Thirty by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online

can afford it. The apartment, not going to Chile. It’s one largish room with a tiny kitchenette and a tinier bathroom. And it’s $375 a month, which is scandalous, but I just don’t care. I’d be afraid to live in a bad neighborhood. And I have the money and all the credit cards and money is just not going to be one of the things I worry about now. I have other things.
    I think I was very clever about the car. I parked it in a lot and mailed the parking check to Howard at his office.
    I haven’t had sex with anyone since the shoveler. I haven’t even had the desire to masturbate. Perhaps I’ll manage to get picked up tonight.
    February 21
    I didn’t.
    February 25
    This is the neighborhood I was living in before I met Howard. (Which undoubtedly has something to do with my returning to it. I realized that at the time. Nevertheless, it is the most sensible place for me to be living now.)
    But the point is that I feel as though all of those years have somehow dropped away. I don’t know how to explain this, how to find words to go with the tune. Let me see. It’s as if I’m fitting back into the pattern of living I had then, except of course that I don’t have a job to go to five days a week, and that I don’t know anybody. There was a time when I seemed to know half the people in the Village. I wonder where they all went to. They couldn’t all be living in ranch homes and driving station wagons. Could they?
    I wake up in the late morning, I go to the coffee shop around the corner for a roll and a cup of coffee. I buy the Times, I wander over to Washington Square, I sit on a bench and read the paper. Sometimes at night I go to a movie. Sometimes in the afternoon I buy something at a bookstore and take it to the coffee house on Bleecker Street. I read and drink espresso and watch the people. And I find myself belonging to this and no longer possessed by a house and a car and a husband.
    There is a man who comes to the coffee house frequently. He reads or plays chess by himself. He seems to know everyone there.
    A very exciting man.
    I don’t know why this should be so. He’s not handsome in any of the generally accepted ways. (Whatever precisely they may be.) But there is, oh, something about him.
    What?
    Let us describe him. A long face. Dark brown, almost black hair, and quite a lot of it, lying shaggy on his neck like the mane of a mighty lion. A hawkish nose. Keen, rather intense eyes. A mouth one might describe as sensual. A mouth I might describe as sensual, anyway.
    I don’t quite feel I have created a vivid word-portrait of this man. He must be thirty-seven or so, but it’s possible that he’s a good deal older than that but seems younger because he is in such good shape, very long and lean and capable looking.
    That’s it! The last words, capable looking. That’s what it is about him, his presence, his air of competence, of authority.
    I wonder if I should make an effort?
    Maybe one doesn’t make an effort with such as he. Maybe he summons one when he wants one.
    And maybe, for all I know, he’s a screaming faggot (of which there are certainly enough in this neighborhood) and I’m building him up in my mind for no good reason at all.
    I think I’ll get in bed and think about him.
    Is it progress to reach the point where you can not only plan to masturbate but admit it to yourself in writing? Or is it only a symptom of further deterioration?
    Would I perhaps be better off paying this $375 a month to a shrink?
    Excuse me, I have to think of Tall Dark and Capable while I play with myself. I’m damp already. Quel disgusting!
    February 27
    I finally got laid last night.
    It’s really about time. One begins to feel foolish, all this sexual freedom, an apartment in the Village, no strings on me, and ten days in a row without getting close to anything more exciting than my own finger.
    Nothing has happened yet with Eric. That’s his name. I have learned that much about him, and we are at the point now