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Dissertation On the Concept of Forever Starting Tonight, Explained in the Second Person, To an Ex-Lover, a Best Friend, and The Man in the Astor Place Subway Station Who Asked Me For a Nickel

(or: A True Story that is 43% Lies and 0% Plot.)

1. Ex-Lover
Have I a story to tell you. And have you a story to tell me.

Forever's gonna start tonight, said Bonnie Tyler, and she is correct. And I don't mean that the world is ending.

There is a man who ostensibly resides in the Astor Place subway stop for the uptown 6 train. His jacket is a smooth, dark green nylon, and it appears to be four sizes too large, approximately. He is tired but he wears the most amused expression on his face. He is chronically, terrifically, madly amused. He gazes across the tracks at Kmart's basement and shakes his head, and laughs. And he speaks, but hold on, you.

Today you were late for everything. It is raining water, dirt, and men. Men stand everywhere, slippery and shiny with wind-raped umbrellas, making faces like their dogs just died. Unbelievable. They don't believe the rain, the wind, each other. They are misplaced, newborn, just recently dropped from the sky to seethe upon Manhattan, in wet wet shoes and mad mad faces. You accidentally bump into one as you race against lateness, and he spins around and accuses you of fucking his mother, or anyone's mother. You didn't do it, I know, I know. Your day is ruined. This is how you are.

Hold on. Wait. Last June: It's late, late, late at night in my bedroom at home in suburban Florida. We're just kids, although we're decidedly legal. You slip inside and I yelp. I am wont to yelp. It's been a long time, you say, breathlessly. I say, uh-huh. It's been three months but it hadn't been forever. Forever wouldn't start until about half a year later. Tonight.

Forever's gonna start tonight because it won't be raining anymore. Because the forever that started yesterday isn't good enough anymore. Standards, like interest rates, are rising like the barometer and yesterday's forever is shabby and growing mold. Or mildew.

What we need around here is a new forever. I'll market it on the corner, wearing fishnets and a demibra, Betty Page bangs and a whip. I'll reel in the passers-by with my incorrigible wit and fabulous body. A new forever--comes free with a pack of paper mache dental floss and a car that runs on water. Get one now. While you can. While they last.

But it's still raining, for now.

I can't stand the rain, says Missy Eliot in 1997. She is wearing a conglomeration of black trash bags, or an inflated catwoman suit, and I am duly impressed. I can't stand the rain, either, because it makes my hair freeze in little knots that have to be chopped out with a knife. A knife, because I threw the scissors out the window three days ago on the off chance they'd stab an innocent passerby, because I am vicious. Just kidding. Not that vicious--I reside in the back of the building and the only passerby my scissors could stab is the formica-looking courtyard, sad and sans any lawn chairs. Because it is raining.

I threw the scissors out the window because you made me mad. I am simple in this way, a six year old. I'm pretty much over you, I said. I still love you, but in a new way. I love you like I love a flower. You merely laughed, and I kicked my chair because you were okay. I am supposed to move on and you are supposed to stay put, on a leash, tied to a pole in the rain. You are supposed to spend your old age in unrequited love with me, prostrate at a shrine of my pictures and unmentionables. This is how things must be. But they are not.

But we can have our friendship back. It was on hold in the coatroom. With forty seven umbrellas and raincoats.

Dig if you will the picture, says Prince. Dig if you will the picture-- you walk down the steps to the uptown 6 train. It is raining. Your shoes leave tractor mark imprints on the suspiciously colored wet pavement. Your lips are chapped and partially frozen in the shape of a weight-bearing lowercase "o." Your jeans are tight and the water has rubber-cemented them to your legs. You are moving in the fastest slomo you could imagine. And there he is. He's not too old and not too homeless but there he is nevertheless, in the sitting-squat of New York's disenfranchised, butt on heels, back against the amazingly non-graffitied wall. He hasn't the cardboard sign, but he's underground and such devices may or may not be necessary here. And it is raining, of course. As you pass him, his left foot darts into your path and you lock gazes, both of you shocked. "Pardon me," he says, squinting at your doubtful face. "Do you, by any chance, have a spare nickel?"

A nickel. He asked you for a nickel. No one asks for a nickel. At least not anymore. The dime-and-quarter guy lived in Washington Square Park when I was a freshman at NYU. He had a gangrenous foot and spent his entire day saying "Spare a dime or quarter?" to every passerby. I once found a fifty dollar bill on the street and decided to give it to him, to silence him for at least one day, maybe. But he wasn't there when I went to deliver, his bench was empty and I spent the fifty dollars on a ritzy manicure-pedicure combo. I was a capitalist and a snob at that instant, an instant at the age of nineteen years and five months. All of this has changed.

But why a nickel? What lowered this man's expectations? A quarter, you'd understand. A dime, even. A nickel is five pennies, and you can find five pennies in any subway station near the little newsstand, where impatient businessmen let them clatter to the floor as they purchase their Vitamin Water for two dollars a piece, and their five-pack of gum for a matter of cents. Maybe this man is a time traveler from 1945. 2002, he told his machine, and they will have a cure for homelessness. Or maybe he is kidding. Maybe he wants to see how selfish you were, or how lazy, that you can't even find a five-pence to spare, a five-pence you'd let fall between the sewer gratings on Broadway, but can't purposely give to another person.

You walk on. Your hands are freezing.

You stand and wait for the train as it pummels around the fairly sharp curve. You like to stand near the edge, on the marigold-colored corrugated metal from which you are designed to shy away. You like to pretend that the train is going to hit you--you stand and sigh the sigh of a martyr. The train's headlights gleam like beady, evil eyes, the green 6 is a bindi on its shiny, silver forehead. It always misses you by two inches, a whoosh of hot air and the stench of New York City's intestinal juices. It smells faintly like cynicism; but haven't we all been tempted to dive headfirst into the tracks, right before the oncoming train? They lie there dormant and mean, like the fire alarm you wanted to pull on the way to gym class in sixth grade, like the crush you wanted to lean over and kiss during easily shattered glass-swan moments. You'll never jump, pull, kiss. These things are designed to tempt us, to tease us along.

You used to look at me as though I could pounce at any moment. I called you at midnight one night and announced that my dream profession was prostitution. You were decidedly less shocked than I hoped you'd be. It reminded me of a time when we were driving someplace with my parents, and we were in the backseat, 20 year old babies, and I was rambling with my usual controversial and offensive tone. You were impressed at the deft and purposeful manner with which my parents ignored me. It explains so much, you said, brushing my hair behind my ear, your hand continuing to my chin, where you squeezed and produced a faux cleft. It explains so much.

We make fun of my poetry classes, where no one laughs and no one thinks I am funny. I am funny. Boys write bad and silly poetry about the proverbial "She" with the big, fat, slurpy, capital S. "She" disgusts me because "She" has no sense of humor. "She" chastely walks around naked, with her left arm covering her well-shaped, big-but-not-too-big-as-though-to-be-slutty tits and her right hand covering her barely-haired pubis. I hate Her.

Dig if you will the picture: "She" walks daintily down the steps of the Astor Place 6 train station. "She" wears high heels in the rain and Her mascara doesn't run, though it does make her brown eyes big and doey. "Pardon me," says the homeless man in the green nylon parka. "Do you, by any chance, have a spare nickel?" His left foot almost touches her right ankle, which is exquisitely narrow. "She" blinks and almost reaches inside her Louis Vuitton handbag to hand the man an entire roll of nickels, because "She" is generous and a little Earth Mother, like a blonde 5-year-old who doesn't hit her dolls. But "She" realizes that if "She" reaches in Her handbag (never a purse, it has to be a handbag. a "Handbag" even) Her right hand will cease to cover that sparsely haired pubis and it will open itself to public scrutiny and desire. So "She" too walks on, mumbling Sorry under her breath, in Her tiny little voice. "She" click click clicks on the wet pavement, never slipping, ever.

Forever starts every day at 6:15 am for Her. "She" awakes smiling and in good humor. "She" does yoga for an hour before breakfast, which is half a grapefruit and a slab of bacon. "She" loves protein. I figure you wanted to date Her in seventh grade, or at least dance with Her at the school dance, and maybe exchange a few hot, wet kisses in the empty junior high corridor. And I'll always resent you for that--"She" is my worst enemy. "She" is everything I am not.

2. Best Friend
In Miami, Florida, a few years ago, a young man beat to death the two-year-old daughter of his girlfriend, because she reportedly ate his sausages. He wanted to eat them for breakfast. Forever was about three years down the road, brimming on the horizon, flashing gamma rays of yellow and bronze.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, just minutes north of Miami, a few years ago, we sat together in the rain and diligently combed each other's eyebrows. It was the middle of the day at prep school and the rain was warm and difficult. They called us a unibeing because we were always conjoined at the elbow. Dig if you will the aforementioned picture: man requests nickel. Astor Place 6 train, Bronxbound. You, you give it to him, because your eyes are so big and luminous like those of an anime porn star, and your wallet is so organized, and you are my best friend because you don't know any other option.

You are my best friend. People at the mall think we are brother and sister, because we have the same coloring and we are both small, sarcastic, and giggly. Our combined closets could clothe a small Slavic nation. You are so upset when I am so negative. I make you cry when I won't explain my poorly chosen viewpoints, knee-jerk and radical, reactionary stances against Britney Spears and the crumbling of the World Trade Center. You remind me of me if I were happy and healthy, studious and suntanned, in the wide, brightly lit expanse of Miami, surrounded by nubile young foreigners in stilettos and shirts with no back.

Forever started in 1996. You used to wear striped shirts with khaki pants. You had long hair that you wore parted in the center. Me too. We ran through the suburban rain to obtain sticks of cotton candy. I was wearing a black leotard and overalls. Three years later, we were caught in a hurricane. It made us laugh.

And we laugh now, but I wrote pages and pages of lovesick poems for yours truly. And say what you will--but of all the completely-wrong-for-me guys I've fallen for, you were the most right-for-me, and you like boys. So we laugh. Really hard.

3. The Man in the Astor Place Subway Station Who Asked Me For a Nickel
You have a name, and it is George. The populace has ceased to name its sons George in this day and age. George is on his way out, like Horace and Elmer and Ernest. You ask me for a nickel because you know it is ridiculous. You know I can spare a nickel. You know I am listening to ‘Karma Police.' You know, you know.

George, I am sorry. I am sorry that your hair is dirty and that you want to go home. I want to go home, too. I am sorry that I do not have a nickel, because coins upset me and I try to leave them at home. I am sorry that if I had a nickel I would not give it to you under the stupid guise that I do not like to play God--why should I give you a nickel but not the next guy who asks me? And I can't give all of you nickels. Because then I'd be giving dollars and I can't give dollars. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It is all my fault. I know. I know, too.

Forever's gonna start tonight, I promise.

You sit there daily, asking for a nickel, and I don't even wonder the obvious things about you. Everyone else wants to know who your sisters are, and what your mom would do if she saw you asking for a nickel, and what were you like as a four-year-old. I want to know how many nickels you get, versus dimes, or pennies, or even the generous quarter. I want to know what possessed you to focus on the five-cent coin, heavy and useless. I want to know if you are wearing boxers or briefs.

For variety, you ask a woman if she has a cigarette. She doesn't. You smirk as though you know a secret. You think forever started five minutes ago.

2.1. Best Friend
 Forever's gonna start tonight because we've been waiting for so long. The ennui is chasing us down corridors of various lengths and colors. We are so bored with everything. We have known everything about everything since we were babies with vacant eyes and suckling little mouths. Now our eyes focus but we are still tied to nourishment, Sony IV tubes feeding delicious music straight to our eardrums, antiseptic aluminum cans delivering aspartame and caffeine to our hearts, which despite good intentions, are somewhat artificial. We try.

Just remember: once upon a time, we didn't want to go swimming in PE.

You give your nickel (nothing more, nothing less) and you saunter on. You wait and look vaguely uncomfortable--you hear what could possibly be the voices of eight thousand rats, squeaking in pain from eight thousand poisonous deaths. Maybe they are singing or praying. Or maybe it is only the tracks. You get on the train, you take your seat, and you go where you're going. I think you'd save the world if given the option. I think you'd be surprised how many people would not.

1.1 Ex-Lover
 You and I used to drive into the Everglades. You say you fell for me when, by chance, I commented on the snakey suspension of intertwining highway ramps at night. This was the summer I was not looking for love. I wanted to want to go back to college.

You step into the subway car and stand, because you are afraid to sit between strangers. You don't know where you are going, and you don't live here.

You inadvertently glare at your reflection in the glass. Grr. Real men don't make sweet love. Real men make bitter love and hate it the whole time.

You re-lost your virginity at nineteen. Afterwards we lay curled on the polyfiber comforter at the Days Inn, naked, but not smoking, of course, and you asked, Do you love me? The best I could do was say, I think I might. I have to go pee now. And I did.

Forever didn't start that night, for anyone. It might have started two weeks earlier, but that forever went on for over a year, not stopping once.

Forever's gonna start tonight, because it isn't raining at all anymore. Because there is only so much anyone can do, and I have to clip my toenails. You used to cry at Unchained Melody, and that was corny, but I cried too. When forever starts, we will cry at different things, at different times, for different reasons, for different people. Forever is going to start in approximately ten minutes. You're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks. You really need me tonight. Yada yada. Bonnie Tyler sings for lovers who migrate together like gigantic, beautiful planets. Not for homeless men named George, or for me, or for you. Forever has to start because there was nothing there before. Call it a big bang. It is difficult to cease loving when it is unsure if you ever really started.

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