in. You know, they tell me they don’t want to hear it. Not explicitely. They don’t say it, per se. They imply with their gestures and their calculated conversation, and I was never taught to be that, and I wonder what it is like to know their secret codes, their rules that make being alive easier for them. If you know what to do then you can interact with everybody else who knows what to do. No, not me. I am strange. They have told me that too. Explicitely. They say it. Per se.
That is why I am not invited into the bar with the pool tables and the lacquered balls on the felt tables that are easy to mar. That is why I am not invited to speak the language or shop for mangoes or listen to loud music outside of my apartment in their cars. That is why they yell at me in Spanish outside of the laundromat, and when I beg them not to be angry in Spanish it upsets them more. Use your words, your only power, but keep them inside of your head, lest they lose all power on a recipient who does not want to hear it. Tell us another story about a cat, okay? Don’t say that you are fluid and sensitive and have observed our garbage and judge our priorities and character by it. Do you know any jokes about tugboats?
No, but I have one about choo choo trains.
