How things have changed

Suddenly single means reestablishing yourself in old haunts. Heading down to the projects to see who's still holding. Massaging the phone lines, pulling scraps of paper with phone numbers written on them from underneath the car seat and out of the empty coffee cups and seeing who they belong to. Firing up old wires that haven't expired. Putting yourself out there.

In the cloisters of the porno shops I return for confession, where the paladins raise the scrims and I kneel on the prie-dieu and whisper what I'd like to see in the next few weeks. I make a point to never mention anyone with a name, no one I have met before, and nary a one I have loved.

When the dollar runs out I find myself back out on the street.

Things have changed since I dropped out of the game a few months ago. People have changed.

Some got deported or just went somewhere else--when I show up at Chipotle no one knows what the fuck I'm talking about when I ask for him, and when I call his number an anxious-sounding woman whispers something to me in Spanish before hanging up.

Down at the river the pristine frozen forest primeval is guarded by an array of closed-circuit cameras.

My favorite guy in the whole wide world...twenty-four years old, not even bi-identified, tattoos of barbed wire around both biceps, only says he wants to JO until he gets here and I get him horny and then he's mine--suddenly he's engaged, I shit you not, and living with his fiance, and so suddenly he's just a straight guy who likes to be with dudes now and then, you know, and I better not try any of that gay shit on him.

And the super cute boy I met a few years ago but it was bad timing and now he's quite the party planner... turns out smoking meth just doesn't quite cut it anymore, and will I be freaked out if he brings points over--well, oh yes, I would be, so he slams alone, or maybe spends hours in the shower excavating every last speck of night soil from his nether region only to re-seed the fertile membranes with another man's idea of generosity.

The trees I used to swing from to get from bedroom window to bedroom window have all been felled and turned into chips and filler; the Hot Topic closed and became a Panera; the boy went to Boston to take some art classes; the guys at the AA meeting say he's doing well, painting in the style of street art against the corrugated sides of rail cars and that are always moving past us, carrying whatever images we throw up against it to a new set of eyes and interpretations.

'Upon those who step into the same rivers different and again different waters flow...'