Still Life #1 My ex-girlfriend was asked to smoke crack topless with an infamous nightclub owner whose exact name she was not given, but was inferred. She would be paid $200 an hour to perform this task and she was asked to find a few more women to participate. The message that was left on her answering machine said something like this, "We're looking for attractive women to hang out with him with their tops off, no sex required." She got on the horn and called a bunch of her friends. I sat in her corner chair flipping through a magazine I wasn't really into. Although my inclination was to Just "say no to crack?" after her fifth call with no progress, I looked up and asked her if she thought that I should do it with her. "They're looking for attractive women, Cheryl," she said and began dialing again. I fixed myself a whiskey and ginger ale and drank it as I watched her get ready to go. Still Life #2 Another ex-girlfriend used bulk force to keep me at home. The force she used came in the form of her rather massive body lying on top of mine in such a way that I could not get off the bed, couch, floor or wherever she wanted to keep me. She weighed over one hundred pounds more than me. One time after we broke up but were still living together, she followed me through Tompkins Square Park and sat on me on one of the benches, saying, "So, you wanna leave, huh? You think you can leave?" It was a nice early Saturday evening in the Spring and people in general were beginning to get drunk and happy. She finally got off of me when I yelled for help and a cop headed our way. She went off in the opposite direction as the officer approached us. I looked back and forth between the two, an absurd kaleidoscope of movement, methodical and inexplicable. "Miss, are you all right? Do you want to get a restraining order?" He said to me. His voice sounded distant. I watched my ex-girlfriend move down the pathway, back towards our building. "Miss," he said again, agitated and trying to see if I was listening. "Yes. No." I answered, "I don't want to get a restraining order." He shook his head and walked away. I barreled down Avenue A trying to figure out the best way to forget. Still Life # 3 I met you in the kitchen, remember, we'd actually met before, briefly and awkwardly, being two awkward people, but we really met in the kitchen at that party, playing cards. You dealt out the hands and explained the game to the rest of us. I felt shaky and wired. I tried to focus, staring at a bowl of plastic fruit at the other end of the table. I had misunderstood the phone invitation to this gathering, thinking it was a cocktail party when it was really a coke-tail party, and the indulgence was starting to kick in. I remember you saying that the person with the highest points won the game and when I unfolded my hand on the table, I was told I was the winner. I got up to go to the bathroom and you were waiting for me when I got out, your head cocked against the frame of the door, your blue eyes looking fondly, curiously at me. We navigated our way through the rest of the evening with conversations half finished and bathed in innuendo. The next day our legs were entwined and a lime was split open on my kitchen counter, dripping juice into the sink. Still Life # 4 We sit in a red vinyl booth at the bar in the springtime. There are tiny light bulbs encased in plastic flowers to celebrate the season. We watch the lights blink on and off until the guy with the vest is dancing again. We call him Vest Man. Tonight a gold chain is bouncing on his white turtleneck sweater. We watch him crane his neck like a camel and you tell me you wish you could see me in baggy jeans and a pocket tee, no lipstick and you don't want me to shave. I don't want to question your taste, but I know there are glossy tomes full of smooth women held hostage under your mattress and Polaroids of past lovers sleeping in your night table drawer. I am forced to sneak cosmetics like cigarettes in a schoolyard.