First Date, Manhattan, 1998
the problem of trying to maintain the conversation the mood and tone of the moment when on the other side of her a hurting hungry middle-aged man with an unkempt beard and long scraggly hair talking to voices only he can hear who could have been my father if my father weren’t already three years dead an untimely found by Burlington police in a rundown studio apartment two weeks after his release from the state hospital ten months after his hell year homeless slowly starving and freezing on Church Street 800 miles from where we are now crossing 37th Street with me trying to not look back again at this moment to tamp down the anger and frustration at everyone including myself to tell myself the book which I have just started writing will be not enough nothing will be enough I know that but it will be something what I am capable of heading to my apartment with a very attractive no stunningly beautiful tall blonde with the best eyes and smile I’ve ever seen the problem has never left me not from that day to this one and neither has she for better and for worse even though I am now three years older than he ever was or will be him who I still see every time I visit the city I loved and gave up and left for these suburbs which I long to leave and will one day I have to I really have to one way or another
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is a disabled author of books for children and adults. His first book, The Outsider, which takes as its subject his late father’s struggles with schizophrenia and homelessness, was published by Broadway Books. Nathaniel has forthcoming/recently published poems, stories and essays with Subtropics, The American Poetry Review, Poetry International Online, North Dakota Quarterly, Red Rock Review, Blue Unicorn, Potomac Review, Permafrost, and DIAGRAM. Nathaniel lives outside Atlanta with his family. nathaniellachenmeyer.com.
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