Gutter

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Love stories. Bad. Stumbled steps on unsteady feet, I’ve walked these feet before. Oh imagine that sudden step down.

Men made these roads with these drops and men made these shoes with these heels. You men and your hands. Big hands, strong hands, and the silly things they make.

But how long and lean my legs look when I stand with my elbow on the bar casually propping me up. Not bad, not too damn bad. Except when I walk or when I forget the step down. Very bad, very fucking bad. There is no beauty in a four inch heel covered in mud when I forget the step down. Down to the gutter. A lovely old gal on the side of the road. In the gutter. The gutter? A gutter! I am in the gutter with the trash and the rats and the leafy mash.

Gutter. What a word. Gutter. Gtttt’rr. Guuuutterrrrr. Guttermouth.

Shhhhh, people live in these houses on these streets and I will not swear and I will not speak loudly. And you should be less loud too. Bite your tongue, sir. Or better, bite mine. Come here. Help me, I have scratched my porcelain knees and scratched the leather arches. How funny. Gutter.

You are beautiful in the shadows and beautiful in the street-lamp light.
Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
Ten steps for old brownstones built before 1940, twelve for the new.
I have lived in this bild’n my enter lffff. Enter, inter, ent, ent, ent-i, entire life.

Shhhhh.

Ten steps, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up…oh, yes, round key not square, in the top lock, right there, up, in.

Hello. You are beautiful in the bright and the hallway light.

The best, worst kind of love story. No names, no faces, only shadows, hands and arms and legs and sheets and sweat and hair and grunts and moans and sighs. The only tolerable kind of love story. Sigh.

Hello. You are beautiful in the morning and the cumulus-filtered light. I haven’t a thing in the kitchen, I need to be uptown by nine, but thanks for last night.

The kind of story remembered fondly, with no bit of expectation or disappointment or jealousy. What other love can boast that?

Childhood love? He pulled your hair, left you with a three centimeter scar near your left temple after he pushed you down the steel slide face-first.

High school? An episiotomy and the stillborn who didn’t take his name because you couldn’t find him after you didn’t abort seven months earlier because he was a man at fifteen and said he loved you, he loved you, he loved, love. Baby Jane at two, at seven, at ten, at fifteen. April 21st, every 21st. Happy birthday, cheers to true love.

College? The worst of all. Palpitations and syncope, prescriptions for blue and purple pills to take at blue and purple hours. Foolish access to post-doc men and PhD students who will spout Wilde and drive you home and look directly into the soul they’ve awakened as they shake your hand and reply, my girlfriend might not like if you come inside. No, no, no broken skin, no faded luster, just a simple test the following week and the healthy glow to make the girls wish they hadn’t pressed against the post-doc in his car, hadn’t kept the baby in her arms in the hospital, hadn’t pulled him down the slide after her to give him the matching wound.

You remember you must be uptown by nine.
You leave him in the bed for a shower.
You walk out with only a billowing cloud of steam and a green towel soaking up the excess water from your thinning thick auburn curls.
You walk out experimenting with where your breasts once were and where they fall now, or massaging your memory and your somehow-bruised hip to find him at one end of the table similarly undressed and reading the Chicago Tribune, a cup of coffee next to a plate of scrambled eggs and toast at the other end. And all you can think is whether or not he already got the Arts section and why the hell you ever bought eggs. Or bread.
What else is in those cupboards?
Do you have a bruise on you back too?
Does gravity take a little break in your 40s?

And you think it every morning when you come out of the bathroom with the green towel after the shower and are still somehow surprised he stayed.

He stays and he stays and he stays.

He finds the fixings and he saves the Arts section and puts a little pack of ice on the bruises. He tells the gutter story too loudly to people you don’t know, but he never lets you get that close to the drop again. He stays and you don’t ask why. It is a question that leads to expectation and disappointment and jealousy. He is too beautiful in the dark and the shade and the light and you are too delicate from the academics and the drop-outs and the boys. The chaos of the beginning found stability in the night. From sex to love? Maybe it is no love story at all.


Down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down with the baby’s stroller bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, with a little giggle before each drop and a little whee as he takes the air.


And because the meeting isn’t for another hour and you could catch a taxi or the next bus, you bump him back up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, round key, not square, in the top lock, right there, up, in. Just to say hello, you are beautiful in the midday light. Kiss his graying temple, wipe his freshly shaven face with the green towel around his neck as the baby speaks his language in the stroller in the hall.

Then bounce back down, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle, down, bump, giggle.

By the bottom step to the sidewalk, even the baby knows.

So two-by-two you again run up on mudless, leafless, gutterless four-inch heels, up, up, up, up, round key, not square, in the top lock, right there, open the door with a shout, a thank you for staying, and an I love you, now the baby and I are going out.
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