6 August

Massimo meets me before work to sit on Grove, drink mint lemonade and wilt in the early August heat wave. He is sprawling across the stoop, running his hands though his hair and apologizing to me for bailing on our long standing plan: to pick up after hours sushi from the Japanese grocery store and diagram ikigai until it was all sorted. He’s not in a place to have things sorted.

Work has been difficult. He reminisces on early summer days when men in ill fitting polos were clamoring to live in the crypt. When the lowest rung of finance bros were seeking something suited to modern luxury for the young professional. When the windowless studios in midtown east would just have to do. Typically, Massimo rents excitedly to those men. Massimo looks down disgustedly at those men. Massimo, by a slender margin, is not one of those men.

Massimo is the kind of guy sent from central casting. The kind of guy to play himself in the sitcom version of his own reality where the apartment is just big enough, problems keep coming, and the punchline always gets a laugh track. Massimo is the kind of guy who wears his buttons buttoned half way down. Whose silver jewelry that drapes with the hang of his European frame. In a perfect world a hand rolled cigarette dangles effortlessly from his hand. Perfection is just out of reach. He lips a Zyn. Nicotine, among other things, is a habit he’s trying to kick. Summer had thwarted any progress.

Massimo is the kind of guy who places a generous bet on his odds against the night. He goes uptown for family dinner to fight with his mother. All might be resolved if he returned a borrowed kaftan and a string of pearls borrowed from her closet. But the kaftan billows nicely on a late night citi bike and the pearls are unstrung, rolling loose in the gutters of the lower east side. Admission is not an option. By 10pm he is on his way downtown to meet a friend for drinks and tuck in early. This friend only refers to himself in the third person. This friend calls himself Charlie Sheen.

“Charlie Sheen is ready to have a night”.

By 11:45pm they are on foot en route to meet the boys. Victim to the imperceptible pivot between the third and sixth tequila soda, Massimo cannot look back now. Massimo is the kind of guy who pictures himself at a quiet jazz bar. Somewhere with fine food and educated company. Somewhere he might sit solo, consider self and circumstance. Somewhere he might sip a martini and muse on his debut novel. Somewhere, if fate allowed, he might meet a sophisticated milf or a well read slut. More often than he would like to admit he does not end up at this bar. More often than he would like to admit he finds himself bellied up to the bar at the Spaniard placing a drink order with a bartender who wishes he was dead and shouting sweet nothings at the only brunette in sight. Almost always, he is teetering on the brink of slurring. Almost always, she doesn’t even hear him. He gets away with it.

He detests the Spaniard for its obvious horrors. Interns on a joyride. Bachelorette parties marched over from the PATH. Young professionals, West Village men, in the never ending pursuit of the night. He, by a slender margin, is not one of those men. He had followed Charlie Sheen who had followed a lead, a breadcrumb trail of airplane shooters and a Snap Chat story confirming his hunch: that the FSU girls were in town and that the Spaniard was serving as HQ.

He is not the kind of guy who is attracted to FSU girls, but still, he goes. It could be a networking opportunity. He might meet someone interested in signing a contract to live in the crypt. He doesn’t.

He goes to the bathroom to sharpen his mind. He finds himself in an excited diatribe about great empires. That gives way to a futurate account of his own. He’s at risk of chewing off his bottom lip. He goes back to the bar. The brunette is gone. He thinks about calling his ex. He resolves not to make the same mistake as last November. He had called to tell her that he loved her. Then called her back to tell her to get some self respect. Then went home with a girl who was big into bag charms and getting almost as drunk as him. She asked him to be her boyfriend and he conceded. It was winter and he was out of money for courting. Valentine's day was tough but he had to see it through to spring. She had already committed them to St. Patty’s day plans.

The crowd thins and Sunday morning has already reared its ugly head. The panic has not yet set in. He’s just been to the bathroom. The delusions of grandeur maintain. He locks eyes with a girl. Someone he tells himself he hasn’t met. Someone he tells himself might escape the damage of her upbringing: a charmed life in an affluent suburb in the tristate. Someone he tells himself might mean something to him.

“This meeting feels like fate”

She concurs. He takes her home. Sunday comes. Mid day breaks. He wakes up. She lays sleeping. He scans her body. Her thin legs, unevenly golden. Her soft hips streaked with red lines from where the lace of her underwear constricts. The top of her head, a shadow of brunette coming in at the roots. He imagines her as the kind of girl with long dark curls effortlessly falling to frame her face. Before the bleach had stripped the pigment and the flat iron had fried the ends. He thinks about kissing her at the part, right at the cow- lick to gently wake her up. He thinks better of it. He wants her to leave. He is sure that she loves him. He doesn’t want her to think that he loves her. She wakes up. He waits to want to kiss her. He looks at her lips. Then down at her boobs, braless, now, pressed against the cotton white tank top he’d given her to sleep in. He sees only her puffed areola, larger than most but not the largest he’s seen. He waits to be attracted to her. He isn’t. He wants her to leave. He doesn’t know how to bring it up in the silence of the day. He tells her that he loves her. He knows now that she never will. He has to do laundry. Mostly his sheets. The Egyptian cotton is stained with her self tanner. He doesn’t want to touch her, nevertheless he holds her, maintaining that he is not the kind of guy who forgot to buy bleach.