Maybe because the show was too good

(and I didn't even want to be there but was instantly much cooler for it and would talk incessantly about it later
and I knew that)

or maybe because I felt like a fraud in my department store jeans next to dirty, sexy people whose "look, my girlfriend cut my hair"

(except really it cost as much as my rent in Cincinnati.
On the second-to-top floor.
With a fireplace.)

haircuts made me salivate and turn green or maybe because I was in a big, scary city surrounded by strangers and wanted to look.

Or maybe because I really do have a bad hip.
Sometimes.

I understand places and things better if I memorize a small piece. So I sat on the sticky pavement until I would've sworn my butt had sprouted roots and examined the nature of the trash (living and not) and the dirtypenny smell of the chain-link fence and the birdlike women (all acute angles) with their long, long talons and beaky faces. I counted clouds and inspected shoes

(expensive, Bright, Impractical. made for candyfeet
not real toes that get grungy and blistered)

and waited, miserably content. I was very confident that I had done something horrible

(would you still love me? did I still love me?)

But soon being horrible would not be an option anymore. I would dance in a graveyard and drink too much of someone else's liquor and not do much of anything else.

unmentionables and all that goes with them.
I was raised Catholic, you know.
yes, masochistic too.

And I would go home, ever-so-cautiously. ohyes, It helps to examine the small pieces.