Photo Credit Anna Marcell.

You saw me there in downtown Saigon, shouting. At a wall. All sorts of weird shit. If I have a defense, it’s that I looked up from thoughts that fired pieces of me out the fringes of a frown. They were all over the walkway. And it was goddamn stressing. All those hours circling Đồng Khởi street, deciding whether I should go back and pick them up. Stick them in my shoe to fix my janky ass gait, soul. Always uneven these days. Maybe sit down on the sidewalk and sigh. Wait for the wind to blow them to me. Or my manic man-arms to collect them all. And then I’d know what to do.

And I heard a sound. A chortle. Some goddamn British woman knocking me back into reality. With 100 people around me stepping on my shoes. Get out of the way, fuckhead. Your emotions don’t have the right of way here.

Bittersweet celebrations,
I know I can’t change what happened
I can’t help it, I can’t help it,
I was young and I was selfish

My eyes. Remembered there was a sky. Looked up at that plate glass wall you saw me at. And some asshole was staring back at me. So I shouted. Random bits of wankery and vulgar poetry. Like I used to do when I’d sink back onto Manhattan streets after sprinting away from myself on my skull’s sinewy synapses. I’d become self-aware. Remember I still lived in meatspace. I’d roar the first four words in my head. To singe the air with the scent of me. For others to sniff and think of me like that sweater your jackass ex-boyfriend left at your house. The one you vacuum pack. To remember the softer side of your heart. Or masturbate to. It was such a special occasion. Those moments I dug myself out my disassocation. Claim your space, motherfucker. Before your thoughts waft you back up into your head.

It made sense to you. To see me pouncing on plate glass. Such a Kavi thing to do. That asshole: yeah, you know now it was me I saw. I always forget I exist. And there, suddenly I did. Instinctively, that spot on the sidewalk was a celebration. I was ashamed. That a grown man needed a party for spontaneously landing on Planet Earth. Then this song spoke some fucking truth. It’s been this way since I cut out the liver of. Tossed the tongue off the Chrysler building. Divorced acrimoniously the stupid.fucking.face of Drake’s dichotomy to live by: being ‘somewhere between psychotic and iconic’.

People I believed in
They don’t even show they face now
What they got to say now?
Nothin’ they can say now
Nothin’ really changed
But still they look at me a way now

Iconic Me is sitting on the curbs of Soho somewhere. Hopefully. I don’t know. It was always a weak ass part of me with flashes of brilliance. No street smarts though. Probably got hit by a car seconds after I shot it out me. To survive. To cloak myself in a security blanket of my eccentricity. To make it through those days when I was living like I was dying. Cos I was. All my weirdness shielded me from knowing no one was around. Made excuses for the solitude. I lived. I’ve lived,

Somewhere between I want it and I got it
Somewhere between I’m sober and I’m lifted
Somewhere between a mistress and commitment

These days my sentences are muted. You think I’m secretive. Cloistered. I just don’t paint for you even a smidgen of the pornographic scenes that make up the Bruce LaBruce absurdity of my breaths. Wisps of Iconic Me

Still been drinkin’ on the low, mobbin’ on the low
Fuckin’ on the low, smokin’ on the low
I still been plottin’ on the low, schemin’ on the low

I’d shattered every time I exploded in NYC. Because I’d planted my feet on Christopher Street. Instead of someone pulling me down from that space near the pinnacle of the Empire State Building I floated around. And thought, always, of jumping.

It’s been years and years. In a city brimming with American sized egos, I still tagged my name on any surface in NYC that wouldn’t have me. To show I was there. That’d I’d made a difference. That I’d shifted the world a sliver off the murder scene it likes to roll in. Always succeded by the ferocity of a smile that only existed because I’d forgotten how to scream. Luck. A life outside poverty. Never were mine. I ran to the finish line by sheer force of fucking will. Almost always lost a kneecap a kilometer back, but fuck that noise. I was Iconic because I was a Me. A real person in a world of waifs and collections of tendons that take the subway.

How did I get here? An embarrassing chunk of time later, still writing you letters to make sense of a shitty little bit of myself you happened to witness. Because I’d decided I didn’t matter. So much so I couldn’t see the streets of Saigon. Couldn’t see me, so I shouted at the stranger danger. Fuck.

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