KEEPIN THIS BEETCH OPEN AS LONG AS WE CAN

Sometimes I think my heart is too tender for this world.
After three cigarettes, a deepfried mushroom sandwich and a caramel custard from Shake Shack, it’s an easy conclusion.
The last activity of summer: me and E. on the Madison Square Park green, watching Venus Williams play that other chick, you know, the one with the last name, on a drive-in-size projector screen. No humidity, just the nightlights twinkling in the park – a winky glow, my impression of season’s end. Shit is done, summer blew, my autumn riding boots are ready to make their debut. Will is texting me the lowlier aspects of the Republican debates – Mitt Romney’s dealing banal cards, flinging his moral javelin, blindfolded. The hypnotic pop, silence, pop of the Wilsons drifting from the screen and over the lawn, nigh-dead mosquitos making last supper from my ankles. we have to win shep, Will’s texting, we have to. He is still the only person who can call me by that nickname and make it sound tender, endeared, not like a dog or a perverted Massachusetts football coach. I promise him we will. We. Will. Not. Lose.
I have dreams. I dream of Barcelona beaches, composition books and Pilot G-3 gels and an unending supply of time. I dream of going CIA on my vacation to Amman for Ramadan – getting fat Clooney with it, but harming no one. I dream of climbing into a deep sea diving bell, alone, so I can peer at the nitrogenous crimson tubeworms growing up from the volcanic fissures in the ocean’s nether reaches, of dropping deeper still, of letting go. I dream of being untethered.
Venus won the match.