well, i have been in and out of everyting and anything.
even though life or whatever you call it, have me by the balls, i won't give in.
life is soon going to change, drastically and it will definitely change my life.
be it life or death, joy or anger, i will wait for it.
here i am, writting something up.

Murmur

(mûr'mər) n 1: a low, indistinct, continuous sound: spoke in a murmur; the
murmur of the waves 2: an indistinct, whispered, or confidential complaint; a
mutter 3: Medicine. an abnormal sound, usually emanating from the heart, that
sometimes indicates a diseased condition.

When I met Maryanne, she was standing on the subway platform and talking to herself. She was tiny, less than a hundred pounds, with dark circles beneath her eyes and unwashed brown hair. We were nearly alone in the station. I leaned againts a girder to listen, but her words were indistinct, a blur of gentle noise, and soon enough a train charged in from the darkness to silence her. The train thundered along the track, and as we approached the yellow edge in anticipation it kept hissing and racing until, at last, it disappeared with a shudder. We were left side by side, introduced by disappointment.
"You were listening," she said to me.
I blinked too many times, flustered. I glanced down at her thin pretty blouse and back up into her tired smile, those two rows of small lopsided teeth.
"Maryanne," she said.
When we boarded the next train there were empty seats, but we stood side by side holding onto the same fingerprinted pole. I spread my feet and felt the train twist beneath me like the spine of a cat. We were new at being New Yorkers so we talked about home, the places we had fled.
"I didn't know people actually lived in South Carolina," I said. "I thought it was one of those states they made up so there would be fifty. Like Olkahoma."
"You're just upset because we call you Yankees," she said.
"Maybe," I said.
I told her I was going downtown to buy an album by The Terrifics that was being released exclusively in vinyl format. I didn't own a record player but I wanted the album.
"I have a record player," she said. "I'm not sure if it works."
"Does it have a needle?"
"I think so. My mother gave it to me."
"Ask her if it has a needle."
"She's dead."
I changed hands on the pole, startled, though I shouldn't have been, as flirtation usually involves precocious familiarity, asking and telling things ordinarily unshared with a stranger. They aren't grand secrets, they're just things any friend would know, but it's through the swift progression of revelation that a new intimacy arises.
"I'm picking up a friend at Penn Station," she told me as we transferred to the E train. "He's in the air force."
"A friend," I said, carrying her black bag.
"He called me up to say he was coming up from D.C. for the weekend. We went to college together. Medical school."
"You're a doctor? You look sixteen."
"I'm an intern at Sloan-Kettering."
"I'm healthy," I said.
"Terribly," she said and reached up to tug the collar of my jacket. We were melting, with a kind of instantaneousness that had little to do with each other and more to do with ourselves, a mutual affinity for being saved. I tried to convince her to leave her friend at the station but she wouldn't agree to it, though it seemed she wanted to. I accompanied her past my shop to Penn Station and walked her to the turnstile where she wrote her telephone number on my hand in red ink. Then she slipped her jacket over her head and I couldn't see her face.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said. "Come here."
I leaned in close, nervous, worried that the sweat on my hands would smudge the numbers. She turned her head and pressed her lips to my ear, as if she were going to whisper a secret. We were breathing in that dark, humid space, surrounded by the fever of strangers, and then she slipped the jacket off of both of us and walked away to meet her unwanted friend.