Baltimore Read Free Page A

pajamas, that you had spent half your youth loving a trained fascist, disguised as a man of renaissance beauty.
    What do I watch now?
    A little of both?
    Channel one: He’s reciting some sort of self-loving monologue in front of a mirror in the last remaining watering hole in the old part of the city, whining over the bulldozers that are going to tear everything down first thing tomorrow, after which someone else will come to cover the demolished shrine with modern and estranged chrome.
    Channel fifteen: They don’t have a problem with bad taste here. They’re all wearing tiger and leopard print lingerie, together with 12-inch heels, the most horrible wigs ever, silicone breasts, and they’re ready for action.
    Channel one: He’s walking along a river and grieving for the fish that are slowly losing their habitat because, alas, all of the remaining embankments have been occupied by boat restaurant owners. I have no intention of thinking about this now, the subject is boring and not at all erotic, but, damn it, we spent so many hours on these boats, arguing and making up. I recognize the hand motion. Even though he has aged. Both he and his hand. And my hand, probably. He once told me that I had child-like hands, that he noticed this while we were making love; that he looked up at my hands and thought: My God, I’m making love to a child. And now look, that child and that hand are cheating on you with third-rate porn, click, go away….
    Channel fifteen: Not fair. Whenever I switch to them, she’s giving him a blowjob. Why is all porn made only for men?
    Channel one: He’s wearing his wise-disgusted-embittered expression. An expression of a man who knows something others can’t see yet. An expression of a man who has already endured Weltschmertz in place of all those living in ignorance. An expression of a man who was aware of the beauty of unformed stone before Michelangelo and who had grasped the horror, which was to follow, before the mayor of Hiroshima. The million dollar question is: Why does this expression still mean something to me even though I’ve been aware of its fraudulence for more than a decade? Is there a way we can ever truly get over an old love?
    Channel fifteen: That’s better. They’re lying on a bed and kissing. I try to ignore the fact that she’s still wearing the heels. And that she has long, purple nails. Because, if I focus on the details, there goes the fun.
    And then, like in a bad SF movie, the painting on the wall above their bed takes me straight back to….
    Channel one: Do you remember? Of course you do. You can use that expression of disgust to show off till your dying day. But such things are never forgotten. Who cares about the fate of a tennis court built in the wrong place. I’m asking you, do you remember the hotel room with the same cheap painting on the wall. Aha?! I got you now, Romeo.
    Fifteen: He has grabbed her from behind and is holding her breasts firmly while thrusting himself into her, and thrusting and thrusting. Now their phone is going to ring, I’m sure of it.
    One: And then the phone rang, remember, and you wouldn’t stop, you just answered it and spoke to the woman from the travel agency while I thought I was going to have to bite into the pillow if you didn’t hurry up and end the conversation.
    Fifteen: Their phone didn’t ring.
    One: …threw the phone on the floor….
    Fifteen: He is turning her around and looking at her and spreading her legs.
    One: …he is turning me around and looking at me and spreading my legs….
    A little bell in my head is screaming that he never even loved me the right way.
    But too late.
    Too late.
    I fell asleep.
    Get lost. All of you. Leopard prints. Clever. Culturally enlightened. Filled with silicone. His silicone vanity. Sticking out abnormally above all the other heads that naturally tilt downwards. His built-up ego wrapped in a perfectly pressed shirt. And why do they always smear the sperm all over their faces and