Drake's "Own It"

Outside the discount DVD store on Broadway, the guy out front was shouting. He was shouting: "Everything! Everything is on sale!"

It was a deliriously beautiful day. The oceans are rising. We will drown one day because we can't quit our addiction to fossil fuels, but before that day comes we get to experience these amazing eighty degree October days.

I was listening to the new Drake album on my headphones. My head was turning every which way. There was so much beauty out on the streets today. My head kept turning that way and then this, following the sight of that beautiful man and then this one.

Everything! Everything is on sale!

The sun was on my skin and I was on my way to get my hair cut. Fade on the sides please - #1. Everyone was in a good mood. The Polish haircutter started talking Spanish to me. He told me I had very good hair, very full, very healthy.

I felt less than healthy. I could see the glow of sweat, of alcohol from the night before seeping out through my skin, in my reflection in the mirror as I watched him buzz off finally the last little remnants of my bleached summer hair that was still clinging to the tips of my hair. It is gone. There is now a break between that time and this. I went to a concierge event last nightat a West Village restaurant with some co-workers, got quite drunk on rose, and then went out to Nick and Diego's house where I drank more rose, then some rum, and from which we then all migrated to Metropolitan, where I made eyes at boys, drank PBRs, smoked a truly disgusting amount of cigarettes, and danced to Roisin Murphy songs as well as other ones I can recall less clearly.

With my hair looking good, I walked through the West Village, through Washington Square Park, down Christopher Street, and down to the Hudson River. I lay out on the piers, taking in the sun, this beautiful day. I read from The Brothers Karamazov, which after years of picking up and putting down, I am finally close to finishing. I think it will happen tomorrow. A cute boy came and spread his towel a few feet away from me. He took off his shirt and his shoes. He had beautiful skin that I kept fantasizing about, but it was his feet that prevented me from reading any further. They were beautiful. Their perfect proportions and symmetry, proof of the divine. I was getting so turned on. Luckily I had my sunglasses on so I could covertly stare at him, at his feet.

At some point, I let the sight go. I packed up my stuff and walked up along the Hudson River to my gym uptown. I was listening to the Drake album again. I stopped to admire the beautiful ruins of a pier long gone, its wooden supports barely peeking out over the bobbing surface of the water. These weathered wooden poles lodged deep in the river floor, built to last. Whatever pier rested on them long gone, but these poles still showing the shape of a trail, a path out over the water.