Cumulonimbus

I took a late train home from Marcy Ave on Friday, and we were a beat collection of strays in the harsh light on the J. Standing on Delancey, waiting for my connection, I stared down the long tunnel into the dark, unexplored entrails of Manhattan. It is the part of the city I have least explored, but that I most desire to see. How easy it would be, I thought, to simply follow that narrow strip from the platform and away, along the tracks, along the regularly dispersed lights, into the eternal night of the underground. . .

As I gazed at the little ledge, I noticed a pile of what I had previously assumed was garbage move. A homeless man rolled in his sleep, precariously close to the edge, undisturbed by passing trains as they shook the walls and pushed the wind. When I looked again, he was jerking off. Life is sad. The point didn't need to be rubbed in. My train came, I averted my eyes, went home in the freezing night.

It could just be the hangover, I said over my coffee in a crowded West Village café the next day. Perhaps it'll pass and I won't know why I overreacted so. The knot in my stomach was coming and going. We were trying to catch up on months apart and still mostly all we talked about was the future. How being back in the City tickled him, how the dream of buying More Time on its streets still gleamed like a treasure in his eyes. How I feared it was an impermanent residence, that soon my time would be up.

Just look at it as an adventure. As running off into the world and trying something different. You can always come home again.

I knew he was right. I love a good adventure.

(And yet knot did not pass, with the hangover.)