There are some decisions I’ve made, actions that’ve changed the arc of my life entirely. At the time they seem like just so much nothing. I threw Nada out of the apartment in the middle of the night. It wasn’t even a blip on my radar.
We fit like puzzle pieces when we make love. I feel loved, finally, when we make love. Afterwards, when he’s fallen asleep, I sneak out of the loft bed and go sleep on the couch.
I can’t sleep in the same bed with my husband.
My husband. Red Wolf. We exchanged rings a month ago. Turquoise, coral & nickle, a American Indian design, of course. They were two for five dollars. I paid for them, also of course.
He doesn’t have a job, my husband, Red Wolf. American Indian, by way of Puerto Rico, by way of Williamsburg, via Washington Square Park. There might’ve been one once or maybe we’d just talked about money before he moved in, I could’ve sworn someone mentioned it, but even though there isn’t one now, he does his best to help furnish my our little apartment on East 7th Street. It needs all the help it can get. He hung the bamboo shades we I bought at Azuma. He’s brought home a blue shag area rug for the living room, stereo speakers, a shelving unit and a small TV. I’m not sure where any of it came from. I mean, none of it is new…
I do have a job. The summer’s over, film school was, well, just more school and so I’m working again. Guys & Dolls is no where near the glamfest that Robbie’s Mardi Gras was. Instead of glitter & sequins, everything is red. The rug, the circular stage, the walls. It’s like being inside a giant menstruating vagina, if that vagina had a bar & non-stop porn on screens everywhere you look. The manager, Rocco, is a slicker, meaner carbon copy of Ralph.
Wolf hates me working in topless bars, he just doesn’t hate it enough to get an actual job himself. He hates that I wear so much makeup to work. He scrubs my face with a washcloth when I get home. I don’t need gilding, he says to me in Spanish. He knows I don’t speak Spanish.
Dame una cerveza. ¿Tienes menudo?
Gimme a beer. Spare change?
That’s the extent of my Spanish.
He talks to me a lot in Spanish. I mostly nod and smile.
If he catches me in public wearing makeup, at the park, he dunks my head in the fountain and smears it all off with his hands. I don’t meet him in the park anymore after work.
He was probably lying when he told me about him and Nada, that she fucked him while I was at work. Fucking Polack bitch.
Nada hooked up with Red’s brother, Brown Wolf, so he moved in with us too. And the kids from the park, every night, a different mass of runaway bodies sleeping on the living room floor. It was just too many people for one apartment.
I know she didn’t fuck him. Now, that a few days have passed, I know it. I feel bad I threw them all out in the middle of the night, bad about all the screaming too. Nada, Brown Wolf, all those kids. But it was too much. Too many people…and I was so tired. Working at the bar, trying to earn money and take care of a home. Trying to be someone’s wife. I don’t know anything about being a wife. With all those people in the apartment, I was stuck in the same bed with him after we had sex.
I can’t sleep with someone in the bed. Not even Wolf.
I’m just so damned tired.
And now, it’s just the two of us.
Me. And my crazy husband.
That’s what he wanted all along.
We fit like puzzle pieces.
Afterwards, I sleep alone on the couch.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it’s not very useful.
Nada Tokay, if you can hear me, I fucked up. I really fucked up.
| << 1979 : wolf | 1979 : guys & dolls >> |
Posted August 16, 2009 at 10:10 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, Guys & Dolls, lonliness, love. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
