My friends all think their apartments used to be brothels. I don’t think any of them ever were, but it’s a fitting mythology for an eerie, rundown place with the original mahoganies, hex tiles, and claw-foots. Sex is a place for ghosts. Sex, cities, specialty markets with vacant glass fish counters, gilded wine bars shut with the dissipation of frivolity that necessitates a gilded wine bar.
It’s the Fourth of July. The city is empty. Stoplights change. Shifting powerbox gears echo the metallic rattle of cart on concrete. Friends have changed apartments, partners, furniture. The Castle Rose, the Cambrian, the Premier, the Gentry. Tangerine pleather pullout, mid-century tweed, black leather chesterfield.
On the way to a party, I stop outside the Castle Rose. It is pale pink, mint, and soft-edged like a cake. The neon sign is off, and there’s a tall black gate now with a key-card sensor. The roses are still there. I’m glad to see the roses are still there. Someone has added petunias to Addily’s old balcony.
I’d heard a rumor that Hollywood Vintage had closed down and am relieved to find it cluttered, peeling, dilapidated, just how I remembered, closed for the Fourth but not forever. Staring through the window at the furs, chipped coupes, velvet-backed paintings, I hear my name, and it’s Chris, late to the party, carrying an unmanageable amount of beer.
When I loved him, I could never have dreamed for a better moment for him to run into me. It’s hot today, but so am I. I mean sweat, of course, sweat. But today, I look damn good. Little black dress. Freshly dyed roots. Sweat, yes, but in a sex-oil way, and I’m wearing perfume. I smell like sweat and roses. I am staring into a building that is simultaneously perfect and dilapidated. At this moment, I, too, am perfect and dilapidated. Now reality, reality.
I say, can I help you carry that beer? He says no. I say, that’s insane you’re carrying so much beer. He says no, I say yes. He hands me two six-packs. He says, thanks for coming. I say, thanks for having me. We make our way to his new girlfriend’s rooftop where the party is being held. I leave early. Carl is going to meet me at the edge of the Willamette, and we’re going to walk over it as the fireworks start.
It’s hard to have memories in the present. This is a poem about what is finished. This is a poem about Addily and her couches. This is about Addily photographed in a grocery store in a faux-leopard jacket next to a pyramid of tangerines. This is a poem about Carl waiting on the east end of the river. This is a poem about exes. This is a poem about the future.