NOTE
After we met I emailed you and asked if you wanted to have coffee
with me and give me advice about finding an apartment in New York
since you had recently moved there but you never responded because
I think you assumed the apartment thing was just an excuse to see you
again and this annoyed me because I thought it was presumptuous
and it also annoyed me because it was mostly true. About a month
later I Facebooked you a poem I had written which was about the
movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s because we had talked about it that time
we met and you said you liked it. I was trying to impress you I guess
like maybe I am not as beautiful as you but I can do this. I was pretty
happy when you wrote back and said you liked the poem and then I
asked you if you wanted to have coffee with me since we both lived
in New York now and you didn’t respond and then I moved to Greenpoint
and A— told me you lived there too and so I Facebooked you
and said hey we live in the same neighbourhood now so we should
have coffee and you asked me if I were close to Manhattan Ave. and
Clay St. and I “Googled-mapped” it and saw it was like a half-hour
walk from me but lied and said yes I’m right around there since I
didn’t think you would meet me somewhere halfway. Halfway just
didn’t seem like your style. It was a really hot day and I sweated a lot
as I walked towards Champion Coffee on Manhattan Ave. and you
were late. I wondered if you were standing me up. I was sitting there
really disliking you when you walked through the door like it was the
entrance to a movie set. You took off your sunglasses and your eyes
were amazingly dark and you seemed precisely aware of just how
beautiful you looked and it was very difficult to not like you again.
After a few minutes in Champion Coffee you found it too hot or too
loud or too something and said we should hang out at your place and
we sat on your couch and I kept thinking I should kiss you I should
just lean over and kiss you when you come back from the bathroom
when you come back from the kitchen with coffee when you come
back from the kitchen with water when you come back from the
kitchen with wine I should kiss you. I must have sat on that couch for
close to two hours and I don’t remember now what we talked about
except you told me a story about how this guy invited you to his place
to record a song but then just wanted to sleep with you and I wondered
if you were telling me the story as a way of saying I better not
try to kiss you or anything because you were tired of men pretending
they wanted something other than your body when that was all they
really wanted (I don’t know how that feels). Then you said you had
to be somewhere and I was glad that I no longer had to worry about
whether I should kiss you or not and left and then not too long after
that I got involved with someone and then someone else and again
someone else. It was that kind of year for me I guess but still I thought
of you once and awhile. And then I didn’t see you for about a year
but then A— and R— came to New York and we all hung out in
Williamsburg and you were talking about how you never pay for your
drinks anywhere you go because men always buy them for you and
then I got up to go to the bar and told you I wasn’t buying you a drink
and you laughed and I said seriously I am not buying you a drink and
I think those were the last words I ever said to you and that was four
years ago. Everything I know about you now comes from the New
York Daily News. It says you didn’t leave a note and it says we were
the same age which I didn’t know and there is a picture not of you but
of the window you smashed on the 24th floor with what witnesses
described as a wooden object possibly a chair and it is so difficult to
imagine you doing any of these things the paper said you did since
you were always so composed and careful about your appearance like
you anticipated that at any moment you would be photographed.
Author’s Bio
JACOB SCHEIER is the author of two poetry collections: the Governor General’s Award-winning, More to Keep us Warm (ECW Press, 2007) and Letter from Brooklyn (ECW Press, 2013). He is also the author of the non-fiction Ebook, My Never Ending Acid Trip, published by The Toronto Star in fall 2013.