No. 91/92 Read online

  02/06/15

  Friday afternoon

  AHHHHHHHHLAAAAAAALAAAAAAAAAHUH HUH

  AHHHHHHHLAAAAALAAAAAAAAAHUH

  AHHHHUUUUHHHAAAHUUUUUGGHHHHHHHH

  (Keening child)

  02/10/15

  Tuesday afternoon

  On the 28 today just for a change. So many sweet little old ladies on this bus. Not enough seats to give up for them. It goes past our old apartment at 59 avenue de saxe. There are bits of white tape on all the windows. Has mme drouin sold? Or has she just installed new windows? I couldn't really see anything in my old room on the second floor except the open doorway into the hallway. In that room I cried with jetlag and missed my family, the furthest away from them I'd ever been, and read Wally lamb into the wee small hours of the morning. Later I would switch rooms with Shannon and she would have loud sex in there with her visiting boyfriend who was two years younger than us so we called him the fetus.

  02/13/15

  Friday morning

  I just miss my bus. It pulls away from the curb then gets stuck at the light. I think about knocking on the door to plead with the driver then I don't do it. I feel like I'm jinxed when it comes to these buses. They don't come for a long time and when they do it's right after you'd want them to.

  02/13/15

  Friday afternoon

  These young girls took the bus one stop from école militaire to duroc. Why? Where are they going? What are these lives that live in such increments, between one stop and another? They are incomprehensible to me. As I type this a guy brushes past me dramatically although there is plenty of room to go around me. My own path today is a collection of specific tasks tied to people and creatures. I had to pick up my check I had to get a croissant I had to shop for my niece I have to get medicine for my dog these are the needs that give logic to my trajet. What is theirs? Thinking of Debord and that young girl who only moved between three points in Paris. Let that never be me. Let me always venture out of my triangle, out of my bounds.

  02/20/15

  Friday morning

  Made the bus today instead of taking a cab. Feels virtuous, like going to the library. Actually it's a good workout running for them, changing, walking to work from the bus stop. The kind of workout you can do while eating a croissant. I've been spending too much money anyway. Went to see a lawyer the other day because they turned down my citizenship request, again. Last time it was because I was a graduate student and didn't have a full-time job. Votre situation est trop instable they said. This time they cited my lack of a full-time work contract. Votre insertion professionnelle est incomplète they said. Bollocks my lawyer said, well n’importe quoi is what she said, you're a writer. You've published books. How much more inserted can you be. There is no full-time contract for writers.

  The words they choose always amuse me. Unstable like I'm a wobbly table. Incomplete insertion like I'm an ATM card someone put in wrong.

  02/20/15

  Friday afternoon

  The mark of the non-native speaker—I can't hear why dégueulasse is more offensive and dirtier than dégoûtant but it is, a mother just chastised her daughter for saying it the same way an ex-boyfriend once chastised me and here I am standing because the only available seat is next to a man so smelly I had to stand back up and that is so fucking dégueulasse not to mention offensive.

  02/24/15

  Tuesday morning

  Someone drops their mobile, bends over to pick it up, drops it again. Thought of a bus story E told me. E was leaving a building where she was looking for an apartment. On her way out of the lobby she was jostled by a young boy running out of the building. As he bumped into her something fell to the floor. She thought it was her mobile that he had tried to steal. But as she picked it up, gathering the phone, the battery pack, the piece of plastic that holds the battery in, she saw that it was his. She ran out to find him and saw him sprinting towards a bus. She ran faster to try to catch him. He got on. The doors closed but the driver saw her running. She made it on and cried did someone drop a mobile? And the boy said I did! And the driver said t’as de la chance.

  02/24/15

  Tuesday afternoon

  I'm reading Hervé Guibert. In the middle of his book on photography he has a chapter about buses. It's as good a way to view the city as another. Better, even. You're on the move. Taking it all in. Slightly above all the congestion it clears our sight like menthol clears our sinuses—it is at the same time a tracking shot, a boom, and a pan. Pan out. Fan across. Two little blond boys playing with water guns on a wraparound balcony shoot at a man on the ground but he likes it and only pretends to yell at them.

  02/27/15

  Friday morning

  Have fallen into the dead zone between 91 buses. It's rush hour but they're in no rush. One bus every 8 minutes suits them fine.

  03/10/15

  Tuesday morning

  Back from spring break and I feel like crap. Today is a day when after weeks of terrible air pollution you can't see the Eiffel Tower in the haze and they have forbidden cars with even-numbered license plates from driving in Paris. And they've made public transport free. Some people haven't heard and they put their Navigo passes against the machines and it makes a rude noise and glows red. They think their passes don't work or maybe the machines. No one tells them. But there are so many people. A woman with a cane doesn't want to sit down when a girl offers her seat. To climb up and back down is toute une histoire she says, you have no idea, and anyway I'm getting off at the next stop. At the next stop she does and so does the girl and her friend and I take the seat near the window but even though there are so many people no one sits next to me, maybe it's apparent I'm getting sick. They ought to circulate more buses if they want everyone to take them.

  Look at all the smug drivers on the street with their odd-numbered license plates. Impaire. Unpaired. Every so often someone with an even license plate. They'll get a fine if they're caught. And meanwhile rumbles in my stomach and lower abdomen and the chills and oh god this is horrible and I'm late because even though there are fewer cars the bus takes just as long

  03/17/15

  Tuesday morning

  No seats on the bus today and I think I'm pregnant. But I prefer to stand.

  03/20/15

  Friday afternoon

  Suddenly the world is full of strollers. I pay attention to the way the parents angle them up and into the buses, I take note of who goes where, how they slide into their parking spaces, how the parents hit the brake to immobilize them, how they keep their kids quiet, how they stop them licking the walls of the bus. There are so many things to know now.

  03/24/15

  Tuesday morning

  So far not a single man has given up his seat for me, my friend J said when she came to town, six months pregnant. The only people who stand for me are women.

  03/24/15

  Tuesday afternoon

  I'm exhausted from growing a human and the buses are slow. Couldn't wait 14 min for the next 92 so I jumped in a cab. It follows my bus all the way home. I get off at my stop.

  03/25/15

  Wednesday afternoon

  Sometimes I get the bus for one stop now. I lean against the railing in the handicapped area and contemplate this new reality. Everything smells so intense like it's all been sprayed with a perfume of its own scent, like the smells are in high definition, if high definition could make you want to hurl.

  03/26/15

  Thursday morning

  Paris sent la merde ce matin pas vrai?

  03/26/15

  Thursday night

  There are a lot of people on the tram!

  03/27/15

  Friday morning

  #sympathyjoyandfellowfeelingofbuspausingforsomeonerunningtocatchthebus

  #annoyanceofthebuspausingtowaitforsomeonerunningtocatchit

  #anguishofrunningtomakethebusandmissingit

  #satisfactionofrunningtocatchthebusandmakingit

  03/27/15

 
Friday afternoon

  This bus is on diversion. The driver breaks the fourth wall to tell us. Then so do the passengers, consulting and commiserating with each other whereas ten minutes ago they pretended they were invisible. All of us departing from convention.

  03/31/15

  Tuesday morning

  You never see people begging on the bus. Taking the bus you only see a certain kind of person. There are some women who just to look at them makes you think they smell like cigarettes and heavy secret smells and would get eye makeup all over your pillow. These women I often see on the bus.

  03/31/15

  Tuesday afternoon

  The bus is full and I have to stand. A little girl is standing next to me, her head at my hip. She looks up at me, then begins to play with a frayed place on the thigh of my jeans. She's singing a little song that goes hello hello then I can't understand the rest of the words. She looks up to see if I mind her playing with the loose threads on my jeans. Hello! I say brightly in English, and scare her.

  04/01/15

  Wednesday afternoon

  Girls using the bendy part of the bus as a jungle gym. They stick their feet in the accordion part and hoist themselves up with their arms til they're parallel to the ground. Then one does this while the other slips underneath her making a table of her back, then slowly rises up. They wouldn't dare this in rush hour.

  04/03/2015

  Friday morning

  When did absolutely everyone get pregnant? No one ever used to be. Now they all are. The word “pregnant” is different now, I think I'll never use it metaphorically again, not that I ever really did, though I do like my pauses, pregnant or otherwise

  04/03/15

  Friday afternoon

  A pregnant woman tries to get on but another woman nearly throws her off the step in her hurry to get on the bus first. She finally makes it on but the only open seat is inhabited by a woman's bag. The pregnant woman is able to make her move it but only with effort. The woman thinks her bag needs her seat more than a woman with a soccer ball for a stomach.

  04/07/15

  Tuesday morning

  The morning thumb ballet of checking all the things I check on my phone now includes reading these emails telling me what kind of legume I'm growing. Poppy seed, sesame seed, lentil.

  it's spring, you can feel it coming on so subtle

  04/07/15

  Tuesday afternoon

  Sitting on a bench. So much teaching. So many hormones. A strange combination. Things they say in class sometimes bring an unexpected tear to my eye. Or I get choked up when I tell them how it makes me sad when they plagiarize. Such a feeling of relief to see the bus round the corner. My hero.

  04/10/15

  Friday morning

  we're moving soon and I won't be taking this bus anymore. I'll be taking the metro. And in a month I won't be teaching at this school anymore. I hope I'll have a job at another school, a permanent job, a real job. If I don't I'll just work on my writing til the baby comes. That would be nice too. Everything is about to be hard but so nice.

  04/10/15

  Friday afternoon

  It should be illegal to wear perfume on public transport.

  And to eat crisps.

  04/14/15

  Tuesday morning

  The impatience and the having to wait of pregnancy.

  This will teach you time.

  04/14/15

  Tuesday afternoon

  I pretty much had to yank the iPhone out of this dude's hands to get him to look up long enough to let me through to the inside seat. This is public space in the age of the cell phone. Rare bus today— he and I are the only people I can see looking at screens.

  So many women in black and white striped marinières. And I'm one of them.

  Oh now I see two people both men on their phones plus us.

  A kid reads Astérix matin. Is that like the Daily Goblin for french kids?

  Another plays with some kind of abacus. One of the beads is a bus. He makes it have a very dramatic accident. Regarde le bus il s’est écrasé! PSCHHHHHHHUUUUUU

  04/17/20

  Friday morning

  Someone smells so fucking bad.

  Is that window broken? I ask no one in particular.

  A woman sending a text message in front of me. Désolée que je n’étais pas de bonne humeur la prochaine fois j’irai mieux.

  We pull to a stop outside a shiny black marble-faced building. Myself reflected in the wall.

  04/17/15

  Friday afternoon

  There is a slightly older woman with dyed black hair and a sour expression and I do not give up my seat for her. I've been teaching all day and after that I had my office hours and I have been talking and explaining and showing and giving and illustrating and trying to make connections and I am pregnant whether you see it or not and now I'm bloody well going to sit in this seat thank you very much

  04/22/15

  Wednesday morning

  83 for once. En route to our first ultrasound, they're doing it early to date it.— it's early but not that early. nearly 7 weeks. they say they might hear a heartbeat. I just want to see the little lentil-blueberry on the screen.

  04/22/15

  Wednesday afternoon

  They can't see anything on the ultrasound not a poppyseed not a lentil certainly not a blueberry and now I have to do a blood test every 24–48 hours to measure my beta hcg numbers. they have to double every day or so for it to be growing right.

  The first thing my sister says when I tell her is stay off the internet. Those are the exceptional cases, she says, those are the outliers. You're going to be fine. Stay off the internet. stay off the internet. don't be scared of the outliers.

  I didn't want to say—but I've never been an inlier.

  04/22/15

  Wednesday evening

  4467.

  04/24/15

  Friday afternoon

  4918.

  04/25/15

  Saturday night

  It's in the tube, they found it in the tube. ectopic it's called. that's greek for “out of place.” that's greek for “what the fuck”

  Methotrexate cancer shot taxi home now we wait for it to bleed

  04/26/15

  Sunday night

  No bleeding, no pain, no symptoms, they're going to have to operate. Not today please I said, can we do it tomorrow, just give me the night. Medical emergency they said, we need to do it now. No medical emergency I said, no bleeding no pain no symptoms, just give me the night. OK but you have to sign this form that says you're crazy.

  Form signed taxi home operation tomorrow.

  stupid baby, you'd never survive in the world anyway

  04/27/15

  Monday morning

  Taxi. Boulevard Port-Royal. How many times have I gone down this road on the 91 with no idea that one day I'd be admitted to one of these hospitals, examined, probed, that they'd take my blood, my urine, tell me the baby's in the tube and it can't stay there and we can't go on like this.

  Lay me down, put me out, take my tube, send me home.

  04/30/15

  Thursday morning

  It hurts to breathe, laugh, cough, sneeze, feels like I'm tearing my abdominal muscles, like my diaphragm is ragged.

  The days have come apart. I don't leave the bed. Don't use my phone except to write this. Check email on my laptop. I can't answer any messages though people send nice ones.

  I watch television, I lose myself in other people's plot lines, I watch people who exist pretend to be people who don't exist.

  05/02/15

  Saturday afternoon

  The disorientation of not expecting to be here. you plan your journey, you know the route, but even one stop short of where you were headed and there's just no salvaging the day.

  well that bus was uncomfortable and there were too many people on it. still it felt like the only way to get to where I thought I was going.

  the part I hate is that I d
on't even know for sure if I wanted a kid. it all got so medical so quickly. people ask when you're going to have one and you say now soon and they're happy to hear it and you're happy to say it and then it all goes wrong and you're the one lying in bed minus an organ. you can't just do these things to make other people happy.

  it's time to stop calculating time.

  05/15/15

  Friday morning

  made it to school to give them their final exam. haven't seen them in weeks. one asks where I've been, asks right in front of everyone. we thought you fell down some stairs they say. I can't bring myself to tell them. what do you tell them? we'd all just feel uncomfortable. I read maggie nelson while they scribble in their blue books.