I keep finding myself in places I don't expect me, such as outside churches, lurking peeringly in their dooryards, or inside my own hollow skull, living this life to which the term 'hardscrabble' might be astutely or ironically applied. Luckily, there are no hipsters or astuticians around to subject me to application. It's just me in here—I'm not even wearing socks. A warm reeky footness buoys faceward. Sometimes, I positively swim with aromas. When charming certain women this everyday household constraint can be recast in the light of advantage. Conscript your drawbacks into tempting signposts of your touchable personhood: it's the only way and in this way do I obtain access to their definitive admixtures of scent and fluid. I'm concerned though that the footness has been preserved—uncharmingly—in the fabric catalogue of this secondhand armchair, already overstuffed with records of what it's been to whom. A casual observer couldn't separate the come stains from those of the breast milk. No matter; we're talking about poles of the same basic problem, a part of which is the punitive fact that I am not a casual observer. Of the few things I do well, casualty is not one of them. I'm the guy who clenched his teeth for the duration of the climax and even after. Do you remember him and me being him, how you wished we would have moaned instead, or called out your name like a concise indictment? But that's not us. We're intense and idiosyncratic, just like everyone. We love out of fashion. We are effortless or say we are. We call exes in other states just to chat. We're comfortable with your new man, really, we just don't want to hear about him. We want to tell you about the weird time I found myself headed in opposite directions on the East side of 6th avenue between W 11th and W 12th, on our way to and from the red express line, wearing the same shirt. I didn't recognize me right away. It took some time. We knew I knew me but we wasn't sure, and so stood there trading platitude futures while we plumbed every inner depth, searching for what had to be somewhere. Each of us trying to remember our name, force it first unto the other one.

finding myself

justin taylor