so long

It's raining and gloomy in New York and I'm staying in bed today - it's ridiculous how easy my life can be sometimes. I was once so obsessed with the movies, especially the realist ones on film, with beautiful boyish girls who moved through the world all quiet and doe-eyed. And the girls who were disruptive and antagonistic and rebellious. But my tastes have shifted. Now I don’t watch as many movies, but when I do they are probably animated or campy fantastical ones, like The NeverEnding Story. I cycle through the likes of Ghibli, The Last Unicorn, Shrek. and then TV. perhaps because I realized all of my previous tastes. I cut my hair short and was a boyish doe-eyed 19-year-old. A disillusioned talk-backing teen. An aimless New Yorker. Now I want to be free, young, light, magic. misery wastes time

Leaving this room is sad, seeing it all empty. I can hardly hear the buzz of the fish tank. It has sunk into the bed's fabric and disappeared. Birds chirp outside, spring? Yesterday it was nearly 80° and everyone went outside to do probably many things but all I saw with an apron on was them sipping on spritzes. 

Two tables say I look like Elle Fanning, which is nice because I usually get Dakota. 

European models talk about a problematic health minister, who is “obviously so obese.” 

I work and work, make more than a thousand dollars and then say my goodbyes because I won't be returning. 

I am sad to leave but happy to go (yes). 

I sit back for a moment with f at the bar, and thanks to his romantic eye, I too look toward my coworkers and watch them do their dance, measuring ounces, pouring, shaking, flirting, rejecting. I love them very much then, and see the magic that everyone talks about - it's so important in this industry to sit back and watch, but the trouble is finding time. Despite love and romance, I stand by my conclusions: Restaurants become toxic entities all their own, and they suck from those who give, as much as whomever allows. If you are not careful, you will wake up all withered and without x amount of years. f, though, is in love with it all and it seems good for him. 

He is the exception, there are those, maybe many of them too. 

He once wanted to act, but now thinks that maybe that desire led him to another. 

This is the path, he says, smiling. 

I order a burger, medium rare.

Re: this room, I hate to leave (l,g,a,a,r,f,n,on,on,on). So many moves have been so hasty, all in a hurry. This one is slower, more methodical, more sad. I am sad but so happy that I am so sad, so lucky. I worry, too. Not for me either. I want everything to be okay (magic).

On my last day in Brooklyn we all sit on the porch. g reads. l draws the yards around us, most filled with planks of wood and brush. But here and there, something: a wire strung around a pole, a planter made out of a basketball, and other examples of recycling taken too far. Mostly her notebook contains renditions of album art or things from our table: a beer bottle, a hand made out of clay with its thumb cut off (broken, a very bad accident, don’t ask). I mend a hat that I found weeks ago for a few dollars, string thread through loops and tie it tight so it all comes together again. We sit and lay for hours, bring snacks and pillows out to sustain us, chain smoke cigarettes, layer up as the sun passes to the other side of the sky. Our neighbors must think we're bums, I think. Lazy sugar babies who work at night and laze all morning. You see we lay like this most days, with a calm about us, a certain self-possession. Hardly a word is spoken and music plays softly until it, too, fades into the background. Our heads sink into our novels and our notebooks. And nothing is left of our breath but the smoke that wafts from what hangs, lodged between our teeth and our lips.