Roof Camping

I have been unusually studious the past few days, turning off the tv and the computer and going out to Hardees and the coffee shops to work on reading and writing (although thankfully no ‘rithmetic), reading Alice Notley and Joyce Johnson ad Jack Zipes on the roof of my apartment building, which is lovely once you manage to navigate the windows that open outward. The first time I came out I spilled my diet coke, which now sits in undrinkable puddles in roof indentations, evaporating quickly like the leftovers from a rainstorm. Had to leave the house to go to the corner market to get some more, this time bringing the bottle out and then my glass of ice separately. Live and learn, my mother used to say. Like the time my friends and I went camping because I had just bought a pup tent with my newly-minted Sears charge card. We couldn’t figure out how to put the tent up, despite the instructions in Japanese and in French, which I had three years of and could barely speak, and so we just tied the tent strings to the window frames of my car. Then we tried to cook some food on the grill, but the crumbs kept falling off the frozen onion rings that we were turning with melting plastic forks like Dali clocks because I didn’t think to buy actual grilling utensils or actual food, and so the crumbs kept falling through the grill grates. We laughed and laughed at ourselves and ate what crumbs remained on the grill and it turned into a great story.

It’s a little awkward climbing through the window and then standing up, since I am wearing a mini-skirt and a tank top, the lightest pieces of clothing that were nearest my bed and when I bend over, the skirt keeps riding up. But, I think, it’s just an ass. Everybody has one. And then I giggle and think, although not everyone else’s is as fine as mine. The neighbors will just have to scratch their eyes out. They are lucky I have any clothes on at all. But the day is young. And I’m not as young as I used to be/never was, and life is short and mine is getting shorter. So we shall see. It ain’t over til it’s over.