9,
The seasons are changing.

She’s dressed in a short — what looks like leather — mini skirt, a few straps of fabic dangling down, like seaweed tendrils. She has on strappy heels, a black low cut shirt, and carries a matching purse looped around her thin wrist. She really is the epitome of style.

We call that “tenderloin swank.”

With the trusted SF Party Store as backdrop, ever-loyal in its recounting of the holidays present, Cop Number One questions her. To every question she responds with a defiant shrug, as if to say, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wear this skirt everyday. She points to something in her bag. Her wispy hair glows green in the halo of neon shamrocks and creepy balloon figures — an eerie ode to Saint Patrick. Cop Number Two gets out of the vehicle and stands on the other side of her. She’s flanked. Her broad shoulders are thicker than the taller of the two cops; yet, she appears surprisingly delicate.

All this happening outside the blur of the party store.

For a moment, she looks up toward my apartment, and I swear she shakes her head at me. I think she knows I’m watching. She raises her hands, palms upward, as if to say, what’d I do? She’s still looking in my direction.

The disco ball burns bright behind her.

I turn down the lights of my studio, just so I am less visible in the dark. I’m hoping in this way she can’t see me watching her; that I’m not able to be seen, typing and talking on the phone, and gawking, watching her life as Spectacle.

I take another sip of wine.

Sadly, I don’t move. I continue typing, talking, watching, in this sick perversion. Who am I to be able to watch her tragedy as entertainment? I told myself I’d end this project on a light note — more humor! I kept telling myself funnier is better! –

but she keeps looking up at me. I know she sees me; sees the glare of my computer screen. Her gaze pierces through my window even as she’s asked to turn around, put her arms against the wall, spread her legs. I begin to mourn the end of Candy when — suddenly –

“Oh wow, they’re letting her go.”

She turns around. There is some gesticutlating, the cops are indicating to where she can walk, telling her she can’t turn left down deeper into the tenderloin, but has to turn right, up Larkin. She nods in understanding. The cops return to their vehicle, pull away, and Candy takes one last long sip of my presence with her eyes as she walks and walks and walks down Post, further down the block, her hips still swinging…

(what is this?)

8,
Ummmm. Hey, Candy. How’s it goin’? Soooo I’ve run this by a couple of friends, and they fall into two camps: those who think I should just ante up and talk to you, and those who think me crazy. Well, okay, there’s a third camp: those who think I should stop with the poetry already, and move on, start an online dating service, plaster famous actor mug shots around the city, or just get my act in gear and actually write something “real.” But where would the fun be in that? I ask them. Accomplishment is so overrated.

So, tonight, when I saw you standing outside of Diva’s, I was really ready to go with the friend’s advice from the first camp and just talk to you. But then I saw you bitch slap that girl, and decided not. So I guess, instead, I’ll be proving the second camp right. Hope you like nihilist absurdity.
[Night eight: Dada, with a 21st century flare]

www.Relâche.Uf.EEei.UUoia.Enh.Whoooo@o-shshsh\shshssshoopé!p’
p’pickiwe’reallgoingtodiesolomonosoaporaki
akiakiakiaka/duchamp=tran?.heoiadkaodm
< ,aakbbbbbbygmpsohyperlinkkkkbbthts-
ktskclikkkkitchhha_Ianesco!
Ip/ .com

(what is this?)

(To make your very own custom candy heart, follow this link.)

Oh, dear.

I’ve fallen behind in my poetry venture. Blame it on the weather. There was [gasp!] sun here in the city. It was February. It felt like summer. Can I be blamed for spending some days in the park rather than writing Odes to Trannies? Please, dear readers, forgive me. Please.

(What’s that? No one has been reading anything since the Craigslist dates? Oh, well, then. No worries.)

Despite no poetry, don’t think I haven’t been ruminating on the subject. It’s funny, though, because tonight this morning I look out my window — the streets already cleaned, vacant of the usual white noise buzz that hovers just outside — and there is no one about. This, a rare occurrence; there is always, always someone there; always always someone to watch; always always someone to occupy my attention.

Interesting, how on Valentine’s Day it parallels so closely that I, also, for the first time, have no one romantically in my life. (I always, always have before).

This is not a sob story! This just is. But this condition, of being alone, of being merely an observer to others being alone and how they handle their alone-ness has made me acutely aware of the spectrum and diversity of the ways in which human beings can relate to each other.
Here I am, Little Miss City, feeling very connected and most sympathetic to online daters and prostitutes. Go figure. Either that, or I am a true graduate of Berkeley, Politically Correct and all, and I am having Delusions of Empathy. Who knows.

But something in these observations has made me believe these things — prostitution, dating, poetry, money, loneliness, power, love, and what-have-you-I’ll-make-connections-between-anything-just-try-me — are connected somehow, and at the root of all of them is the sense that we, as human beings, have something fundamental in common; that, by the very nature of being alive, we can relate to each other on some sort of deep level, to the point where perhaps it could be defined as an utter sense of similar objective — we’re all just looking for love. For acceptance. For contentment. For a fuck.

Oh, sure. It’s manifested in a medley of different ways. Some of us are needy, lonely, heartbroken, depressed; some are utterly self-confident, content, loved, privileged; some are addicted to sex; some addicted to love; some just plain addicted to addiction; some, still, are after money, or drugs, or greed, or power, or food, or a deep, aching desire to write really bad poetry.

But doesn’t it seem relevant that somewhere, below all that, each of those desires and wants and needs are fundamentally the same? Isn’t that, by definition, the essence of empathy?

Hell if I know. Here’s some more poetry:

5,
Tonight I’ve named you Candy. You have beautiful glossy bubble gum lips, and your heels light up red-blue, red-blue, red-blue with every step, step, step you take.

[Night five: no idea]

more, more with that click
it’s become my nervous tick
there now, Candy: one more trick

6,
How are you tonight, dear trannie? I almost got up the courage to speak to you today. We passed by each other, like two ships in the night: me, on my way home from work; you, on your way to — you looked at me ever-so briefly, almost caught my eye, but diverted sharply. Is it because you sense I was not worth your time? I’m not sure, but my eyes lingered longer. I felt the words nearly fly off my lips: “might I have a moment of your time?” (oh, I’d pay you, certainly. Just to talk? Would that be okay?) I want to pick your brain a bit. If I’m not too presumptuous in saying, I think it’d be the easiest hour of work you’ve ever had.

[Night six: Limerick]

There once was a prostitute, trannie
Who went by the nice name of Candy
She strutted her stuff
Perhaps liked it rough
And her resemblance to a woman? Uncanny.

7,
Okay, now I’m almost hurt. I walked right up to you, all direct-like, and you turned your back to me and faced your pimp. At least I think that was your pimp. Wow. I feel really bad writing that (“pimp”); like I’m irreverent and sarcastically insulting to your profession. But I don’t know how else to describe that guy who always stands in the doorway of the apartment complex next to mine and watches you walk Post Street from afar.
Step, step, step.

[Night seven: e.e. cummings inspired]

there once was for me (a
love, certain then, perhaps of
something I once fell upon) shores of youth
;something in you triggered it. Perhaps it
was the desperation I, felt
you felt
I felt, and how
the only, other, time I’ve ever felt such desperation,
was when I was Willing to allow myself
the (insatiable, surrendering, drowning flavor) / (pleasure-privilege)
of love.

(what is this?)

4,
Trannie: Tonight, as I “get lost” with Chet Baker, I look out my window and see you, there, in front of the SF Party Store, (from) whence I bought my tasteful white Christmas lights on a string. I don’t know, tonight, if you are a transvestite or not. I suppose if you’re not, then this poem is mis-titled. If, however, you are: you are quite feminine.

[Night four: McWhirtle verse]

Do men who pay money
for services rendered
by you, dearest trannie
(who’s open for sale),

E’er stop for one moment
when dimming their headlights;
consider that, maybe, ain’t
woman but male?

(what is this?)

3,
Today I really think I’m going to ask you to, you know, talk—but I chicken out. I want to yell this to you, yell: How Much Do You Cost? But I think this might be construed as rude.

[Night three: Acrositic poem with dactylic tetrameter (kinda); rhyme scheme ababbaba]

Trannie appears with the fleeing of day
Reaching her hips out across lonely streets
Ah! How I want to have confidence! Say: ‘
Now, look here, Girl — are you going for sweet?
No one believes you are anything but meat
Ipso (jons) Facto: they’re looking t’get laid
Enter the world of passion and heat!
S‘pose, though, you’re looking for more than just pay?’

(what is this?)

2,

(dear Trannie,)

I really mean you no offense. I am so fascinated by you. You look so stunning and strange there in that silver off-the-collar V-neck thingie. (I couldn’t pull that off.) You have these great shoulders which shine. I wonder today: how much do you cost?

[Night two: rhymed, metered]

I see you, Trannie, getting ready
to take your flight upon the night
Despite stilettos, ever steady
Your body sells, I wish you well.

My Dearest Trannie, where do you roam?
O’er to the park cloaked now in dark?
Stay the car? Abscond to someone’s home?
I feel there’s no suitible go –

And, Trannie, love — about this here fee:
(so deserving for your serving)
High or low? What is the price pays he?
I pray the Dip includes a tip…

And so we sew a difference
you and I — for you: pay, for me: love
but really what’s the difference
when it comes to sex, or hope, or — love

(what is this?) 

I got three hours of sleep last night — I’m not complaining. I’m using this as a preface to this Project Launch. I am including this little anecdote, now, which I’m about to deliver, in the next sentence, for a reason.

You see, I went to bed late (11PM) and had to get up early (4AM). And in between those hours, the hours of about midnight and two, I spent giving a witness testimony to the police about a pimp who was beating up a prostitute. I’m not being crass here — that’s how the police officer with whom I spoke — bleary-eyed and dressed in my silk pajama bottoms, long flannel shirt I had put on accidently inside-out, and my rain jacket, flip-flops, a beanie — put it. He said:

“Oh. So it was a pimp beating a prostitute?”

I said yes, yes it seemed to be.

They had arrested some guy who fit my description. Only thing: he was the wrong medium-build, dressed in black, running Westbound on Post Street, 6-foot-tall male. So I corrected them — that this wasn’t the guy I had seen — was thanked for my help, and dismissed; afterwhich, I went upstairs and cried (for the fact that I had witnessed a beating, that I wasn’t getting any sleep, that people turn to prostitution and drugs or that they had arrested an innocent man because of me, I don’t know) and locked myself in my studio.

I tell this story now, just to say, I don’t think prostitution is a joke. Except when, of course, we make jokes to cover up for the fact that we are cowardly and would rather make something funny than actually confront it. Pain is funny.

LAUNCHED: Poetry to a Transvestite Prostitute
A simple literary project that you can find out about here. And if you can’t figure out how this relates to love (the theme for the month), then just stop reading right now.

1,
(dear Trannie)
I see you there, nearly every night, outside my bedroom window. I am too shy, scared—something—to speak with you directly; I write you poetry instead:

[Night one: Haikus]

It starts with a click;
at first distant, then louder—
heels signal the night
* * *
Clothing feminine
hangs soft from her waist: dainty
And yet her jaw: square
* * *
More poetry on
transvestite prostitution?
Hold on, it’s coming