Last night, walking to Diego's house, clouds were shrouding the Chrysler Building, its beautiful lit curves visible through the fog. This city that sometimes seems so removed from the physical reality of this planet, of nature, connected with it last night in a way that seemed to me then, and still so in recollection, particularly beautiful.

Early this afternoon, I went to an apartment in Hell's Kitchen. It was on the 45th floor of the building, up in the clouds, the view astounding. The clouds were already doing something interesting today, were big and massive in a way that reminded me of the clouds in Florida, awesome things that took up the whole horizon sometimes. From the window there, I could see all of lower Manhattan and these massive clouds gliding above the Hudson River.

The scene in the apartment was weird. It was an escort and an old man, the old man probably still high from the night before, seemingly barely there. The other escort, really sexy thing who I was very glad to fool around with and to get paid for doing so, was aware of the older man's cluelessness, had seemingly dealt with him many times before. He told me just to make it look like I was fucking him, to not actually penetrate him, and that was all we had to do, that the guy paying us wouldn't know. So me and this hot boy fooled around in bed while the older man putzed about the bedroom, looking at us, going out to the living room (probably to do more drugs), and then coming back to watch some more. We put on a show, he on top of me and really close to my body, and we pantomimed fucking, this guy watching us none the wiser.

I got dressed, admiring the apartment and its view, made chit chat with these two, and felt weird about the encounter I was about to depart.

The clouds, beautiful things, and the warm weather kept me outside. I bought a salad and sat in a park to eat it. I could see the black mass of sky moving in from New Jersey and it seemed that I could finish the salad before those clouds made it to me. They were quick though, sneaky things, and a few bites into my salad the rain came down. There was a bit of sadness about not being able to finish my lunch outside but sometimes you have to bow to things so awesome, those clouds today being such things, such massive, humbling things that they are allowed to inconvenience me.