Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

Back in NY straggling home from the office, I’d do the burp fart shuffle four blocks south from my stop, trying to forget which building was mine, trying to forget which apartment. I could live anywhere, I thought, I could put my key to any door, not a card to swipe but a dagger to stab and turn — wounding any door, wounding any lock, and the insides that would weep for me, the roomy rumen and innards viscera, all that bark and sap and heartwood ringing, would be similar or same. They’d heal, but even when they wouldn’t, I could always exchange them, I could always upgrade — with no regard for brand if new. The new — once the time of the unprecedented, now the time of the compatible.

It’s mortifying, but this also went for women — the thought that any woman could accommodate, could give me what I expected from a life. The fault, then, would be with the expectations — downsized, reduced — the fault, then, would be mine.

My landing was temporary, hard on the heels. Junior Caliph Floor #2, North.

I leaned against the jamb. Against the bar. Open Sesame. If no one’s around, no alarm will sound.

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I hadn’t realized I’d left the sink on. I washed my hands with my hands, cracked my knucks from numbness to stinging — if only minibars carried Vicodin or Percocet.

Admit it, I was smitten. Me, the stricken party.

I’d been aroused by a woman wearing a sweaty tent, a woman I don’t know, can’t ever touch to know Biblically let alone get proximal to for a chat in a neutral language — it’s absurd. With a husband too. To whose swart cheek I’d delivered democracy. Four fingers of unrequited democracy, not even the thumb opposable.

Her husband? who else? Next corridor please let it be a widow I encounter. A cripple. May the next corridor be so empty I can only save myself.

I was desked again, chaired again — the primal scene.

It’s difficult to concentrate — difficult to pay attention, though it accepts any currency current.

I downed trou, tried to get a honker. Tried to beat my cock like it was leukemia. Twisted my scrotum like the wallsafe knob. Then I switched to stroke my shaft with the hand that bled and throbbed. I managed a half honk, a sputter. A corpse’s lean on the wheel.

If only I could shrink like my hair into a single follicle. If only I could zip into my wheelie and mail myself flatrate, at email rates, on home.

I rooted around the nethercompartment of my wheelie, surfaced with my smut — these pages too glossy to gloss. I surrounded myself with the porn, flicked, flipped, unstuck the pages to loosen me up.

I knew as much about these women as I did about that girl. I knew more about “Agnès,” pp. 20–22 her spread, in French. At least I know “her name.” Better to know her name than her herpes.

Masturbation feels different with different hands and without a ring, which I’d left behind in Ridgewood, jarred in clay with the clamps and clips, Moms’s cloying amber glaze. To compensate, then, I rolled the pages around me, positioning their binding staple just at the seam the ring once touched, and stroked, as if I were scraping away a model’s hipbone mole or removing jiggle from her thighs.

With this I managed a bit of length, of longness. A width that wouldn’t flatter girth. Trying for an elevator shaft, straight up and down, getting the incline of a stairwell. Trying for Rach’s shape, narrow and hard, but getting that girl’s — a swerving curviness.

The lamp stood straight in the corner, its metal stanchion staunch, incorruptible. The table with the ice bucket rose immovably, stiff. Two glasses erectly stemmed, unbreakable bottles of booze. Cigarettes, matches, undisturbed smooth. Her bawdy chaudey lips léchouille, bouchey coochie coo. Her khaki hands cupping my sac.

But then the imam interrupted and the call for Isha was all that arose: Allah hu akhbar, chafing, Allah hu akhbar, chapping, Allah hu — my cock bowed over my thumb.

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I went for my Tetbook, dented and loosed of a Return key, which went chattering around the tote like a tooth. Everything was running slower. Walking, crawling, load. Its cord, its powercable, raveling, unraveling. I weaved it between my fingers to make four insulated rings for the friction, for the frictive pleasure, and wrapped the rest snug around my base — what to call the connection of cock to scrotum along that seam like a perforation on old printer paper with the holes? Don’t tetrate, resist the urge to tetrate (“what to call the connection of cock to scrotum along that seam like a perforation on old printer paper with the holes”) — and, while I’m at it, what’s the difference between raveling and unraveling ?

No, memory will not be, cannot be, refreshed — is it the Chinese or the Japanese socket that has the slitty slanted eyes and slashes for ears? or is the proper term not socket but outlet ?

The computer’s coolant fan was squealing at pitch with the room fan, with an equal frequency of rotation.

I thought I had to have some porn in storage, some neglected impulse stuff I hadn’t called upon in forever, and, according to tech, according to psychoanalysis, everything transferred. Metaphor, its literal meaning is transference, but tech doesn’t think in metaphors. In similes, maybe, which are like or as math. Regardless, the originals, if ever originated, would’ve remained from my former setup. Time to rouse the past. Raise the clotheless ghosts.

I opened a window — not a real actual window, rather an otherness or alterity — a sill for my filth. I browsed internally by all the cumskein verbiage that occurred to me — blowjob pov, reverse cowgirl, reverse cowgirl Arabian Indian Pakistani teen, curry pussy, spicy biryani pussy, French maid proctolgia purring barky British boardingschool accent — no results. Then browsed by types of files—.avi, flv, mpeg, mpe, mpg, mov, even went for the.jpegs, jpgs, tiffs and.gifs, pngs and.raws — zero (0) results. I’d modernized too precipitously, adopted too early, never saved my vulgarity to memory, relied too much on streaming — how much I had to stream.

I emailed Aaron: email me some porn. I emailed Caleb: email me some porn. I emailed Finnity: email me some porn. I emailed them all again, not cc: but bcc:, my preferences. Tried some social profiles, the Tetsets: Lana’s square, which featured just professional headshot pics and shaky footage of her lecturing, was socialized with the square of a Patagonian preservationist at the Met, who though she was too old to get me up was coupled virtually with the square of her darkfeatured daughter, who though she was too young to keep me up was coupled virtually with the squares of maybe cousins or friends of intermediate ages whose unprotected images extended from last springbreak to last weekend’s MDMA excursion culminating in a mass makeout in the middle of the Pulaski Bridge.

I tugged my wire, charged myself.

But then another window opened, to shut my own — the prayer of Fajr. There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His slayer of boners.

I clicked away, to Rach’s blog.

What was new wasn’t the vid of a client picnic — Governors Island, all leis and tikis, account execs wattlenecked sweating the BBQ, multistrawed canisters of daiquiri and piña colada sweating pixels — I sat through all of it but Rach never made an appearance. Neither was it the pic of the rental condo we’d had in the Hamptons, “Steatite counters!” “Miele appliances!” shelves of salty cookbook, the landlord’s romance and detective novels, the only thing human a suede docksider shoe disembodied on the maple — Adam’s, it had to be.

Rather what was new was a comment. If I can call a thing a comment that has nothing to do with an original. Rach’s blog is offered for free, which must be taken to mean: only at the price of reaction. But I wouldn’t react — not yet.