Today’s post title courtesy of both the image above and the fact that over the course of the past two days I have realized that two very cheerful sounding songs I am rather fond of — songs that I have listened to and sung along with on multiple occasions — are, in fact, both about male sexual dysfunction.

Item the first: premature ejaculation.

Item the second: impotence.

Not one word am I bluffing, as my dearly departed grandfather used to say. Not that I am in any way opposed to songs about sexual dysfunction, you understand. I’m just reeling a bit from the inordinate length of time it took me to figure this out. I am clearly not, despite my academic history, the domain name I chose for my site, and my current profession, a person who pays enough attention to words. I resolve to do better, in the future. No dirty song shall henceforth escape my notice!

Um.

I think I’d better leave it at that.

P.S. Ladies and gentlemen, this is why I do not want my parents telling my relatives about my blog. My little cousins will click themselves happily along to this entry, their mothers will hear them chortling to themselves and hum on by to read over their shoulders, and in a minute flat I will become their depraved niece who lives in America and writes about penises on the internet and I will never be able to smile sweetly at family gatherings again.

Jordan, who already had a special place in my heart, is now officially the coolest person in the history of the entire world and human existence, as well as the first (but not the last, I hope!) of my friends to have been hired by NASA.

There is always one day, right in the beginning of spring, on which it feels like the sun is literally pouring through my skin, coursing through my bloodstream, and pumping into my heart — which expands with its golden bounty, opening up more than it has in these grey-brown months, when it has been brittle, has had to be guarded, has throbbed only gently lest its nearly frozen vessels crack apart — a day on which my breathing slows and deepens, and I cannot stop smiling at strangers, whom I know to be fellow survivors: “We did it, we made it!”

And on this day, when sun and air are sweeter than they’ll ever be and January is a half-forgotten dream, my green heart understands what it is to be a tree.

Getting my red coat out of the closet in the morning, the door wheezes open like a horse that’s just heard a joke. I push it closed to hear it laugh again

The subway announces its arrival and departure coolly, an ancient chime. People hum and breathe and sigh with the impatience of the morning. I pull my hat down low and put my watch up to my ear. It ticks full of smug satisfaction: I am going to be on time

At my desk the fingers of industry click in their syncopated rhythm, jagged and unpredictable. My tapping is connected to my brain and propelled by random bursts of inspiration, quieted by spreading pools of boredom. I listen to crisp pages turning and turn them back again to listen

Lunchtime. I pull the red lever for hot water and it splooshes reluctantly into my plastic bowl of instant noodles. I notice, too late — the water is tepid. I curse under my breath and the word is delicious and soft. Microwaves beside me ding self-importantly. I tug a door open to save my lunch while the small talk of strangers washes over me. My mind is a comfortable, empty seashell of wind and wave

“Spaaare chaaange? Spaaare chaaange?” The voice of a homeless man in the middle of the train station wobbles through the same old afternoon mantra. I try not to hear, try not to let my heart break over it while I make my way to where Jenn’s warm, friendly face will kiss my own clean cheek. His voice sings an unsteady aria of need and confusion, and it follows me only one stop further before it flies out the open train doors

Strains of Spanish guitar lilt through the underground tunnel in Park Street, an old man with a grey beard thrums an accordion on Mass Ave. A blonde woman in dark glasses smokes her cigarette and lends her voice to the woy yoy yoys of the dreadlocked guy singing Buffalo Soldier in front of the Out of Town News. I close my eyes and try to listen to the sound the sun makes when it realizes it can stay out an extra hour

“Wait, Honey Bunches of Oats are the little cones, right?” “No no no…”

My best friend’s laughter rhymes with the clink of margarita glasses

Walking home, sweet conversation brushes in between my phone and my ear. I hang up and play the last note, the whirr of my camera taking this picture

First Date

A pair of earrings,
drops of luminescent green
sea-colored
so that when I turn my head
I imagine waves
breaking.

In a little bit we’re going out to the wonderful Plough and Stars to hear these folks play, so I don’t have time to tell you about my real first date, on which momentous occasion I was not, in fact, wearing any earrings at all as far as I remember. I do recall that I was wrapped in my favorite denim jacket, which had arrived in my closet through various stages of hand-me-down journeying (the air-conditioning in most buildings in Singapore is so arctic as to require layering). Everything else is a blur; I think my brain had actually turned itself off entirely and become a buzzing, melting appendage of nearly no usefulness.

P.S. I was a very immature 15.

(Pictured above is the elegant ear of my colleague Liz, who suffered my lens on her with great grace and wit — as you’ll see quite clearly if you click on the photograph and look at the images on either side of it.)

Only he knows which one.

I remember a party June had when we were 18 or 19; her family was moving and no furniture had been installed in the new place yet. Nothing beautiful or breakable inhabited it. The electrical systems hadn’t been connected. The house simply sat: empty, beckoning, full of promise.

So June had a party there, of course. We lit it with candles; tealight after tealight arranged like airplane exit signals, spiralling through every floor of the house and making it glow softly: flickering, seductive, full of promise.

It was one of those parties. I didn’t really care about talking to anyone there; the sweet burn of whiskey and coke made its way warmly through my body in place of the blood in my veins and the throb of that wordless, trippy techno someone always put in the cd player substituted itself for my heartbeat.