"Natty Ice"

Last night, I wanted to get in touch with nature and feel real again. I started by lying naked on the ground of my apartment. Face down, I studied the grain of the wood my ribs pressing into the second floor. Hearing my neighbor below having sex made me realize these perfectly man-made strips of wood were not getting me any closer to touching mother nature's finger tips. I sat up and returned to my mattress. Tomorrow I will try again, I thought. I awoke with new hope that it was possible to feel alive in this city. I lie on the pavement for 15 minutes, staring up into the narrow view of blue and felt nothing.  I climbed a tree on Perry Street; I swung and gripped the unevenly textured branches and noticed the spray painted "X", meaning it would be cut down. I wasn’t getting anywhere.

I took the 1 train to 59^th Street and smiled — surely Central Park would hold everything I had been missing. I walk down the paths and past the lake full of rowboats. I see readers, coffee drinkers, and couples lying on top of each other. I am feeling better already. I see a nice lawn and decide to slip off my shoes and lay down. With my hands behind my head, I inhale. Breathing, feeling the grass in my toes and the sky above my head, I smell something awful. I push my body up to my elbows and looked around. An Upper West Side woman in Louboutin heels just let her little dog shit three feet away from my nature-loving session. I watched as she scooped up the dog, unlike the feces, and opened her bag, dropping it in just like the other material possessions in the large leather purse. Those heels walked away smoothly in a way only certain a woman does. Cunt, I thought. I was fully upright sitting in the huge grass field, feeling frustrated and defeated. As I walked back to the subway, all the optimism I had felt on my walk to the park had been replaced with the sight of a homeless man peeing off a rock;  nannies with babies crying in strollers, missing their own mothers that are too busy to take care of them. This was a disaster.

I passed the doorman, I took the stairs to the rooftop of my building. Maybe the ground isn't what I need, I thought. I stomped to the ninth floor, excited to swing the door open and feel the freeing sensation of the sky above me. It was almost sundown and the world had never looked better. I stood with my toes on the edge the roof. I inhaled once again with my palms facing up. Sure, I felt an adrenaline rush, and I had never stood on the edge of a building before. Don’t worry I wasn’t trying to kill myself — that comes later.  Anyways, I feel the air. New York and the lights are all around me, and I'm still not feeling in-touch with nature, just in touch with, well, being up high. The only thing making me feel alive was the thought of my foot slipping. A person coughed behind me. I turned, he was putting out his cigarette. He smiled, I smiled. He opened the door and was gone. I stepped down onto a table, jumped back to the gravel, and retied my shoe.

Lying on my mattress again, I sunk my head deep into the feather pillows and thought of what drives me to live—what makes me scared. If that fear is from nature, I must find it.

I woke thinking of water. I sprinted down Charles Street, past Washington Street, and onto the highway. The freezing air burned my lungs. I had neither a jacket nor the sweatpants from Grossmont Center that my mom purchased because she loved the five-dollar deals at the store with singing animals at the entrance. The faster I ran the more I thought my bra was going to snap off from how hard my heart was pounding. I ran past the West Side highway and onto the astroturf. What the fuck is this? Astroturf? Really? I swear to fucking God... 

I turned and ran onto the pier. I can’t get away from it. It was winning. But the wind was so strong that I knew maybe this time was different. I felt the uneasy planks of wood beneath my tennis shoes swivel with each step. The Hudson River was murky and brown. The waves were violently pushing into each other, slamming into the pier and then back together again. I wondered what it would feel like to be that powerful. 

New Jersey was staring at me and I was glaring back. I thought of the spray tans and gym memberships. I sat on the ledge watching my feet dangle. I thought of porn magazines and beauty pageants. I felt the bleach in my hair and licked my corrected teeth. Nothing natural exists anymore, except birth, death and sex—and all of those have been objectified and materialized. I thought of my future daughter and how I’d never want this world for her. She would be an object, and I would make her into one everyday. I slipped smoothly into the water. Unlike the violent waves crashing, my body seemed to melt into the ice water and liquefy into an orgasm of colors and shapes—and then calm darkness. I always did like nighttime.

—CBF