Naked

The first day of Summer, when parks are peopled
we smile at each other for no particular reason
other than the darkness has been lifted
like we were taking off our clothes.
Funny though, since we’re ashamed of the sight
of nakedness.  But here we are when the air is thick
and bodies play in the sun barely clothed.
We are exhibitionists teasing each other
and ourselves with these desires.

Impostor

She lives in fear. Fear of the front door not being locked, even though she checked it three times and almost missed the elevator; the iron left on, losing her essentials: her keys, her wallet, her phone, her ipod being left behind. She has a routine.

Everyday, she says out loud, “I locked the door”. She checks her pockets numerous times for the keys, ipod, phone and wallet. She closes her eyes and goes back in time to when she unplugged the iron and put it away. The iron and the door are the most difficult, since the urge to check could never be satisfied once she’s left the apartment. She did once consider calling the Super asking him to check her front door. But she didn’t.

She revisits these moments again and again. Even if she’s late, she stops to do these little things. But what she fears most is the day they will discover her secret. The police will be waiting to ambush her at Fun Time Toys, where she’s a Sales Associate, or late one night while she’s walking home. What would she say to her boss, or better yet what would she say to Eva?

Jordan was meeting her lover at a theater on 86th and West End Avenue. They were going to see a performance. Jordan was early and Eva as usual was comfortably late. So Jordan decided to walk around the neighborhood, maybe find a bookstore or a coffee shop to sit and read. She found a chain bookstore. She awkwardly went in, hyper-vigilant as the security guard looked her up and down. She nervously played with her left earlobe.

Knowing that the bookstore had a coffee bar with a seating area, Jordan headed straight there. It was packed with readers. Tense, she pretended to be cool walking to the nearest section, Photography, casually glancing through the aisle. She thought maybe finding a corner where she could just sit and read her book would be enough, but nowhere looked appealing. She returned to the coffee bar, her face bathed in sweat. Luckily, there was an empty chair. She sat between two people perusing books.

Shaking her left leg, she uncertainly pulled her book out from her satchel. Her leg stopped as her eyes stared intensely at the book. She suddenly had an epiphany of sorts which made her incredibly self-conscious. Looking around, Jordon thought if she now tried to leave with her book, it could possibly be mistaken for theft, and her secret exposed.

She assumed no one would believe the book was indeed hers. Quickly, as her left leg continued with its rapid shaking, she flipped the pages searching for the receipt, but to no avail. Stopping to pull on her earlobe, she then rummaged through her satchel hoping that the receipt may have slipped out. There was nothing but a wool scarf, fingerless gloves and a battered journal. Just then her right leg joined in the shaking.

She believed that even though she was dressed “properly”: a button down shirt, clean sneakers and pressed trousers, she was still in a ritzier part of town. She was still black, still showing off on her right forearm the tail end of a red dragon sleeve tattoo, still generally assumed to be a guy, still suspect, and still had a secret.

“But what about all these people, surely there’s someone here who brought their book just to read? And besides, an alarm won’t go off if I walked out with MY BOOK, right?!” Jordan said to herself trying to calm down and read in peace, but reading was impossible, as she constantly reached for her earlobes. “That may be true,” the rant went on in her head, “but I purchased the book at another branch, which means it most likely is in stock. And besides myself, there’s one other black person in the store.” She looked across to the periodical section and stared at an artsy looking gentleman thumbing through a New Yorker. She then reminded herself, “This isn’t the 1930s…. And it is New York City.”

Jordan still couldn’t help but think she’d be arrested for stealing, because someone saw her put a book, hers, in her satchel. She imagined the plain clothes cop standing by the staircase, with his gun clipped to his side, would stop her and she’d be escorted to a backroom, where she’d be given one phone call. She’d call Eva of course hoping to explain everything before the police exposed her secret. She’d have to tell Eva the truth. It’s then and there she would lose everything. The life that she wanted to have with Eva would vanish with just that phone call.

“Or maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Since they’re thinking black guy/woman stealing a book. And nothing about my past will come up. I’d call Eva and once again her whiteness would justify the reason I am in an all white environment.”

She thought it would be like the time when they started dating. Jordan had gone to a party with Eva in Maryland.  She remembers the stares and how she wondered which was it: was it because she was black, or was it because she was black, looked like a dude and was with Eva? She remembers the one guy drunk enough to reveal his true opinions. A friend of Eva’s from high school. He questioned Jordon as to whether or not the jacket she was searching through was really hers. She was looking for her lighter. If it wasn’t for Eva’s intervention, things may have ended badly.

Jordan continued to imagine the worst, and instead of being hauled to the backroom, she’d be asked to pay for the book. She checked for her wallet, for cash and her visa card. “That’s ridiculous paying twice for the same book. And the shame… Being called a thief… If only I remembered where I put the goddamned receipt.” She knew she kept it somewhere. “Where is it?”

All this time, Jordan was pretending to read as both legs were shaking, and once in a while she pulled at her left earlobe. She wondered if the white woman sitting next to her would ever feel suspected and think like this? “I wonder if I were white, would I still feel this way? Probably not. I wouldn’t think about race, maybe class… Maybe I’m just too paranoid. I mean, Obama is President…!

I could just leave the book on the coffee table. But I really want to read it and I’m not buying another copy. I could borrow it from the library, but I love marking off my favorite passages, phrases…” Jordan’s time was up, as she agreed to meet Eva at the theater for 7:00pm and it was now 6:50. She supposed, if she got up and left the book, she wouldn’t draw suspicion. “But it may look incriminating if I just leave it there when it was in my bag. It may appear that I thought about stealing the book and at the last moment decided not to. Ugh, well I can casually leave it on a shelf.”

Jordan got up, put her satchel over her shoulder, and she walked to the literature section to shelve her book. She told herself that it was the best thing to do, but at the same time she couldn’t believe she had succumbed to such fear.

“Maybe one day I’d look back and laugh, a very sour laugh. Who really steal books these days?” she thought.

Rejection Letter #1

I recieved it in the mail today
my very thin self-addressed envelope
not today I said out loud, not today
for you see, I’ve already felt the day to day
crippling blow, as I made my trek through
the drudges, through the thick mundane
automatic motions.  I have failed as a robot.
Regardless, I thought and grinned for chance
there’s still the possibility…  Aah yes the optimist
with her tireless audacity, with her juvenile beliefs
full of maybes, could be dreams floating like clouds 
waiting to be caught, oblivious to the message in the
note starkly staring back: thank you, but no thanks.