The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf

Author:Elaine Kraf [Kraf, Elaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2024-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

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Before going into the problems or chaos brought to me by my past coming to 72nd Street in the form of Melita and my ex-husband and his spools, I want to talk about The Alien who invaded my life and turned my fifth radiance into a nasty affair. This man obsesses me today as I return from great radiance into a state of simple calm. Being simply calm is odd. It is more disturbing than terror and stranger to me than radiance. I try to see it as the end of a comet’s tail—a threading off of the explosion or a temporary rest. Perhaps radiance takes more energy than I am aware of and now, letting nature take its course, as they say, instead of chemotherapy, I have worn it out. This mild state is suited to The Alien. He never lived here, never belonged here, was imported by me as a lover from another realm. He could have been from another planet like Mars, Portchester, Westchester, or some part of Long Island.

I was going through a cycle of acute materialism. I have these periodically, thinking of husbands with houses, incomes, and the remote possibility of permanence and care. It is this side of me that poor Auriel could not see or ever understand. I have often kept it a secret in fact. Needing care is something you must keep carefully hidden from men so they don’t panic and run. The Alien was one of those large men attracted to those needing care only to smash them up further, a common occurrence and contradiction. I see him clearly with his red beefy face, enormous belly, and skimpy gray beard without which he might have escaped my attention completely. He wore a rose in his lapel, grew and tended roses as a hobby, and got involved with interesting or peculiar women on the side. It was after my car accident which resulted in the loss of my little toe—the car seeming to center all its weight, as I crossed the street, on that teeny phalange. It has in no way impaired my walking nor left me with emotional scars or penis envy. However, a certain feeling of vulnerability due to this accident is probably what drove me into the fleshy arms of The Alien. He was a physician specializing in urology. And from the beginning Rombert wanted to help me and begged for a urine sample to put through his Mixmaster. He believed that taking apart the urine is the secret to the understanding and cure of all bodily and emotional distress.

He took it as an insult when I refused. Mistakenly, I thought urinalysis might detract from our romance. But the urine denial was what cooled his passion. He took to picking at me, to finding flaws. Rombert informed me that I was losing hair in the back, that I had an amazing number of stretch marks, and that my bite was imperfect. He was an expert at this common sport of men.

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