(20 Seconds) to Save the World.

I am called upon, and I stand up in Speech 101 class with confidence. I’m confident, because I have my whole speech memorized. When Professor Oumano was teaching us how to make a preparation outline for our informative presentations, I didn’t have to pay attention because I learned that stuff in high school. I forgot to bring my speaking notes with me to the podium, and this is not a problem. Look at all the students looking at me. Look at my professor waiting with baited breath to hear my informational, pontificated intercourse. This is going to be awesome. I speak in a relaxed baritone, as if to create a sense of unified community as only I speak. I am you. I see head nodding. And I hear laughter from my audience of friends. I’m unconsciously funny. I remember to not say “in conclusion,” and it’s over, and I bow and await review - and then it happens. My Speech teacher says it sounds like I had trouble finding the main points. And there were grammar errors. And that I should buy a style manual. And that I need to go to S500 for Speech tutoring. I almost always wake up at this point in a pool of my own sweat and a pillow of my own slobber, which is good because that way it stops.

Fear is the primary dynamic at work in the classroom. Jane Tompkins, a professor and a former student, said it best when she described fear as a ball bouncing back and forth off the walls of the classroom of her nightmares, the walls representing the teachers and the students. In her essay, “The Dream of Authority,” Jane talks about the pedagogy of her elementary school life, and later, high school and college, where she was petrified by some of her instructors or mildly freaked out by others. She believes that out of that fear derived obedience, enabling learning. But there’s a price to the college price tag. The fear stays with you until the deal with it. And it wasn’t until Jane was instilling knowledge into other students as a professor when she fully realized why she was so frightened of her students in her dreams, and why it was so important to her that her students remained frightened of her - sometimes. Everyone is getting hit by balls. I’ve never been hit by the ball before, until my Speech professor tore apart my presentation outline.

Everybody’s pretty much petrified of Professor Oumano in my Speech class. In her class, you know a lot about something, until you suddenly don’t. Professor Oumano will assign you New York Times articles to locate and state the main points from, and afterwords she will leave you feeling like you don’t know how to read, which will come to you as a surprise. And you will understand it’s your fault, instead of hers’ for having some sort of main point finding mega brain. On the first day of class, she told us what she expected of her students. She told us that she wanted us to be Barack Obama-like speakers, to speak with a charisma and confidence to run a Presidential campaign founded upon social change. On the first day of class, I remember when all of us students were introducing ourselves. I spoke my name at the time of calling attendance with volume and bass, I described my life story in a quick and mannered 20 seconds of pure confidence and new beginning.

But it’s almost time to give my presentation in front of the whole class and the Professor for midterms, and I live in fear of speaking longer than 20 seconds. And if I speak too loud, what if people hear me? Something else I’m concerned about: If I don’t transform into an Obama-like speaker, I will fail this class, and the federal government won’t to pay me to take it a second time, I won’t graduate from Borough of Manhattan Community College, and then I won’t be President. Tompkins, in her essay, speaks of the unfortunate imperils of one, young Steven Kirschner, and it is with him she associates - a pupil, a victim of unwarranted teacher meanness - even though she only rarely walked in Steven’s shoes. “He is the very picture of innocence abused,” she writes (3). In my own Speech class, I know one student who is repeating the class at exorbitant expense. “Don’t ever do a speech about abortion,” she says. I don’t question the fellow student’s advice. I accept it as knowledge.

Yet last week, just before midterms are due, something happened. During a hands-on lesson in hypnosis therapy meant to combat speaking in public, our genius Chinese classmate began to cry. She spoke of her parents, and how she was adopted and how her parents call her a bastard for being in community college, and of her siblings working as doctors and bankers at Columbia. Professor Oumano began to speak of being a single parent, of her parents making her believe that something was wrong with her and of how they believed their put-downs to be motivational. She spoke of putting herself through university any way she could, of her fears of speaking in a corporate setting as a pregnant young woman, of being a strong female professor. She spoke of her fears. Jane Tompkins spoke about this, too - about oppression. About laying open to an authority figure which frightens you into submission first and rebellion later (4). Tompkins cites this factor into her own path to becoming an educator herself, as well as framing her methods of teaching. She called the process “control” (4). “I do not know what earlier debasements the teachers at P.S. 98 were avenging when they screamed at us in the halls,” Tompkins writes, “but I know they must have been the object of someone’s vengefulness” (4). Vengefulness. That’s what I meant when I said “meanness.”

I think the fear ball, which for whatever reason in my head is colored red, is kind of a, “I hurt you, because somebody hurt me,” kind of thing. I teach you, because somebody taught me - they say. I’ve noticed a couple things. Thing 1: The innocent pupil in Professor Oumano’s Speech class, whom did the presentation last semester about her abortion, came back for more Oumano. She could have picked any other professor to take the course again with. This student might even become a professor, like Jane Tompkins, and join (3). Thing 2: I’m petrified of Professor Oumano because I respect her so damn much. It is because of that reason that not living up to my first 20 seconds remains utterly terrifying. Scientific studies which I have read in AM New York have concluded that more adults are scared of public speaking than they are of terrorist attack. I have to wonder, if I become President after graduating Borough of Manhattan Community College, will the terrorist attacks freak me out most, or will it be the press conference? Our professor told us that if we can pass her class, we can handle anything. I just want to deal with my fear of speaking in public and never talk about it again.

Almost Homeless / Coyote Fugly.

Now I’m in New York and I’m almost homeless, and everybody’s telling me to get a job, so I will. For my first job in the Big Apple I will be hired to physically distribute the AM New York newspaper at my local subway stop. My wage will be minimum, my shift 6 to 9 in the morning, Monday through Friday and on Saturdays. I won’t talk about it to so many people. I’m not embarrassed, it’s just that if you say your wish, it won’t come true. I found this AM New York job from Izzy, my homeless and underprivileged youth organization’s volunteer employment specialist. Izzy helped me create a resume that showcases all my skills that I have, like conversating and closet organization. She made me lie and we said I was also good at food prep. And my brother made my resume look cool with cool fonts. Izzy’s job is to get people who have never had job experience jobs. I don’t want her job. Izzy has a pool of contacts, and a hit list of companies that she sends her clients to. I’ve never been a client before. And I wonder if I could put it on my resume.

Izzy told me that she doesn’t know if I’m strong enough yet for Macy’s so soon. She told me she really saw me selling merchandise at Yankee Stadium, because if I get fired I become eligible for unemployment benefits, but she wasn’t sure if I could get hired there. But I don’t want to get fired. I don’t wanna come home and tell Rick and Rick’s son that I got fired. She’s sending me to AM New York because she says they hire everybody, and that she heard there was a tremendous opportunity to move up quickly in the company. I wondered if I could trust myself and my ability and write fast enough for my own daily column in the AM New York. In the morning my brother and me are off to our interviews in Queens. It’s the night before, and I’m having trouble sleeping. I’m up writing. I want to record the thrill I receive of the newfound freedom of running to the 24-hour deli on 4th Street for Hershey’s Symphony at night and not telling anybody. Nobody knows. I’m scared my brother’s alarm clock won’t work, and I’m scared I’ll miss my interview and I’ll get fired.

My brother’s alarm clock woke me up. Queens is different than Manhattan, it’s like a warehouse underneath an overpass - the trains are in the sky. I’m entering the dark warehouse with my New York State ID and current Social Security card. I’m not really sure where to go. A man in a chair asks me if I’m here for the interview, and I say, “Yes, sir.” He points me to a big box of pencils and directs me to a back room past the trucks. I follow the line. There are a hundred of us. We’re in a big room with tables, I notice some people are more talkative and others keep to themselves. Some men are wearing suits. A lady comes and distributes W2 forms for us to fill out. She tells us that we have two minutes to complete the form. She shows us how, and some people have questions about how many people they should claim as dependents. I just claim myself. I’m grateful that Izzy showed me how to fill out my W2 last week. She’s my secret weapon. I just hope I’m doing it right enough in time. All of us move to the center of the warehouse. An older man with crazy hair moves to the microphone to speak in front of a mountainous stack of AM New Yorks. He speaks about the ethos of AM New York, to inform the people of New York City on the train, and why we are all here today. I think to myself that I can’t believe I’m here, that I’m really having my first job interview. I crave from deep within myself to be proud of myself, to be able to go back to New York and tell Rick that I got a job, and to tell my parents that I have a job, and that everything was different now and that I was a man. The older man on the microphone says, “You’re here because you want to achieve. You here because you’re selling drugs, you on crack, you just got out of prison, or you on the block.” After he spoke, he introduces another young woman who started as a distributor, but was promoted to district manager within a month. She will demonstrate to us how the paper should be properly distributed, and then all of us will have a mock audition. I’m getting scared. I’m looking at the audience. I remember from high school English 2 class that in my writing my homeschool high school instructor told me to consider my audience, speak to my audience. I don’t feel any different than the other contestants are, but will they accept me as their own? The promoted lady shows us how it’s done. And now I know. Within seconds her stack of papers has dwindled and dissipated and soon we are all holding a copy of yesterday’s AM New York and we don’t know how or why. The intensity and passion for which she speaks, “Get your AM New York right here! It’s free! 20 percent off at Macy’s inside! AM New York!,” was the mark of gifted professional. I just want to be her.

The old man tells of the AM New York vest. We are to wear it with pride as we were representing the company and it’s fellow men as one. The old man divides us by our boroughs. But only a couple of people here today I guess live in Manhattan, and everybody else is from Brooklyn and Queens, so he puts my brother and I with Brooklyn and the Bronx with Queens, and we are battling each other. One by one of us puts on the vest, are handed a stack, and just go. Some people aren’t very good. It’s just that they’re being too quiet. I remember what Izzy told me, that I would be hired if I just only be loud. It’s my turn. I walk to the front. The man puts the vest around my body, I’m handed my stack, I hear the bell, I don’t think, I just go. I feel like I’m jumping out of a spoon airplane into my cereal. I scream, “AM New York!! It’s free! Oh My God!!! 20 percent off at Macy’s!!! Get your news right here!! AAAHHHH!!! AM New York!!! AAAAHHHHHH!!!,” all the while stuffing papers to the hands of my audience. People are screaming. Oh my god. It’s 20 seconds later. That’s it, time’s up. And silence. I look down at my hands. Nothing. I gave away all my papers, I did it. I march up and return my vest. I begin to hope that my brother does okay, too. I watch more and more people do their thing, and some of them are better than me, I know, but I think I medaled. The older gentleman encourages us, “Move your product! Sell it! Push it! Move your crack!”

He divides us into East and West. He calls our names, and if he calls us, we made it, we start tomorrow. With every name, We cheer. We’re a family. Hello, 12. Hello, 13. Hello, love. But as spots are filled, the unchosen begin to become sad. My brother is not chosen. I am chosen. I make it to the second round, and then I’m cut. Hands are on my shoulders from friends I made. “You’ll get it next time, buddy.” “Wow, I thought for sure you would get it. You were really loud.” “It’s politics.” I wanna find my brother. I run into another one of Izzy’s clients who was really nice to me. He just got out of jail for selling crack and needed a shot like me. He didn’t get picked either, and he had all these kids to claim as dependants on his W2. I put my hand on his shoulder and tell him he was the best guy up there, and to try the Metro paper. “What about you?,” he asked. But for me, it was the open road. And that I wasn’t meant to be here. I find my brother. He tells me that the older gentleman approached him, and told him that he wants to see both of us outside before we leave and that he wanted to make us a lucrative offer. But the promoted lady steps up to the microphone and asks everyone to return to the center of the warehouse. She tells us that we’re all hired, and that we would be receiving phone calls within the week informing us of our designated subway stops, and that if we didn’t receive a call in week, to call her. The crowd erupts with joy, as my brother and me walk to meet the man in the parking lot. He puts his hand on our shoulders and offers us a flyer distribution job around Bedford-Stuyvesant. He tells us that he saw a spark in us and that he’s the head nigger around her, and he gave us his card to reach him. He says it’s his nigger card.

Could I have a nigger card?

It’s been a week. My phone hasn’t rung. I don’t call the AM New York promoted lady back because I don’t really want that job. I’m going to Times Square this afternoon to interview for a market research analyst position at the Universal Survey Call Center. Izzy says it pays minimum wage, but goes up to 7.50 after a month and 8 dollars after two. The thought of making 8 dollars an hour blows my mind almost to the point where I don’t wanna even think about what a job can pay me and get my hopes up, and possibly not be loud enough and be let down. So I rise in the elevator of the Universal Survey Call Center with optimistic enthusiasm. But I’m scared. I have to talk on the phone to be able to do this job. I’ve always been nervous about talking to people on the phone, I’m just really shy about it. You can’t see and frame a conversation around people’s expressions, and it’s harder to be affectionate. And I sound really country when I’m on the phone. I’m here now, I’m surprised and relieved to find out that there won’t be any practice calls during the interview and training process. The floor manager speaking to all 100 of us even told us if we were hired today, we would be assigned and begin our shifts within the hour. I wanted this job really bad, but I’m scared shitless after I found out about the Reading Test.

I am going to stutter, or read too fast, or read ahead. What if I just can’t read? What if I get hard words? I don’t remember being tested on my reading in my whole life.

I passed the reading test with flying colors, and I got hired! I am Just Hired. I tell myself just to stay hired. The reading test was only about the pronouncing of surnames of Hispanic California politicians. I have been calling people for over an hour now on a telephone with a cord and I am calmed that I am officially owed 7.5 dollars. I’m just in shock. Everyone who is unemployed is beneath me, it’s so hard to believe. My market research associates working with me at the call center are a cast of characters. There was this one man who introduced himself to me, we had both trained and were hired today. He has been in jail for over 30 years for selling drugs and has just been released, and this was the first job he got. Another guy I know shot the cop that killed his mother. And there was one lady who I met in the bathroom who might be a great undiscovered national talent. In my head I call her Susan Boyle. My brother never really understood what I meant when I called him on the cordwith phone and I told him that I got to call next to Susan Boyle today. My brother went to Bedford-Stuyvesant to see that guy, but it didn’t really pan out.

When you arrived to work at the call center, you were to immediately walk to one of the two computers in the corner designated for clocking in. You would enter your employee ID, and the screen would turn blue. If the screen would turn red, we had learned in training that it meant you are fired. Management was enforceful of clocking in on time. Senior staff would stand in front of the door after the scheduled start time of the shift and tell everywhere who arrived late that they were fired. I noticed the ones that disagreed could stay. After clocking in, we were all to meet in the lunch room. There were sheets of paper on the wall telling us our assigned seats for the day, but sometimes these were disregarded and sometimes you weren’t on the list. We all had to wait for placement, and sometimes the process could take hours. After placement, we then had to be taught today’s script as a group. I almost got fired one time for reading ahead. This is where we learn how to pronounce the Hispanic California politician names. Then we clocked in again on our computers and started dialing. We don’t start getting paid until we clock in this time.

Senior staff started as callers, but were promoted within the month. I got the sense that they thought we were beneath them. I don’t think anyone’s beneath me.

Once I pressed “enter,” the computer will call out, some person’s name will appear on my screen, I will ask for them, the person’s spouse will ask if they could do it, I will say no, and then I will began to read from my script while asking multiple choice questions. Do you strongly dislike abortions? Do you somewhat dislike abortions? Do you somewhat support abortions? Do you strongly support abortions? This was called “dialin’.” If I stop dialin’ for longer than 20 seconds, a staff member I call in my head Mean Patti Labelle, who sits atop an elevated platform like a lifegaurd house and can watch over all cubicles, will shout out, “Number 14C, why aren’t you dialin’!?” Managers listen in on the calls I’m making, and will pull me aside for performance reports, grading me on a 1-10 point scale. If I ever get under 5, I get fired. The most common comment I will receive I am told will be that I’m not doing what is called fighting refusals.

But I was constantly pulling from the fighting refusals guidebook that hung on every side of my cubicle. “Ma’am, your opinions will help improve products and services!” “This survey will only take a second, and then I will be allowed to stop calling you.” I felt awful. I knew the survey would take at least an hour. I was written up for saying “okay” after I had received every answer, because my manager said that it biased the survey by implying that I agreed with the answer. And there suddenly I felt another limb cut off. My only trick to completing a survey was to engage the person I was speaking with by making them feel like I was agreeing with everything they were saying. It sucked constantly agreeing with people in Pasadena who strongly dislike abortions, man. And today, I was talking to this one lady during my Chrysler survey and she was telling me how her husband sabotages her diet by bringing sweets into the house. The only times I had felt like I was taking a good, quality survey was when my dialer called a person who used to work at a call center. I could have kept them on the phone for a couple hours and it wouldn’t have mattered, and they would be so polite, asking me if I had any more questions. There were occasional moments of happy. I loved calling new Moms with husbands in Iraq, stirring supper on the stove and completing my survey with the phone on their shoulder, a kid tugging on their leg. They didn’t believe in abortions, but they were so sweet, and I hear in their voices that you could just feel their excitement for a whole world in their future. I love when people asked me where I was calling from, expecting a different answer than New York City.

But I’m sitting on a toilet pretending to poop and it’s reminding me of school. I do it all the time, wondering if my colleagues would maybe hit the quota. Sometimes, sometimes an hour after we had all arrived for our shift, we will hit our quota for calls to complete the scientific ratio of the survey, and then Mean Patti Labelle would yell at us, “Stop dialin’! Hang up on them. Stop dialin’ now!,” and we are to punch out and leave the premises immediately with no thank you. I have mixed emotions about taking home $7.50 from a day’s work. Rick says it’s not legal and that I should sue, but I’m sleepy. This is the hardest job I’ve ever had in my whole life. I tell myself to just stay hired, but it's so hard. And what I crave for most is new management. Like Scar says, I’m surrounded by idiots. And Rick was constantly telling me that I must constantly push myself for broader horizons. If I got a job, celebrate and immediately get a new, better one. My new job’s being a spa attendant at (Equinox). I found this position because my social worker who was fucking me at the time knew that another member of his youth staff was a spa attendant here, too, and saw that as an in for me and my brother. My social worker thought that maybe they would let us be unpaid interns, learning the ins and outs of a New York City business and having the ability of observing at a luxury spa on our resumes. He came with us to the interview on Madison Avenue, and that’s where I met Matt, who was impressed with my conversational and organizational skills and ended up offering us real positions folding towels, lifting heavy boxes, and taking out the garbage for 8 dollars an hour. I resigned from my position as market research analyst, and from the ground up, I was proud to earn the reputation as the most reliable and loyal spa attendant at the company’s flagship location. I got a Christmas card with money in it from the estheticians. I worked double shifts, lifted the heaviest of boxes with my bare hands, relearned homeschool high school Spanish 1 from my co-attendants, and was a regular face at the location nobody wanted to work at. I love coming home physically exhausted, instead of emotionally exhausted. It makes me feel like a manly lug, instead of a Mom. I receive no recognition or more money, so I quit.

I asked for a promotion at another location and got it. Now I’m a booker at the front desk up front, and sometimes, whenever everybody else leaves the room, I’m manager on duty. All my bosses have SAG cards.

Last summer, I noticed a flyer for the United States Census Bureau. My brother noticed it first, called the number, got hired, and he’s making $18.75 an hour going door to door filling out census forms for folks. So the hiring process for me feels as so official. First, I have to take a math test at an assigned government neutral place in your neighborhood. My brother tested at the library in front of Tompkins Square Park. I’m testing and training at a public housing project elementary school gym room in Loisaida. Gosh, I’m so nervous of the math test. I got a 96 percent! I’m sitting at the desk, looking at my potential future associates. I want to have sex really bad, and I’m looking for someone I want to flirt with. But the people around me are different from the ones who used to work at all my other jobs with me. They’re young, in there 20’s and 30’s, they bond over living in Gramercy Park, they had MBA’s, and resumes too, and they were unemployed. And they have been unemployed for awhile, I can hear the stories. They’re so stressed out about getting this job. And suddenly within me I felt it become very important for me to get this job. Please God I need this job. I can’t find anybody I wanted to have sex with, so I worry about if my parents registered me for the Selective Service. The lady says that’s what’s most important.

I think about what Rick said, about always getting better jobs. And more money. And how I needed to always get jobs for more money so that I can put on my resume that I have the experience of making more money. I thought about what it would be like to know that I’d be making at least $18.75 an hour for the rest of my life and how rich I would be. Starbucks and Qdoba and Chipoltle and Five Guys and organics. I got the job as a Census taker. Upon my resume it says I’m a Census Enumerator. It’s my second day of training. I’m very sleepy. I fell asleep during school for the first time in my whole life. Yesterday morning I walked in and sat down at a table, not at the back but not in front of the teacher. Seated at my table was an intelligent black lady who reads and lives in Stuyvesant Town, an older gay man who reads and lives across 2nd Avenue from me and who used to be in the Gay Mafia and who once attended a house party of somebody he said was actually named Gore Vidal, and a grad school age Brooklyn girl who lives on 14th Street and can cook her own dog food and who I think was a castmember on Big Brother a couple years ago but I didn’t want to ask her because I thought that might be in the past for her and I didn’t wanna bring it up again because she didn’t win the million dollars. I love my Census friends. I was secretly elated when, today at Census school, we all sat at the same table again and exchanged last names, as other students watch in envy of our bond. At lunchtime, my new friends gave me an apple, grapes, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As new government officials, we were finger printed and took the Oath of Office together. I thought I didn’t have to give my fingerprints again after I gave them for the food stamps, but I did.

One student, whom in my head was named Rosanna Rosannadanna, is constantly trying to infiltrate, but we’re a secret society. It sucked when they split us up. Census enumerating was very serious procedural man business. We’ll have NRFU meetings at Starbucks daily with my crew leader, compounding and collecting more PII. Our teacher taught us that PII is an acronym, a word formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term. PPI stood from Personally Indentifle Information, like home addresses, Facebook profile pictures, dog food recipes, and social security numbers. Us enumerators were given PIP on every household we were to visit with the objective of collecting more. We are trained that, because of the nature of the Personal Identible Information, it is our responsibility that the PPI remained safe and confidential. I would often have anxiety when out in the field that in crosswinds 1.) My PPI would fly out of my hands, as I would go running after it.. 2.) That I would be hit by a car on the job, and the proper authorities would not know what to do with my PIP as the US Census Bureau is an independent organization from the state level. And 3.) My federal government identification ID badge would fly off the person in a crosswind as well, becoming me trustless to the citizens I served.

Even though I’m making $18.75 an hour, I spend more time folding towels at (Equinox) because I like doing the laundry and I’m making more friends here. And I know that’s stupid. But I’m not paying my own rent. And Rick’s too preoccupied with dying to run my books and yell at me. And maybe I’m too preoccupied with Rick dying to care about money right now no matter what Rick says. Rick’s kids tell me to agree with Rick. My crew leader called me in to a meeting at Starbucks and asked me to hand over all my PPI and my NRFU before he told me that 4th Street to Houston from 2nd Avenue to the Bowery had been successfully enumerated. A couple days later, my brother enumerated Rick. One more time.

Things have changed since then. I pay my rent, and I worry every month about if I’m gonna make it, even though I shouldn’t have to because, if I can’t, the City of New York will. I have a modest 10 by 12 apartment of my own, which I have broken the lease on by painting navy blue accent walls, but I lined the hardwood floors with AM New York first. Since my promotion to front desk at (Equinox), I am prospering, suddenly becoming the top seller at our Soho location where I occupy 75% of the shifts, and Pitbull asks for me by name. As I file my tax returns, I look back fondly on these experiences. I think about when I didn’t know what a W2 was, and I appreciate that I don’t know what a W4 is. But I wonder what’s to become of me. I fear promotions to manager on duty at (Equinox), then front desk manager of experience, then spa director of experience, then global director of training experience, then CEO, then I could never be anything less than a CEO - because it would be on my permanent resume. But I didn’t come to New York to be CEO, or take surveys on the phone, or take surveys at your front door. I came to New York because I wanted to answer phones at Hot 97, to answer phones for Hot 97. It all makes me think I should apply for jobs at Equinox. I go back to watch Coyote Ugly to see if I’m doing the right thing. It took me months to be able to afford my college application and my silverware drawer organizer.

Things have changed since then. I learned about quarters. I used to not respect change, but there is something about quarters that are power to me now. If I have quarters, I can wash my clothes at the laundromat, buy Insomnia Cookies on 8th Street, buy sesame chicken and Nissen noodles for a big supper, and buy dollar pizza on St. Mark’s Place and 6th Avenue and in Hell’s Kitchen, and falafels if I wanted to. I can buy all this stuff with dollars, too, but if I do, I’m spending money I don’t have. If you buy supper with quarters, it’s free, and it feels achievement. Things have changed since then. Rick passed away and two weeks after that my brother got into college. I thought that not being able to tell Rick must suck, and with a robust financial aid package in my very own hands and hopefully the same fate in store for me in a couple weeks, I can concur that it truly, madly, deeply does really suck to not be able to tell the one person you really most wanna tell, the one person whom you really want to be proud of me. I just hope there’s a point in going now. How daring and foolish of me to think that I can succeed in university, but I have to if I ever want to answer phones at Hot 97. Things have changed since then. I slip out at night for my secret job. Nobody knows.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you must say, “Fuck the rent.” It’s a special moment of clarity between you and yourself when it was the 1st of the month, and now it’s the 4th of the month, and you get your rent bill slipped under your door when you wake up to go to work, and you had the money for it on the 29th, and your holding it and you say, “I’ll pay this later. And if somebody calls, I’ll tell them I mailed it two weeks ago.” It happens because you’re pissed off because you’re friend died and you want a burrito, or because you wanna buy a frying pan, or because maybe you’re uncomfortable with physical money and untraceable money orders and have never bought stamps before and you don’t know how to fill out a check, or it’s because if you stop at the mailbox you might miss the train, or it’s because you wanna buy a fake fireplace from the Penney’s catalog for your apartment, or it’s because you think your apartment feels fake because there’s no cookie jar and you wanna buy one. I just stopped worrying about my rent, and I started exercising more. I don’t worry about if I’m stupid unless there are tests. I worry about money. I went to the movies today. I paid $13.50, so I got two quarters back. But I’m looking in my bluejeans and can’t find them, I think I threw them away by accident. And I feel like a stupid face.

Sometimes, when I’m booking a massage for someone, they won’t allow me to have a credit card number on file to hold their appointment, and I fight their refusal. I love my job now because I can just talk on the phone now, and I’m not so bad. One time, when I was in elementary school, I gave a girl my number and she called me, and my Mom listened in on our whole conversation. When I was working at the call center, I loved getting to wear my leather jacket. And one time, when I was a spa attendant, I stood at the finish line for the New York Marathon asking runners if they wanted a massage and that it was free and that we had 25% off facials. One night I was walking to the train with my friend from work Jason after work. And I was telling him about what the Head Nigger told me, and Jason told me that I should be a writer. I think about it, I wonder sometimes if I’m one of those guys that just isn’t meant to be traditionally direct deposit employed, a misfit, a writer. It would be such a adjustment for me to accept that, because I want a manly career like Tom Ford’s. When I was a spa attendant, before I was at the front desk, a girl named Mary was at the front desk. I didn’t really get to talk to her much, because I was always folding towels in the back, but she was super sweet, southern, blonde, and beautiful, and before I knew her name was Mary I called her Britney Spears. One day she got a better job and she quit. On her last night before she was leaving, I was giving her a pick-up hug goodbye, and she told me, “Ryan, promise me you will take care of yourself,” with enough sincerity to inspire me to go cry next to the dumpsters in the basement for little while. So I’m at the front desk. And I’m not making enough money. I wanna quit. Go on vacation.

Learn food prep. Everything I’ve learned. All the donations to my landlord. I’m so proud of. My four jobs, sometimes two at once. My own food/play money sometimes. But I don’t care, I still don’t have a husband.

Alabanza.

I finally bought my cross and chain. I've wanted one for my whole life, it's so sexy on a man. But I can't help but not wonder if it's bad luck. Ever since I've started wearing my cross, I fell off a swingset and broke my finger, I tripped in Harlem and broke my face, I got pneumonia and drug-resistant staph, I fell over a barricade and produced a scare that will be there forever at Pride, I haven't gotten a promotion and am still folding towels, Jack fell in love with another guy, so did my brother, my dog died, and my friend Rick passed away.

Rick felt okay, and then he wasn't. The doctor said he had small cell carcinoma of the lungs, which the doctor says is the bad kind. I'm walking to the deli with Rick's son to buy Rick's diet Coke, Ciao Bella, and cigarettes, and he's talking to me like he cares about me and he's holding me back from traffic when we're crossing the street and he's telling me that Rick has two months to live, and he's telling me that I really need to find another place to live because he’s going to have to rent the place out in order to keep it. I don't tell him, but I don't believe him. I think it will be more like a month and a half, and that I'm about to feel something I've never felt before, and that I'm gonna focus on that instead of avoiding homelessness. All of Rick's kids start being nice to me and thanking me for helping out. I try to help out as much as I can, bring grapefruit juice upstairs for him, and do stuff. It's just like Rick is the new my Mom, it's easy for me. And it's what I know I know how to do.

It's my seventh night in New York City. Rick says New York is the centre of the known universe. Rick and I have just gotten back to the brownstone after a night of social events, and I've just dropped an expensive bottle of expired wine on the kitchen floor. I pick up the bottle neck and take it to Rick in his chair. Incriminating myself, showing my work. Rick tells me something witty I don't remember and says don't worry about it, and I go back to clean up the floor. I open the cupboard and find a mop. As I'm mopping, I say to myself, "I don't know how to mop." Rick wants to show me something related to the arts and he's calling me into the other room, but I say just a sec. I get on my hands and knees and start to feel for broken glass so the cats don't get hurt. Rick shouts, "What are you doing?" I say just a second. Rick says the cleaning lady will come tomorrow and it doesn't have to be perfect, and the cats will be okay. I project that I'm almost done, but I have internal doubts.

Rick says, "Ryan, what are you doing?"

When I get off work, I'll run up the stairs and tell him what I did today. Sometimes he'll be already gone to sleep, and I'll say to myself, "Well, that sucks." Sometimes he'll be gone to bed, and I'll run up some more stairs to see him. The weather is still appropriate for my combat boots and he knows I am coming and he will turn the light over the stairs on for me. He loves to listen to my Mom's voicemails at the end of the day. I save them for him. We'll listen to them and talk about what my next move might be. I'll remember one time he told me he needs to smoke to think. I'll think about all the cigarettes and Sunday Times I got for him. I'll remember the first time he asked me to go make him some coffee at the deli. Making somebody's coffee is scary and complicated for me, I can't even get my own right. Did you know that you can put milk in tea? I'll be so proud of myself that I might be doing it right and so nervous I am doing it wrong. Not that I think he would whip me or anything. I want to be good. I am so happy when he sips it and says it's good, but I buy the wrong cigarettes.

I'm going after work to see him in the hospital. I saw him once before, a couple days ago. I brought him his book requests and plugged in his Blackberry to charge for which he has developed a fondness for later in life. I'm looking at my phone and I'm looking for Rick's son's text to me. He texted me detailed directions to Rick's room, which I think is really sweet and also thoughtful. The social worker that I slept with called me before I got to the hospital. He told me on my voicemail that he had found out that Rick had been moved into the ICU. Boing things the social worker I slept with say go off my head, and I go to the Rick's room that I know. I peek inside, and there's someone else old in his bed and a different name written in removable replaceable marker on the door, and I don't understand. I don't like to see that, I ask the nurse. She tells me he's in the ICU, and I ask for very detailed directions. I'm told to walk all the way back, and there he is. He looks different. I'm not happy. He's getting chemo. There's an IV in his arm. That's how they do it.

I always thought that they put you in an empty room, somebody flips a switch on the radiation, and everybody runs away. A timer like in a kitchen goes off, and somebody comes back. I'm standing in the corner. I don't know if he knows me, and I don't know what to say. The nurse says I can say hi. I say hi. I cry. I feel for tubes, and sit on his bed with him. Now I'm laying next to him. He's watching Sex and the City. I tease him about it, and unable to laugh or choosing not to, he smiles at me. He's speechless. His eyes are closed. I whisper in his ear, "I know you can't open your eyes for some reason, but you have to take my word for it that you nurse is a hot gay guy with salt and pepper hair." He smiles again. I sob. The nurse asks me if I'm Rick's son. I say no, and he asks me how I know him, and I say he saved my life. The doctor asks me if I'm Rick's son, and I say no. I tell him he saved my life. Rick won't say anything, but I see Pride in his face. When the doctor starts talking to Rick about stuff I don't understand, I plant a kiss on Rick and get out of there. In the elevator I think about how the last thing I said to him was see you tomorrow, which is how I know how he's probably gonna die tomorrow. I get home and send an email to Rick's Blackberry. It says, "Everything is gonna be okay," because he used to say that to me a lot and I always remembered.

When you’ve never had any friends or family, nobody ever dies. It’s all so new.

This is my public face. I'm gonna lose it. I wanna talk to Jack now. I email him and tell him so. He emails me back and Jack's drunk and having sex with Sam, which makes me wanna get drunk. When I'm in Rick's house when Rick's in the hospital, I clean and make stuff look nice, and when I'm folding towels at work, I talk to God. I very rarely pray, because I feel like praying has the connotation of asking for something, and I very rarely ask God for stuff. I'm always looking at my phone to see if it's 11:11, because I've always felt like the 11:11 Gods are to be hit up constantly for stuff and they won't get mad or stop listening, but Big God I respect. Mostly I just like to talk to God. He's always been a friend and better than an imaginary friend. I prayed about Rick. Not that his cancer would go away. I never really feel like that's my business to pray about health stuff like that because I don't know the plan. But I just ask that whatever happens, that everybody's okay. I know that when I'm in the back folding towels with the cart and talking to myself that it probably doesn't look like I'm praying, but I am. When I get home, I put my boots in the closet. I used to leave them on the floor by the closet because I think that it looks that way less like I'm living here and like I can leave anytime but if I did I would probably be homeless, but I stopped because Caroline the cleaning lady told me that Eliza, Rick's awesome dead wife, hated having shoes on the floor and would want them in the closet. Eliza's in a vase at the top of the stairs to upstairs. When I'm not looking for a job or finding a place to live, I talk to her a lot. I tell her what I'm cooking, I ask her how to make stuff, I tell her that I really liked her new children's book, and I ask if I've been taking the family scarf and if I should stop. I wonder if she likes me.

Rick's son is being really great to me about granting me updates of Rick's condition every day that he's still in the hospital. I run to him and ask every day that I see him and he sincerely takes the time to tell me everything that he knows when I know that he probably doesn't have the time. One morning I am in couch bed and I hear Rick's son and his boyfriend come up the stairs. I sense a lot of relief in Rick's son's voice and I enter a childlike place and pretend like I'm asleep because I know that Rick just died. They keep walking up stairs to the next floor. I hear my brother's voice. He's walking right into this. He must have no Dead Sense at all. The guys come back downstairs and leave, my brother comes down and into the kitchen. I get out of bed and walk to the kitchen. Looking at him looking out the window, I ask, "What's wrong?"

For the next couple hours, I have a profound urge to see the body. It's like the last time I saw him in the hospital, he had to prove to me that it was still him in that thing, and I'm asking him to do that again this time. Or it's like I want him to hold me one last time and I don't care if he's alive or dead. I'm really sad that he's already cremated. The cleaning lady finds me on top of his bed again. I am so sad and she is, too. I help her get the house ready for the service later. But I've never had to host a service before. I don't know how to do this. And then I go to work. Because I know I can fold towels and cry.

It's a busy day at work because nobody's noticing that I'm not really folding much laundry and getting it out. Work's over and I go to the park and swing until midnight. I'm starting to go back to the house, hoping that everyone's gone, except Rick's son so I can tell him I'm sorry. I'm standing outside of the front door of the brownstone, looking up, and I can't go up there, because there are people up there, and I can't do it. I walk three houses up in the center of the block and sit down on the sidewalk behind some stairs, and I still allow for that feeling to come through, thinking I can't get believe I get to be outside after dark, sitting in a gutter in New York City, the centre of the known universe, and it's because of Rick. I'm getting up and trying again. I'm as far as the door inside without a lock that goes up to to his place. I listen. I hear laughing and glasses, and "All My Friends." I'm smiling, I think this is awesome, but I'm not ready for it. A sweet girl, one of Rick's son's friends, comes down the stairs and walks past me to leave. I tell her I just can't go up, and she's really sweet. She asks me, "Do you have a place to stay for the night?" I tell her I'm gonna be okay. I'm going to Walgreen's on Astor. I see Pringles and buy them. I walk the streets of New York City and eat all the Pringles. I love Pringles. I walk to Little Pakistan, Chinatown, Little Italy, and back home. I walk up the stairs and go in. Lots of people Rick's son's age and Eric's age look at me, no Rick's son. I go up more stairs and hide in a bed I've never been before in the guest room.

Everybody's gone now. I go downstairs. All the food's cleaned up, but some of it's not recycled. I dry the glasses they washed. I sort the cheeses, and there are so many organic pita crackers where the ants come. I put the kitchen table back. It takes me an hour. And when I'm on the floor wiping up, I'm just thinking. Ryan, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? I want the house to be like when Rick was here. After the cleaning lady came. But it's already different. There are two boxes of Kleenexes in the living room. What happened that must have been so bad that you need two boxes of Kleenex to satisfy the demand of one room? I put a box of Kleenex in the kitchen. I walk back and throw a bunch of Rick books on the floor. I think what bothers me the most is the flowers. There are so many flowers.

They're just stopped being stuff to clean at Rick's old house but the cat box. I started to delete all my Mom's voicemails after I heard them. Rick's sitting on the kitchen table in a small box and he doesn't really talk about the University of Chicago or say much of anything anymore, so I don't really like to think of what's in the box as Rick anymore, even though I still talk to whomever it is a lot. I just got courageous and found out that the thing on the mantel atop the liquor cabinet is Rick's wife and not the thing on the stairs to the bedroom, and I've been talking to an empty pot for five months. That's okay, I still think she heard me. There's still so much food from the memorial service left over, and the family said I can have it. It has turned into my lifeline. There's even a giant meat platter. Lots of people are asking me if I'm okay, can they get me anything. I always say food, to feed me. It's time to move now. I start doing ceremonial last time rituals. I'm going to Whole Foods. I'm going to The Cock. I'm going to this place on Broadway called Au Bon Pain. It's my favorite French restaurant. I remember my first afternoon in the city Rick put a stack of money in my hand here and said learn how to buy food with money, and I returned with macaroni and cheese and a smile. I loved my macaroni and cheese.

I'm leaving Rick's old house for my own place in Washington Heights in a couple hours. I signed the lease last week. I'm walking around looking at stuff. I'm playing with the piano loudly because I’m moving. I think I been staring at the Insane Clam painting that one of Rick and Eliza's friends painted over the toilet for four minutes, just trying to remember it so I don't ever forget. I'm emotional. But I think that a life worth living is a life looking back and being able to say "I was emotional." When I go upstairs and smell the bed, I begin to cry. I've been smelling the bed and crying all week. Forcing it. Rick smelled like the bed. I say goodbye to Rick, I pull the front door behind me and go. I'm on the train for awhile. I put my key in the door, and now I'm in my new place. My stuff's in the corner. The social worker that I slept with has a car and I waited for him to move my stuff before I told him that I hate him and that I never wanna have sex with him again. I don't have a stove. I have a big refrigerator. I have a tea cup that I drink Mountain Dew out of. When I'm cold I get a bathtowel. When I come off the train and walk home at night, I walk past fight clubs in front of the McDonald's. Up here every fast food place at night has a doorman. When I climb into my bed at night and look up at the sky, I hear glass breaking and gunshots and I sometimes see the Bat Signal. In order to be okay with this, I have to think about it like these are my young, downtown years. I think I have to love it all. I think I have to live in an alternate reality, where everything is beautiful. And I sometimes feel more like a man when walk. I walk from Harlem, to Spanish Harlem, to the Bronx, and back home.

I believe in independence. I believe that in a day and in a night, everything can change, and that people have destinies, and that people are supposed to do something, and that it's up to me to go out and make people give me my dreams. I grew up believing that I could do whatever I wanted to be. I believe in a series of choices. What ever happened to a man's right to choose? My mom called me and she asked me if I had happened to have kept the correspondence between me and Rick from when I was upstate and we were first getting to know each other. She told me that if I don't send her the emails, then she never wants to see me again, and I said no. She told me if she kills herself, it's my fault. If she dies another way, it's my fault. She told me if my brother dies, it's my fault. And she told me that my brother was going to college and it took me a year to fill out the paper work. I feel sad. Rick's funeral is coming, and so many people are gonna be there. They're gonna ask me what I've been doing since Rick died and I know I'm gonna tell them that I've been having a lot of sex and I’m making a frozen cum dildo in my freezer.

I'm at Rick's funeral at the Bar Association of New York and I been telling everybody that I making a frozen cum dildo. I'm scared that the family is going to ask me to speak for Rick's funeral. I'm scared because I think I'm the perfect person to speak for Rick's funeral. The last time I saw Rick's son after Rick died, he told me that Rick didn't save my life. And ever since he told that to me, I have been wondering every day who did. Who made that choice? If Rick wasn't responsible for me running away from my parents the first time, he was responsible for me singing "Let The Sunshine In" from Hair to myself when I was running away from my parents the second time, and I love him for it. I am walking into Rick's funeral and the lady gives me a program to Rick's funeral, and it reminds me of a Playbill. Some people walk straight up to me whom I’ve never known before and tell me that Rick was so proud of me. I would just like to say that I don't think what I'm writing right now and what you're reading is very good. When Rick was alive, I remember overhearing him talking with Jack, and Jack was asking Rick if I was writing about him because I had told him that I was gonna write a post about him and the week he came over to visit me and how I'm in love with him and stuff, and Rick told Jack that I was and that I was trying, but it would take a very long time to be finished for me because for Jack from me the writing had to be perfect. I think that's what I'll miss most about Rick. I made him fight hard to get to know me, and he did. He pushed me to be better every beautiful fucking day, but he knew when to wait for me. He thought I was worth so much. He was just a friend. I've been trying to write something that's worth him. When I had my old blog when Rick was just getting to know me, and I made all that stuff up about being in college, my favorite thing that I wrote was that I bought a tie, and I didn't know how to tie it, and I was stuck in gridlock on Interstate 91 in Springfield, Massachusetts with my girlfriend, and I got out of my pick-up truck and knocked on a guy's car window, and asked him if you could teach me how to tie my tie. And I'm so proud of myself for Rick's funeral for actually doing that.

I forgot to wear my cross one day and I got a promotion. I'm making a little bit more money now, but they took away my food stamps because. I’ve gotten much better at receiving anal sex and I’m doing yoga. I was having sex with this one guy and I was telling him about the 11:11 Gods and Big God, and he looked at me and made me feel stupid and I just left. I’m attending college in the fourth quarter. My relationship with my folks is bad. My Mom called me and she asked me if I felt like I should apologize for what I've done and I thought about it and I said no. She told me that I was a terrible, horrible person now, that she didn't know where her sweet boy was, and that New York City has made me into a monster, and that Rick stole her son. It infuriates me when she says that Rick stole me. It makes me feel like I'm stupid. I had no chance there. And then Rick showed up, and gave me this wonderful opportunity and safe place to be better. Rick didn't steal my Mom’s son. I just left. I'm supposed to be happy. I really believe that I'm supposed to be happy in my life.

You're so fucking special. I wanna be special.

Have you ever fell in love with a guy who didn't want you back? Have you ever fell in love with a guy who you met in a situation you shouldn't have, and you met him online, and you lied a lot to him in the beginning, because you never thought that he would know your name one day and your address and fly across the ocean one day and have sex with you and that you would fall in love with him, even though you know you were already in love with him before you met him, but nobody else knew, and if somebody told you, "You can't be in love with him," you would get really pissed off at that somebody and wanna punch them in the face, and who didn't want you back? When I was locked up, I used to think a lot. Whenever I thought of something that was funny or felt good, I wrote it down in my orange notebook, and most of the stuff I wrote down would become a blog post. A section of my notebook was called "Jack Fantasies." This was where I wrote a bunch of fantasies about Jack or a faceless man I was assuming was Jack. The one that always meant the most to me was the one when Jack and me were on a boat in the water together at my request, and the sun was setting. We're in Florida. The space shuttle goes up, and I tell Jack, "Look. You see science, but I see magic. Who cares, it's cool." I always knew that I was wasting paper, writing stuff I could never post. Because it was embarrassing. Then Jack came over. When Jack came over, I hid my notebook and all my fantasies at the bottom of my suitcase of all my male underwear. Except that I didn't.

Rick told me that New Yorkers don't pick people up from airports. Fuck that, I'm Middle America. I bought my ticket. The man behind the glass at New York Penn Station tells me to go to track 4. The guy on track 4 tells me to go to track 7, and that it was express and would get me to the airport faster. It's so express that it zooms me right past the airport. The lady on the train tells me I can get to the airport from Newark Penn Station. The man behind the glass at Newark Penn Station tells me that I can't get to the airport from Newark Penn Station. He tells me to go to track 2. The guy on the train tells me I'm on the wrong train, and that this is an express train to Trenton. Every now and then in my life, I sometimes say and do things that are exactly like my Mom does. I politely ask the guy on the train if there was a quota of wrong express trains I had to be put on by NJ Transit officials in one afternoon before my ticket pays for itself, and I tell him about my observation that the only people that know where the trains are going are the people on the trains, and I never see them until the train starts moving which sucks. I call Rick because I can't call Jack because I can't make international phone calls with my service plan even when Jack's on the same train line as me just going in the opposite direction. Rick tells me with empathy that it might be best for me to meet Jack in New York City. I knew that that was the best thing to do for Jack, so I say okay and ask him to tell Jack for me. I get emotional on the train. I'm sitting in my seat of the train, I'm looking out of my window and seeing manicured lawns and red stop signs at four corners. And I don't know where I went wrong. This was supposed to be the easy part, and then I was supposed to get on something called the Air Train. I had plans. I guess I just think that Jack is flying from across the world to see me. I want to meet him halfway as much as I can. Even as much as baggage claim. I want to be the the first person he sees in America. He's at Golden Krust waiting for me now, it's over. I wanted to have sex with him. I wanted to have sex with him at the airport. I wanted to see him before he saw me, I wanted to get nervous, I wanted to go up to him and passionately kiss him. I wanted to see if I could passionately kiss him, I've never done that with any guy before. But I know I could. And I wanted to take him to the handicap bathroom which you can lock and have sex with him. I wanted to get there early so I could find the bathroom. I just wanted him to have sex with me.

Jack tells me to meet him in front of Madison Square Garden. I'm coming up the escalators, and I'm nervous. Jack and me meet. He looks good in real life. We go home and take a nap. We wake up and have hamburgers with Rick. I'm gonna be the last person to finish mine, I'm listening to Jack and Rick talk. Night comes, and Jack wants to go on a walk with me. I wanna take him to where I go at night, my hangout spot, but I ask him if it's okay first because it's 57 blocks north of us. He says yes, without me telling him where we're going. After work at night I always sometimes go swing on a swing. It's in a part of Central Park that's closed at night, a playground, so I have to hop some fences. And when I'm at the top of the swing, I can see Times Square. Jack and me are walking to it, but I didn't enter the park the way I usually do, I didn't enter at the big horse statue thing, and I'm lost. Now I'm found. We swing and talk. He starts swinging his swing next to me at a diagonal as a scientific experiment, and I start laughing, screaming, "Stop!" We talk more. I'm trying very hard to have an emotional moment now. Jack slows down, and gets up, and starts walking to the fences, so I think I should follow him and I do. We go home and I pull my bed out of the couch. I get nervous, and I tell myself to just relax. Jack's under the covers. I ask him if he's naked and he says no, so I get naked and get under the covers. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. We talk about stuff. I turn the lights off and turn on my side to go to bed. I close my eyes. This is a decision that I am making. He touches me with his hand. I feel him. He touches me on my back and down my arm, he puts him arm around my body. I scoot back closer into him. I rub my foot up and down his leg, I do this so that he knows that I'm right here with him. It all stops. He turns over and we fall asleep. Right before I fall asleep I touch his leg with my foot, just so I can know that he's really there. The next night we all go to an Italian restaurant to have Italian food. I'm in the cab with Rick up front and me and Jack and my brother in the back. I'm sitting next to Jack. I'm looking out the window at all the people in city. I get an idea to slide my hand under Jack's leg and rub his manhood, so I do it. I don't know if he likes it or not. Walking into the restaurant now, Jack tells me to sit across from him. I'm disappointed at the sight of a large, round table. The menu is in Italian, I ask Rick and Jack for help. I don't know what antipasti means. I get the same dish as Jack, except for dessert. We share ours. We come home and I pull out our bed. We kiss and touch, no intercourse. Antipasti.

So I begin to really worry that Jack wasn't having a good time. It's just that the week was supposed to be about me and Jack, and it turned into being about Rick and Rick's kids, what happened with my social worker, and just all this stuff. I ask Sam what to do to make Jack happy, because I'm trying to recreate Jack's weekend with Sam last year. I ask my coworkers at the spa I work at what to do. I lock myself in the tea storage room and cry, and I don't even know why. I just have so many emotions that have to get out. Before I have to go to work, I just get back and see my brother for the first time since yesterday, he tells us that he lost his virginity to a guy, and then I have to go to work. I remember at work being so scared that my brother and Jack were going to have sex. I run home. Jack and me go to Rawhide, Eagle, Viewbar, G Lounge, Barracuda, Splash, Vlada, and Therapy. Therapy is my favorite. There's a place on the second floor where you can dance or sit and watch other people people dance and sit, and they played songs like Man, I Feel Like A Woman and You Outta Know, and you can sing and nobody can hear that you're singing. I go over all the options in my head and I decide that I wanna have fun and I don't care if I look like an idiot because I'm already going home with somebody who's nice, and I'm pulling on Jack's arm, "Please, dance with me. I don't wanna try it alone. Please." I get him up but then Don't Worry, Be Happy comes on, and I'm like what the fuck, and everybody leaves and last call is called. I'm smiling. I think I like being out in Hell's Kitchen in the middle of the night with him. We're on the E train now. I keep stomping through cars in search of an empty one and trust that he's following me. I settle on one with a homeless person on the other end. I wanna have sex with Jack on the train. I rub his cock through his jeans. He takes it out, but he won't let me suck it. We transfer at West 4th Street. Both of us pee on the platform, just me and him. I'm smiling, I'm comfortable enough to do that and I really think I'm being with him now. Me and him get home. I'm standing in the living room watching him get ready for bed in his colorful underwear, and I feel like I have some big thing to tell him but I don't know what. He says, "Come on, let's go to bed," and I pull our bed out of the couch. He kisses my body and fucks me.

I fuck him in the morning. I like this, to fuck, more than I think I would and will process this at a later date. Jack brings me imported chocolates from his country. He shows me how to prepare them on Wonder Bread, and we eat in bed together one time. He shows me how to wear one of his cockrings. My favorite times with Jack were when we were at the house, him and me, and nobody else are. Then he sings. He sings in the shower when he lathers up with his concentrated foamy bathwash that he lets me use, and I sit on the stairs below the bathroom in my underwear and listen. He has a New Wave voice, from the 80's. I want to hear him sing Erasure's "A Little Respect" and "True" by Spandau Ballet. When we get back and nobody was home but us, he goes straight to Rick's piano and plays. He plays classic songs I don't know, songs by Radiohead and Muse, "Up Where We Belong," and "Imagine" by John Lennon. Sometimes I watch him play and go upstairs and cry, and I don't know why. And one time Jack follows me. One time I was alone in the house without Jack. I see some of his shirts in the drawer, and I rub them on my face and tears stream down my cheeks. I want to teach Jack how to play the piano version of Poker Face. I think that it's gonna be a song that I'm gonna like for a real long while, I want to share it with him. I want us to have a song. And I think he could play it. But I didn't know how to play it. It's just like why I showed him my swing. I want to make sure he leaves with a part of me. I want to give him everything. One day me and Jack go to the museum. I am scared I'm not gonna be able to contribute anything to the discussion because I'm dumb, but I think I'm doing okay. One day we go to the park. We walk and talk about stuff and I tell him what the title of this blog post's gonna be and we go all the way up to Harlem. I'm not wearing my glasses with him. When he tells me we're on Malcolm X Boulevard, I am so excited. I buy a chili dog. And now I want something to drink. We go in a store. I see Vanilla Coke, I think I am crazy and I am so excited. I'm so happy to share my happiness of the Vanilla Coke discontinuation lift with my friend. I wanna tell him, "This is Vanilla Coke. This is me," but I don't think he'll understand. He doesn't like vanilla coke anyways. He takes me to see the old church near Columbia that's not done yet. We sit in the garden for a little bit and look at the statues. It's really cool. He takes me into the church, and I'm comfortable enough with him to tell him that I don't like it.

I know that he is gonna want to go out by himself. One night he tells me that he does, and then he does. I have to work that night, but then I get off. I decide to go out by myself. I wanna go home and tell Jack that I can do it by myself. I wanna stay out long enough that Jack will be home when I get home. I go to Chelsea. I go to a sex store, and I flirt with guys I don't want who make me feel young and attractive. I go into another sex store across the street and price cockrings. I go to Subway, and I eat a sandwich. I sit next to the window, and cute guys look at me as they continue to walk. I go to my favorite sex store with the glory holes. I put 25 cents in, turn the thing, and then my gumball comes out. I pop it into my mouth, and the owner smiles at me, I smile at him as I walk out. I wanna go home. On the way home I find men's chocolates and that makes me think of Jack because he is a man and I buy them for Jack. I walk past the apartment building where me and Jack pee'd, too, and I start to feel very lonely and lonely for him. Jack calls me and asks me if I want to go to The Cock and I say yes. I get to The Cock before Jack does. I sit in a corner, but it's in the middle of the bar. Then Jack shows up, I'm really happy to see him. I tell him something like, "I want alcohol," and he buys me vodka and Coke's in between every other Coke. Jack and me are in the middle of the room kind of dancing. I kiss him, I touch him, I put my head on his shoulder, I suck his cock. I do everything I can think of to make him think that I'm a sexy guy. I'm sucking the go-go dancer's cock. A man pulls my jeans down and tries to put himself in me three times, and I slap him across the face and I tell him that he's a bad person. I'm watching Jack suck the go-go dancer's cock, and I think to myself that I want to be that guy. The go-go dancer puts his hands on our backs and tells us that we're a beautiful, open couple. I like hearing this. I like hearing that he thinks that I'm beautiful and that we're a couple. A bear comes. I say something like, "Umm. Umm," and he sucks my cock in the bathroom and Jack come gets me. A man named Peter comes. He's tall and picks me up. Jack talks to a black guy. I rub my face in the French man's chest hair. He says, "I want to leave with you," but I say I can't. He's says, "I want to take you to my home and make love to you," and I say no. Peter comes back and I ask him to pick me up again. The pretty drag queen comes up to me and asks me if I came when Jack was sucking me earlier. The bar closes and me and Jack go home, the black guy follows us home and we have a threesome on the stoop outside on the street with the front door, and then the black guy leaves. Jack and me go up the stairs, and I pull our bed out, and I go in the bathroom and throw up a lot. Jack and me go to Whole Foods in Union Square in the afternoon. Jack buys a salad and we go upstairs to find a good table. Jack tells me he'll share it with me, I go back downstairs to get a bowl and come back up and he lets me have most of the salad dressing. The table is square and he sits across from me.

I tell him I don't wanna ever go back to The Cock for a year. When we go back to The Cock on Wednesday, we see signs everywhere that say No Sexual Activity Allowed. I grab his arm and I tell him that I don't remember those being there. Jack gets scared about what happened, and I start to feel really bad. Jack's really scared, and I try to tell him about all the people that sucked him that I stood and watched so he won't be scared. Then I get scared and feel really dumb. I don't wanna bond with Jack over HIV infection. I just feel so dumb. I remember an MSN talk that I saw on Rick's computer. Rick asked Jack what he thought about my brother, and Jack said that my brother is better looking than me, but that he liked my innocence. And now I don't even have that. And I know that if Jack would have gone out alone by himself to The Cock, I probably would have gone swinging.

So I start to worry that I'm not having a good time. I don't know what to do with myself and I feel everything. Before Jack had come, me and Rick used to lay down with me on top of the covers and talk about plans and about how I would feel when Jack was here and what I would tell him and if I was scared. I told Rick that I was scared, and that I would tell Jack everything, and that I wouldn't hold back, because it's just easier. But after The Cock, I couldn't help but have regrets. I never really got to make out with him. I kissed him, but we never really made out. All I ever really wanted to do was be with him. I thought that Jack craved intimacy as much as I did. When we used talk on MSN and have cam sex when I was locked up, that's all he talked about with me. I have a dumb person's job, I'm a dumb person, I have no friends, my first kiss was with a 70 year old man, I can't drive, I'm 140 pounds and stupid 6 feet tall, I can't play piano, but I can be intimate. I know I can be intimate. It's just that nobody else does. And I wanted to be intimate with Jack. I wanted to give him that good part of me, that nobody else has ever wanted. If Jack had nobody else in his life that would be intimate with him than I thought that he would be intimate with me. We go to the park a lot. We walk past the boathouse where you can rent boats for 12 bucks. I suddenly want to be in a boat with Jack very badly. But I hold back. Jack tells me he likes ploosh animals, and that his home collection lacks an oddball bat. Me and Jack play a game about logic and it ends in a tie. Jack and me walk across the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight. The train going down there is empty, and I know that it's all almost over, I tell myself that I'm gonna hold his hand on the bridge and I do it. I remember feeling surprised that he let me.

The next to last morning for him here, I wanted to do things. I fool around with my cock and his, but he's on his gayromeo.com profile and he tells me he's saving his load because he wants to go on a date for his last night. I say something like, "Oh, okay," and I turn over and make sure all the covers are over my face. He asks me if I'm okay after I stop pretending to be napping, and I say something like, "Yeah." He asks me if I am mad, and I say something like, "No." Me and Jack are in the house alone. I get on Rick's computer in my underwear and look up the FAO Schwartz website. I climb the stairs to take a shower. When Jack opens the shower doors and gets in with me, I have to leave. It's the shortest shower I've ever taken in my life, 15 minutes. Getting out of the shower with Jack is the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life. He knows that I've been begging him to take a bath or shower with me all week, and it hurts me so much that he made me do it. I come back in to brush my teeth. He asks me what's wrong, and I tell him something like, "I just think you're a fucking asshole for telling me you're saving your load for somebody else the last night you're gonna be here." His head was between the shower doors, it was all foggy and he was naked, and he told me he was doing it on purpose so I wouldn't look up to him so much and that guys in New York are a lot more muscled than in Europe and that he's already turned down 3 guys to be with me, and I don't look into his eyes and say, "Fuck you." I wipe off the mirror to see myself. The only guy that makes me feel hot is the only guy that can inspire me to look in the mirror with such disapproval. Jack stands in front of the door. I pick a can of Old Spice which Jack doesn't like the smell of, and Jack moves. I go to FAO Schwartz and buy Jack a ploosh bat.

Then we're going to the park, and I get emotional on the train about sleeping with my social worker. I feel so pathetic about doing that. I tell the whole train. I look at the floor of the moving F train.

I remember when me and Jack were walking to Avenue A at night so I could get pizza after work after Eric had sex. I remember him telling me how he thought of his friends as circles and each consecutive circle had an increasingly larger circumference, and he was a dot in the center, and that the circles that were closest to him had a trust between Jack more intimate than the outer circles, and that he said that I was one of his inner circles. I remember how much I liked it to sit in the red pizza booth across from this man and have him explain to me stuff. I remember asking him if he wanted my pizza. I remember thinking in my head about if it was more better that I was a circle or that he used to want to masturbate with me on Skype. I want to have both.

We kissed and touched all over the last night and morning, with some sleep and an arm over me in between. When he touched my body and kissed my back and neck, tears ran down my face when couldn't see, and the devil in my head said that I'd better enjoy it. I turn over and I touch him. When I touch him he makes little noises. I look at my hands touch his chest and arms and body, I look at his face, and I look back my hands. I kiss my favorite part of his body. He tells me he's scared because it doesn't mean as much to him as it does to me. But I was always more scared. Sex with him means more to me than him. I see magic.

I miss the way Jack made me feel when he touched me. I miss his arm, and how the pillow that he used that I use doesn't smell like Himalayan mist anymore. I use Axe Dark Temptation bodywash because it smells like his rubber bodysuit that he wore. I've woken up every single morning wanting him to be beside me, wanting to see my favorite part. I miss the little sounds he made when I touched him. I miss my best friend. But I can't believe that he wasn't only touching me to make me happy. He made me so happy. Jack tells me I will get over my misery, Rick tells me I'm gonna find someone to be my husband, and Caroline, the cleaning lady, found me in a corner emotional and told me I was acting like a girl. I feel this torch I'm carrying for him duct taped to my hands and I couldn't put it down if I wanted to. I have so much I have to say to him, but I don't know how to tell him. Like, I wanna tell him that if we made plans to meet up at a pizza place for supper after he got off work, but he was late or forgot and it was raining, I would stand in front of the pizza place in the rain until he remembers me. I would lay brick for him. I will be best man at his wedding to somebody else for him. I am a puppy. I'm dumb, I druel. I'm loyal. And I need to know that he hears me this once, so I can never tell him again. And that I'll never use West 4th Street station or hear "Up Where We Belong" or have vodka and Vanilla Coke the same way again. I think about a year ago when I just read his blog and he didn't know I existed and I tried to write some good posts before I let him read my blog and I was in love with some other guy on the internet. I've always been waiting for my rocket to come. It's in my notebook, I made it up.

The last day I asked Jack if he would please open the combination lock on his suitcase so I could place the ploosh bat in as a surprise. We get nuts, roasted ones. Rick calls me when I am trying to make out with Jack again and tells me to get a job. Jack buys slate at Crate and Barrel. It becomes really important for me for Jack to taste Krispy Kreme glazed donuts, a beacon of hope from the South, but the lady says they are sold out. Jack seems to enjoy his Boston creme and lemon thing, but I am so pissed. It's like McDonald's not having hamburgers. I really thought that this one was gonna happen. When we were carrying Jack's bags to Penn Station, it rains. When we were on the train to Newark, I cry a lot. When we got on the train, there were no two available seats together. I sit with someone whom I don't remember and Jack sits in front of me with someone. I remember leaning forward and him holding his hand back and me holding his finger the whole way. I don't care if this whole train thinks we're a beautiful, open couple.

I was surprised that saying goodbye to Jack was as hard as I thought it was gonna be.

Before he got on the plane, he bought food for me at McDonald's. I think the nicest thing anyone can ever do for me is feed me. But I am so sad. I remember asking myself what I was doing, following him to the airport. Why am I putting myself through so much pain when I don't have to? I didn't have to come this far. I didn't have to come to New Jersey. But I knew the answer. The answer was because I had to. Because I had no choice. Because he's gonna find somebody. Because I'm never gonna see him again. Because I'll see him again, but I'll never be with him again. I couldn't even look at him. I just sat across from him at my square table and looked at my Angus Beef sandwich we shared. I try to save my napkins for goodbye. When we say goodbye, he tells me I love you. I don't tell him I love you back. I don't know why. I don't even try to have sex with him. I kiss him and he lets me, and then he tells me to go. I go, but I stop and I turn around, but he's gone. I think of some more things to tell him. I want to tell him that he was my first. Just like I wanna tell Jay Brannan he was my first and not Yanni. I want to tell him to find some guy like him, some guy as good as him, and to not date dumb people like the Brazilian guy. I'm taking the Air Train the wrong way, and I'm a mess, and I don't care. I don't care if this whole train thinks my dog died. I'm at Penn Station now. There are still no glazed donuts. I don't remember where I go after that, but I know I don't go home. I don't know what I want. I'm in love with Jack, I care about him a lot. Why would I want him to love me?

No Scrubs.

I don't like how they made the STD clinic be in Chelsea. I feel like Chelsea times should be associated with homosexual fun. It makes me feel like I'm being potty trained and like I'm being led back to the warm puddle I made to see what I've done. At least it's on 9th Avenue, I never go to 9th Avenue. At least the jock strap store is on 8th Avenue. I'm standing here and I see that the clinic is right across the street from the mission, the line is around the block for folks coming to get something to eat. I should go there sometime. Walking to the clinic door and facing it now, I say to myself that I'm just gonna look at hot people and not think about what I'm doing. I walk in and I'm proud of myself for knowing enough about the healthcare system to know to walk towards the cop behind the bulletproof glass first. I walk up to him and say, "Hi. Is this the... I'm here to...," and he points me to where I'm supposed to go. I go there, but I'm confused and I don't know where I go now. I see a girl who looks sweet also in the waiting room, and I ask her what to do. I sit down and begin to fill out my last 12 months / last 3 months card, and I suddenly see a lot of signs telling me what to do. I see the biggest box of New York City condoms I've ever seen in my whole life. I love New York City condoms, and want to jump into the box and throw them in the air and catch them in my mouth.

I am called by number into a room where a girl asks me my name a lot and then I can go upstairs. Now I'm in the real waiting room. I knew that this was the room where you wait, and then you know. It was different than I thought it was gonna be. I thought that everybody was gonna gay. And male. I thought that I was gonna be in a room full of concerned sex addicts, and that they would find me attractive. And when I sat in my seat in a place in the room where I knew most could read my vulnerability on my face and saw that a reality movie about AIDS was playing on the flat-screen television, I couldn't believe it and said so out loud and everybody laughed, which calmed me down. But the movie was from the mid-90's, and made me nervous again. I remember one of the lyrics to the rap in the movie was, "I walked through the valley of the shadow of sex." I start singing "Don't Copy That Floppy" in my head to myself, and calm me down again. There was a kissy couple in the front row to the movie, a guy and a girl. They were saying things like, "I support you. It's okay. Whatever the results, I support you," and they were almost having sex. A cub and a Latino sat in front of me, a gay couple not kissy. I just thought, "I wanna have sex right now."

The lady whom always wears gloves tells me what to do with this plastic cup, turkey baster, and tube, and shows me where the guys' bathroom is. The guys' bathroom is like an art installation of lipstick penis drawings. I pull my pants down and start, but it's hard. I'm scared I'm gonna drop my Patient's Bill of Rights in the toilet. I urinate into the cup, transfer to the tube, and walk back to the waiting room feeling proud of myself that I could do it myself. The Jamaican lady come gets me. She takes blood from my arm for HIV testing and also from my finger with the prick of a needle. It seems outdated to do it this way, I thought I was going to have a penis swab. I am told to wait 30 minutes for my HIV results and to check all my other results within 7 days online on mytestresults.com. The movie with the teenage girl who was in love with that boy who plays basketball and she gets chlamydia and has an abortion is on loop in the waiting room. The straight couple has splitten up, the cub is praying. And so am I. I'm so nervous. I've never been so scared about an HIV test which tests what I was doing 3 months ago when I was a virgin. I've never had an HIV test before. After last Sunday and what I did at The Cock, I've just been really reflective about stuff and me and things. I'm sitting here, in this room, and I think about how I'm in New York, and I'm having sex now, and I'm having an AIDS test. It's like I'm in a movie, it's like I'm in Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks. I think that this is another cool thing I get to do now, and that makes me feel better. And then the doctor says my number, and I decide to get up and acknowledge that that's my number, and I'm walking behind him, and then I'm talking to the doctor. And he's a doctor. It was different than I thought it was gonna be. I thought that the doctor was gonna be gay. I thought that I was going to be HIV positive. I take condoms and leave. I walk to 8th Avenue and skip down 8th Avenue. And then I see old St. Vincent's Hospital. That's where gay people go to die. I walk through the valley of the shadow of sex. I think I would like to die in St. Vincent's with everybody else, too, but not for awhile. From now on, I'm being safe, and only having safe sex. I'm never getting tested again.