I am so tired of cliché, I think to myself as I lie here in my rented room staring into the faulty fluorescent light on the ceiling and taking a long slow drag from my Viceroy. I meditate on the ceiling and let my eyes relax. The cracked lead paint is a strange blue, or is it battleship grey, and it seems to change in tone with every flicker of the dying fluorescent tube. So what am I doing? A whole lot of nothing really as I wait for this writer's block to subside. Killing time as I wait for that supercharged rush of ideas to scream into my head like a flaming Concorde into the side of a moderately priced french hotel. However, lately there has been nothing. When I read my own recent writing it bores me and seems unoriginal and cliché. I thought drinking would help as my bar bills will testify. I suppose I need to break up my routine. Break up that pattern and through a rock into the still waters of my mind.

Now Simone wanders by my door. She is the contortionist that lives down the hall in this flea bag hotel on the edge of the meat packing district. She asks to join me for a drink and so even though it is still morning, out come the dingy glasses and the half full bottle of Makers.

We have no ice and the nearest ice is two block away so I serve the liqour neat. It is warm and grey on the other side of the loosely drawn Venetian blinds. The grey light slips in through the Venetian slits and sits flat on the carpet like a dog waiting to be fed. It is very clear that Simone likes me. She has no compunction about showing up at my door just wearing a dressing gown or a loosely closed robe. She will sit on the edge of my bed painting her nails while her hair dries wrapped in its damp terrycloth turban.

She will tell me about all the sleazy guys who hit on her and take her out. Guys whose name you read in the paper and guys you see on the vidiot box. Guys who are no doubt married. But I think it's me she really wants as she thinks that I am a gentleman and I fit the bill of her fantasy. She thinks that I am dark and poetic. I suppose I could be if needed.

Once I went up to visit her at the Mardi Gras off of Times Square . The Mardi Gras was one of those clip joints that used to populate the area when sleaze and neglect were the rules of the day. One of those places where you would not be sitting alone for too long. It was a place where shills would invite themselves for a drink and if you bit, you were sucked into buying the cheapest "champagne" at premium prices. In the back room "locals" and other lewd acts  were being performed and negotiated.

The stage was behind and ran the length of the bar. One girl at a time would come out and perform her routine. It was the same set up in hundreds of places across town. I sat alone at the bar and ordered a bourbon and soda, light on the soda. Within moments I had some professional cooing in my ear and sidling onto the barstool next to mine. Actually, she wasn't bad to look at but she had tired eyes with very little sparkle in them. “Thanks for the offer of your company but I would rather be alone", I said in clear mellifluous tones. She was about to persist when Simone walked out of the back room. So girl one retreated to the dark corner from where she had emerged and Simone attempted a smile. It looked like it hurt her to smile. I had no idea of what had brought her to this place or any of her history. I know that she was from somewhere in New Jersey and that she had slept with many men that she did not love. It seemed to me that she carried with her much sadness, but she never talked much about it and she never complained.

So we shared a morning cocktail and toasted the car alarms futile screams just outside our rented window. Between the car alarms and the and the sea of microwaves that I live in, high frequency waves that are cooking my brain slowly from the inside out, it is no wonder that I can't seem to concentrate on any one thing for too long.

Simone is getting that dreamy look in her eyes. She tilts her head back and touches the empty rocks glass to her throat. It cools her for a moment. It is then that I notice the time. I tell her that she is more than welcome to stay and drink on her own , but I have to leave. I will see her later I am sure.

And so I down the last of my drink, grab my bag, my blue plastic mat and head off to my yoga class.