spring-ish
I’m always surprised at how light it still is when I leave work and head through the mobbed Times Square area, the countless visitors to the city that never sleeps seeing it lumbering through the last throes of the day. My manager (the seventh one I’ve had in five years, which could tell you something about my employment history) sneered at me in the elevator, lips curling into a lewd smile only shared between men: “Dude, there is some fucking hot skin out there.”
He smelled of his mid-afternoon cigarette, where he’d been surveying the bared thighs of the girls trotting slow and timid tourist steps while they looked up at the lights that somehow still outshone the afternoon sun. He resembled a shorter and less-bulldog-jowled-and-less-bulb-nosed Nixon, and I quickly scribbled “Tricky Dick” in my mind, imagining his leering eyes slithering up and down every attractive girl’s slender body.
Cutting my way through the slower foot-traffic, weaving past the gridlocked cars, I took the long way to the subway station on 42nd. The air hit my neck slightly cool; I knew I’d started to sweat a little from the quick-but-long strides characteristic of a New-York-speed walk. Heading through the doors and down into the station, I made good time, listening for the train, deciding whether to hit the shuttle or the 7: I was in luck, catching the final moments before the door closed.
I emerged from the subway into the afternoon sun, fading but still strong, setting but still bright, the crisp air tasting pure and bitter at the same time. And even as I got home, my keys and phone dispensed from my pockets and placed on top of the hallway table, my bag and jacket left in a crumpling pile on the floor, I felt this strange in-between-ness of hunger and lust, and want and need, and so as I heard Smarty Pants’ iTunes belching out some random ’90s pop music I licked my lips, began unbuttoning my shirt, and confirmed in my mind just how much I enjoy fucking with the daylight streaming through the bedroom windows.