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Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa
<<2005-06-05 - 12:05 a.m.>>

I want to write odes to the ambient noise of Spanish Harlem. I wake up in Ken's apartment (exposed brick and hardwood floors and this is the ascetic/debauched late twenties!) and watch the trains go by, MetroNorth on Park Avenue while he showers. Rattling. Gossip in chugging, lilting, lifting Spanish. The woman on the stoop who calls him Chameleon: Hey, Chameleon, I didn't recognize you without the hat! The Ortiz Funeral Home. The little park across the street.

Last night I went back to my high school for the first time in over two years. Nervous giggle. Clutching Ken's hand. Instructed like a slow child to call Ms. Hollander by her first name. Rebecca, she says. What's my name? Rebecca. And Danny is Mr. San Germano to a flock of teenagers putting on possibly the last production of the Brick Prison Playhouse ever. I thought about the year they did my play. We waited outside afterward with Danny and "Rebecca" accepted an invitation to dinner and we were the cool kids because we were hanging out with the teachers and it was all unspeakably bizarre.

Leaving dinner, hugs all around, Ken and I walked uptown and "Rebecca" asked where we were going. His place. The teachers giggle. Call us lovebirds. I am allowed to kiss a boy in front of a woman who used to be my teacher. And Danny is a teacher, gossiping in the faculty lounge. (What?)

And I am waking up in Spanish Harlem most mornings. Saying hi to Ken's roommate in the living room. Getting on the downtown 6 and kissing him goodbye in front of Tekserve and my keys in the lock in the morning make me homeless (I had a really brilliant conversation with Chloë the other day, the this-is-why-we-are-such-dear-friends kind, in which I articulated my homelessness and how I think I am staying at Ken's because that at least is not supposed to be home).

(And I have asked this question before, in several different phrasings, but: When, exactly, did I become a girl who kisses in the rain on Park Avenue and every corner north of 96th Street?)

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