Fantasy #1
Fantasy is a series of prose poems about encounters in NYC which may or may not be real.
The first time we did it he asked if he could hold his stuffed lamb. It was the summer forty-nine people were shot in a bar. Lucas was rich and very gentle. Sometimes it took him an entire song to cut a line. He wanted everything to be perfect. We met at his parents’ apartment on Madison. They were always in Lisbon or Mallorca or somewhere in France. I would come over and watch him do things. That’s what he wanted. We’d talk. The lamb would watch also. He’d put him on the sink while he took a shower. Prop him up against a vase in the living room while he read. I’d walk up the 60s on Park and listen to “Cheree” by Suicide on repeat. The most quiet avenue in the city. The only things you saw were doormen, islands of tulips at crosswalks, dental offices, cabs, and the Met Life building drenched in sun. Lucas never asked about me and I liked that. I would read him Lord Byron while he ordered things online. We’d have tea. He didn’t smoke so I’d have to go down every time from the penthouse. It could be late or early when he wanted to be watched. When he couldn’t be alone really. One night he got a suite at The Pierre and the text came around midnight. Walking to 709 I saw a tall blond boy in a red hat leave the room. I never thought I was singular but I watched Lucas so much, I didn’t know anyone else did. It was one of those red hats all over the news. I hadn’t seen anyone in the city wear one. Lucas was in a bath. We made a playlist. He got stuck on Taylor’s 1989 and wanted to include every song. I let him, of course. Lucas always got what he wanted. Until I didn’t see him again and he’d send me a text once or twice a week for years after. There was one I remember around the middle of September (the most beautiful time to be a person in New York). He needed help picking out a Frank Stella for his bedroom. He was living alone now somewhere in the 80s. “Come back,” he said. It was more of a command than a plea. I was in the back of a cab when I read it. That’s where the poet Robert Lowell had a heart attack. The city was burning. Heatwave after heatwave. There was hardly an autumn. And I was not the same person I’d once been. I didn’t know how to write that in a text. I was farther away from my American youth.
