when i saw you today you were so good-looking that i had to squirm a little. your onion-flavored rings tee shirt. how did you guess? at the department party everyone drank martinis during the thunderstorm and the sounds of thunder bounced off the metal cups and forked our tongues. conversation, obviously, was kept to a low air-conditioner hum. in the midst of this someone tried to convince me to open a bottle of whiskey and toast to habermas. fuck that. thinking of you sitting outside the steps of parsons looking all dark-haired and smoking your dank cigarettes i realized that i was poor, really poor, and i could never keep anyone like you, even if i managed to 'get' you for a moment or two in between the art opening receptions and silly punk shows and lightning and rain that bookend your life. then i vowed to become really ambitious, and through that, really really rich, wealthy even, disgustingly so; so that i could engineer and build for myself a glass house with glass ceilings and glass walls and central air. that way the sun could pour in without it being too hot. Or I would build it somewhere cold, like Canada, or Denmark, or Iceland, or in the Black Forest of Germany, to be more ecologically sound.

then when i sit in my glass house with its glass knobs and glass corners looking out into the vast expanse of greenery, i can see across the spaces of the trees out onto the steps where you'll be crouched, waiting for me. the smoke from our cigarettes will pass each other in the breeze.