1854 : saturday night :

Her present was a coloring book filled with pussies and she said, "You know I needed a vagina morale boost. That was very thoughtful of you. ... Write that down. I say the best things in the world." I wrote that down with all the other great things she had said that day. We used glitter crayons to color some of the many varieties of pussies.

She dug in her purse for her birth control pills and popped one in her mouth and said "Now you can jizz in me."

She took her clothes off and climbed on top of me and I was afraid it would make me late for an appointment but I shut my mouth because when a beautiful naked woman climbs on top of you, that is the most important thing that will happen to you all day — and you never know when you might die.

She rode me hard and came quickly and I was worried about being late and could not come even when I got on top and even from the back but she masturbated while I squeezed her ass and my balls slapped her from behind and she got off again and I was not even close but I did not care because she came twice and that makes me feel better than my own orgasms. I did not shower and just threw on my clothes and we hit the subway and somehow got to the appointment on time and I love this mad mad city.

On the way there, she told me she tells a girlfriend about us in bed and she she said, "Is it okay I told her about that?"

"Oh, it's fine," I said. "You can tell anyone anything great about me anytime."

The artist put an outline on my shoulder and a buzzing needle to my skin and it hurt like a motherfucker and I told him I am a big pussy and would probably cry. She got excited when I said that and clapped her hands in small, fast claps. He stuck my shoulder with needles and ink for hours. Every now and then he wiped the blood and black away with towels and squeezed water on it to clean his canvas and it was cool relief.

"It's like painting a wall with a toothpick," he said. He also said that living in a city I once called home is like date rape. She wrote that down for me, and we talked about how living in this city is a struggle, too, but it is usually a struggle with yourself and eventually you give in to it and love this city the way you love someone in a relationship — a relationship with someone who drives you crazy at times.

The pain got worse with each passing hour but went from stinging and shooting to burning and throbbing and finally I submitted to it and told myself that there will be permanent art at the end of the temporary pain and there was. He wrapped my shoulder with plastic and tape and told me it would start to ooze in a while so wash it soon and I wondered if I would make it home alive.  

She left for work and I went to a deli to buy water-based lotion so the ink on my shoulder would heal properly. A guy in front of me asked the old dude behind the register for "sewstungs" and the old dude said "Eyeno undustend," and the guy said, "Suesings!" and old dude scratched his head and said "Haen?" and the guy raised his arms said, "Shoe strings!" and the old dude pointed to a wall and there they were and they both looked like apes inventing spoken language.

I walked to the subway and an SUV almost hit me in the crosswalk and I slapped the back window and yelled and the driver hit the breaks and I was pissed so I rushed to his door and he rolled down the window and he started yapping so I punched him quiet and slung open the door and yanked his ass out of the seat and threw him to the cold concrete and realized he was disabled. I did not see the handicap license plate.

I ran to the subway, breath puffing in the cold air like a smokestack. I almost fell down the steps, rushed through the turnstile and lost myself at the back of a platform. It was empty except for this lady wearing a lot of animal print. I stood near her to make her uncomfortable and I ripped a long rat-a-tat-tat fart with much bass and she looked at me all horrified and I laughed as loud as I could and she screamed and scampered away.

Maybe I am one of the crazy people on the subway that I always encounter on my way home. Maybe I am one of the tests people have to endure to live here and still love it.

The train came. I took a seat and the doors did not close. We just sat there. A woman with a stroller sat next to me while her dude stood next to her.

"If my baby shit herself I'm going to rub it in ya face," she said, and she laughed. She reached into the stroller  to check. "Do I know my baby or do I know my baby?"

The train was still in the station and I kept waiting for someone to come chasing after me, someone other than the crippled guy, and I was anxious for the doors to close.

The almost closed but popped back open and closed again and popped back open.

The conductor's voice scratched over the speakers: "Someone in one of the cars, pull your bag in." The doors rattled open and shut. "Thank you. Lets get it together, people. Be responsible. Pull your bags IN." Yes, thank you people.

A few stops later, someone at the back of the car started preaching: "You know what I got for being a crackhead? Nothing. You know what I for for being a Christian? Eternal life."

I transfered to another train and a dude was screaming on the other side of a turnstile, "One man! One man! One man! I'm just one man! ... Mothafucka." He wore all black and slung a tiny pink backpack over his shoulder. My shoulder was still burning under the plastic wrap. 

A couple in front of me was trying to figure out what the man had been yelling.

"Was it 'white man'?"

"I thought he was saying, 'White Plains'."

I said, "'One man'," and the dude slid down the handrail to the platform like a big showoff in a musical and I was really hoping he would bust his ass but he did not.

A hefty woman walking next to me loudly told her girlfriend that a guy tried to pick her up by saying, "Hey there, big girl," and she said it like she was bragging.

A tall man wearing a bike helmet and a long thick beard and wrap-around sunglasses and striped leg warmers and black boots and a big gray blanket over his shoulders with a hole cut in it for his head walked by. I wrote all that down and my shoulder throbbed and I read several of the things she said to me that day that were great:

... "I just got a weird feeling in my stomach, like something bad is about to happen. Weird! Must be from lack of jizz ingestion."

... "I'm never going to do anything with my life. I really believe that." (She said it like an affirmation, smiling.)

... "I guess I feel like anal is a diss to my vagina."

I could hear her saying all of it in a voice that is diffused light.

The train came. A stranger helped a blind lady with a fancy hat find a seat. At her stop, she called out, "Mark! Mark! Where are you? I need help!" He was not on the train.

A homeless guy kept staring at me like I was the reason he was homeless, and I wondered why so many whales commit suicide. Humans like to believe that whales beach themselves by mistake, which is pretty bullshit when you consider how many other human aspects we project onto them such as intelligence and singing and love and blah blah. Why not depression? If whales are so human, then suicide only makes sense.

A few stops from my stop, a drunk guy gave everyone a speech about being a musician and having an expensive mic stolen from his apartment and he said he needs money to buy another one so he can earn a living. He sang a cheesy R&B love song and his voice was awful and annoying and people gave him money anyway, maybe enough to buy another drink. 

I got home and drank a cold beer in a hot shower and washed my oozing shoulder and chunks of dried blood and ink circled the drain and I toweled off and sat in my white leather chair and held my half-hard cock in my hand while I read a newspaper online. I squeezed my dick a little, like it was a water balloon and I squeezed it and squeezed it and pumped it up and down a bit too, just enough to keep it at that level, not harder, not softer, just thick and squishy, and I read a story about a scientist who studies cities and he claims he has the madness figured out on a mathematical level, there are equations and such that can predict everything, and I touched the swollen ink on my shoulder and I thought about her riding me and making that face she makes when she climaxes and the way all her muscles tighten and that thin sweat that covers her skin like each pour squeezed a cool drop to the surface and I stiffened and stroked and came all over myself in hot, thick gobs.