Let There Be Light
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still—if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
I’m coming at you live from Baghdad. I mean New York. I don’t fucking know anymore. It doesn’t matter. There’s no difference. The electricity was finally restored one hour ago—after twenty nine hours of darkness—to much applause from the flashlight-wielding citizens of 23rd. But the manhole cover across the street from me is smoking and the firemen are hosing it down. You see, there was an explosion a few minutes ago, and the shockwave I felt while sitting here in front of my baking monitor. Just a loud gassy pop, followed a few seconds later by the staccato clangs of heavy metal impacting against unyielding pavement. A few more underground explosions could be heard down the street. Aftershocks I suppose. Maybe I should get out of here. I don’t fucking know anymore. The city has been a war zone over the past two years. We need no further proof that the people who run the world are idiots.
Last night I read Slaughterhouse Five by candlelight. 135,000 people died during the allied firebombing of Dresden, nearly twice the number who died at Hiroshima. So it goes.
Leslie was stuck in Jersey at her mom’s place, but with a dead cell and bad land lines I of course didn’t know this. Her car broke down on the way to the Lincoln Tunnel, which was closed. I was worried. Her mom, who owns a deli a few blocks away from here, lost $30,000 worth of perishable inventory. So it goes.
To their credit, my fellow New Yorkers remained calm, and when I went out for walks there was a decidedly festive mood on the street, people just drinking beers, listening to the radio and shooting the breeze. Candles, flashlights and glowsticks painted the uneven sidewalks. But it was better in the wee hours of the morning, when most had put to bed and I had the black canyons of Baghdad/New York to myself, Gotham architecture set in relief against the blue-grey night sky. Gazing out over the murky Hudson, this was the one time I envied the folks across the river, who sat comfortably in well-lit and air-conditioned homes. I had to step over the blob-like figures of the homeless. It was difficult to tell whether they were dead or alive.
But, back at home, as I tucked into David Foster Wallace’s infinitely wordy Infinite Jest for the second time, a picture fell from between two miscellaneous pages of the weighty tome. It was Leslie and Bond Girl, embracing on the couch and revealing tempting thighs that peaked out under matching and ridiculously thin black slips. As a point of celebrity reference, Bond Girl looks a little like Jennifer Garner, what with that angular face and strong jaw line of hers, and I call her Bond Girl because she was, like, really into Bond flicks. Bond Girl was Leslie’s present to me on my 29th birthday and we continued to see her for a couple of months after that. She was tall enough that I could fuck her from behind while standing up, bending my knees only slightly to accommodate entry. The image must have been from Halloween night, and the two girls gazed into the camera contentedly, almost cat-like. I think that night I fucked Bond Girl on the couch, first missionary and then from behind, as Leslie watched from across the room. I enjoyed it most from behind, because Bond Girl has what I call a grabby pussy (made legendary for me by that insipid commercial theme song—Grabit!), the pink folds of which would grasp my cock on the way out, not wanting to let go. I also liked the way she laid her left hand on her ass cheek and spread it to give me both a better view and a deeper fuck. Yes. I painted her tight little ass with jism that night.
She was such a sweet girl. Sometimes we would come home drunk and just fall asleep together on Leslie’s soft bed. Those were some of the nice moments.
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