IN THE CLOSET

Stay at home day—for awhile. Head up to the Dominican shopping district on 181st St. It’s seriously like Central America to me. Comida stands on the sidewalk, roasted corn, bebidas, and street sellers everywhere offering a delightful assortment of cheap sunglasses, bootlegged DVD’s (in front of the cops!), Spanish lit and crap (like cheap sunglasses and bootlegged DVD’s) no one really needs. Also the ugliest designer jeans imaginable.

We step into a 99-cent store to get a dish rack and Jesus Soft Rock is blasting on the speakers. Lots of Jesus here. He’s in our hearts and souls and also in the pee you smell everywhere. A couple of the low-rent housing apartments in this area are huge and have incredible views. “If yr going to live in squalor, then it helps to have a nice view.”

We clean out a closet in the apartment so I can take my shit out of the boxes filling the front room. Cara is purging her family’s collection of things that don’t need to be collected. I tell her she’s doing them a favor so she shouldn’t worry. She ran 14 miles yesterday and doesn’t even seem that tired.

After sweating and getting stinky doing this, we had to the YMCA. On the subway ride down a crack head gets on and addresses the entire train car, relating how her house burned down and everyone died. She then proceeds to walk most of train car on her knees asking for money.

I want to swim but some strange masters program is going on and I don’t have the energy. I resign myself to head home and work on the manuscript I’ve been doing corrections on. The previous crack head joins us once more for the train ride north. At home it’s hard to work, the poison isn’t totally out of my system. Cara comes home late from dinner with friends and I’m up to 2:30am and still not close to being finished. Just like the good old days two weeks ago.