i enjoy eating thai food right out of the to-go container even if it’s aluminum which can taste jarring but i like the claustrophobia of the noodles and vegetables and tofu all stuffed inside of the bowl. tonight the rooftop overlooks an urban Catskills and Eric tells me his mom used to bring her mattress to the fire escape to sleep on hot summer nights and i like how that looks in my head. when i was younger we only had one air conditioning unit in my parent’s bedroom so we would bring our mattresses in and sleep on the floor it was like an ice box i never did understand why you’d turn a room into winter when it’s summer but i didn’t complain that never did me any good and my father would sleep with no fan in one of our rooms not sure why maybe to prove a point i never understood that either and when i would wake up in the morning the difference in temperature from outside of their room was so vastly different and it’s hard to eat in that sort of heat. the other day on a rooftop in Brooklyn a man in a pink shirt spoke of dyslexia for longer than i cared to hear and as i stood there patiently listening to nothing i thought about my dad sleeping in 100 degree weather by his own will and wondered if there was that much difference between us. doing something you don’t want to do and could easily not do but doing it anyway. a few moments later he spilled his beer all over my legs and sandals. later that evening at the restaurant over garlic shrimp and brussel sprouts i looked at the table across from us and saw a man in a button down shirt with the three top buttons loose like a low cut blouse and i couldn’t stop staring at his cleavage and wondering if this made him feel awkward but he never seemed to notice. that night i dreamt of dark skies and water and battleships and boats and the end of the world and woke up knowing without a doubt that it was time to install my air conditioners. is it possible for garlic parmesan fries to be titillating? i can never get passed the tit in that word.
