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Romantic Love
Fifty Guilders
I sat by myself on the train from Copenhagen. In the middle of the night, the door to my compartment opened. A young woman wearing a ponytail, a T-shirt, and a dark blue suit eyed me stretched out on the seat, my gray hair curled over my collar. Then she decided to come in. She heaved her baggage into the overhead rack, shut the door, and stretched out on the opposite seat.
August 1992Kissing In The Movies
In 1961, Nicaragua and I were still developing, both of us unsure of our desperate passions. I knew nothing of politics. When the U.S. Air Force needed my father to teach Somoza’s pilots to fly, my family moved to Managua. The State Department warned of the dangers: malaria, earthquakes, revolution, poverty, sharks swimming in fresh water. They left something out.
August 1992Pedestrian Dreams
On The Virtues Of Walking
I’m a native New Yorker. I was born in Greenwich Village and raised in Brooklyn. I don’t live in New York now, but I still work there, and I consider it my goddamned right to go anywhere I want in the city. I’ve got to watch out — if a place looks dangerous, or people look dangerous, then I’m going to steer clear. But not on principle.
August 1992June 1992
The Map I Was Promised
Things I didn’t get to last week: answering the mail, giving up coffee, saving the planet.
June 1992The Cruise
“Here we are in Martinique,” the man said. He was standing at the window with his hands in his hip pockets, looking out at the green lawn and the deep woods beyond.
June 1992Don’t Take It Personally
“Go on up there and sing the hell out of that song, Shiffler,” Marva said, and then she hugged me, and I could feel the underside of her breasts brushing my shoulders.
May 1992
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