for Schwartzberg

do you remember, Cayla Schwartzberg, when we first met at your second floor duplex apartment on the 21st of September? you probably do not. but i do. vividly, serenely and rather embarrassingly. you were wearing a black and creme, crisply fluidic A Line dress, a sequined belt with mildew-colored plaits vanishing down your waistline, a starched ribbon turban stretched across an uneven semi-circle of your anterior head cavity, and retro stackable turquoise rings on your index and middle fingers. the laced bow-tie of your bra was giving your upper breast a supple firmness and pushing your nipples up to the crown of your trimmed collar-bone, giggling playfully through the air barrels of your poplin-tulle fabric. you greeted me with a smile, a cigarette breath and a bouquet of hyperbolic enthusiasm; a general rise in emotive atoms, sprinting through an autumn air, colliding and elasticizing, swaying and lulling to the low trebles of Ella's gramophone discography. i stepped on the threshold, scrubbed the sole of my chain-leather opal Zanotti's vigorously, against the erotic bristles of your Magritte doormat, and proceeded down your hallway.

it was tremendously white, as far as i can remember. you had painted the door moldings a burnt gold and tattooed on them the anatomy of fireflies. you had lampshades of raisin, spatulas of ivory and chandeliers of tallow wax, dandelions and aluminum. bottles of cognac and Spanish wine hung from the ceilings, upside down, with cracked necks, acrobatic lips and breathless apnea. posters of Lolita, Marx, missionaries and pornography lay squatting on your bedroom walls, peering over the mythology book of Aphrodite, sleeping across your window ledge. a condom wrapper by the sofa-set lay diddling in the air, laughing at the aroma of searing spices. it was disturbingly black, julienned across the tip and shriveled with creases of phenomenal age. the topology of the Americas remained squarely displayed across the beige plywood wall of your dining room, and photo-prints and postcards hung disproportionately near the curling curves of the ceiling. you lifted two wine glasses from the kitchen counter-top, the excessive thinness of the stems projecting an illusion of dramatized fragility, and poured copious bundles of Pinot Noir into each of them. the sounds of the trickle amplified along the curvatures of transparent wind columns, resonating and gurgling in the interiors of my ear. a platter of Brie, walnuts, figs and cloves, paralyzed and footless on the teak-wood of the table, joined our smiles in awkward company, in a shawl of contemporariness, frivolity and friendliness.

you introduced yourself as a distinguished photographer, a blossoming linguist, a careful interpreter and a Dali aficionado with an obsession with neck-ties from Attolini and Harry Rosen. you are twenty two, with mocha-colored hair and a smattering of Tuxedo Red lipstick. you giggle at consonants, laugh with your head tilted fifty degrees to the air, gawk at vowels and lisp like the hiss of a neonatal chameleon tumbling and burning in respiratory distress. your fingers are soft, your lashes are brittle, and the shape of your waist is frighteningly similar to the keepsake of an ancient Egyptian cremation urn. your mother was a revolutionary phenomenon of the 80s, erupting in activism, rioting like the Teamsters, and reshaping the grounds of working class literati. you know less than little, however, about Ira Schwartzberg, your dead father, who walked away from your mother's kiss when your were the size of a marble pod, boiling in the age of lonely gestation. you are an immigrant, a second-class citizen, a subject of comedy, modeled like a tumor; a supplement, lacerated, displaced for an extra. despite the politics of an uncompromising government, who disregard your status at the cost of talent, you have managed to stage an act of happiness without a trace of doubt. in your first letter of our correspondence you wrote, i have never lived in a small town, and i feel depressed. and i traveled from Back Bay to your rural residence to provide a formal introduction, relieve your awkwardness, and provide a means for careful assimilation. 

from the very first time we met and carelessly flirted, we became an odd sensation in the binoculars of our neighborhood. we aided in the gentrification of an orchard-town, driving past the city hall, down the intersections on Marcy Avenue, and opening at the northern edge a new pastry shop named Mayefsky and Maldonado's. we talked about sunshine, laughed like parrots, danced like peacocks and dreamed like clouds, aspiring for entrepreneurship, success and education. one Saturday night you said to me, can we fuck, please? i need it badly. i refused. the next Tuesday morning you requested again. i laughed it off, oh come on! i'm not feeling it. and this cycle of lies, these packets of hush-hush excuses kept piling up, one on top of the other, leaning over, gripping under, shaking violently in the humiliation of a bawdy discomfort. the following Saturday you walked into my room, peach colored and virgin, put down a pile of books on the mahogany breasts of my corner table and said, i'm not letting you go if you don't do it tonight. i'm telling...telling you, i will go mad. and sensing your tone of flamboyant desperation, sensing the frankness of your sexual request, sensing the ease with which the words erupted, you broke into silence. and then you cried. and broke into a fit of amazing hysteria, convulsing violently in the middle of piercing ululations. you held my hand, tightly, as the candle by the bed-stand vanished into air, and demanded an explanation for my useless behavior. for the leading on, for the merry rides, for the songs of love we spilled across, for the nights after nights of dizzying words, reading poetry, cooking, clinking Bordeaux stems in vortical shades. what was the meaning of assistance in the holocaust of a heart break? what was the purpose of bed-shares if it meant absolutely nothing? the time, the effort, the collusion and bending, the tripping and gripping, the showiness and sacrifice -for what?

but i never got a chance to tell you, two years running, that none of that was for you to blame. none of my dispassionate front-twirling, hand-swinging and theater act had anything do with a rejection of you. it was me. it is me, Cayla Schwartzberg. it is that i loved solitude, Aaron Keisel, on the foothold of denial, the strawberry tutus of the jewel ballerinas, Brody Saltzman from a night at St Regis, Garvey Einhorn from the polyester store, and above all, the diary of Warhol. you were the palette of breath, in our small town charade, buckling and bending the physiology of time. for this, and the love of man, i welcome you again into my temple of paint, the masquerade of hens and the philosophy of kings.