Queer Friendship in a New York Minute

by M. ROSENBERG

This is a poem for the first friends,

the failed potential roommates, the craft night talkers:

Our friendship lasted a New York minute,

until the night ended

or I broke up with you

or you moved to another state,

but believe me,

a minute is a lifetime,

in a life with many lifetimes.

I met the girl with the ear gauges on lesbian craigslist

while fumbling through the choreography of finding a New York City apartment:

you’re queer,

you’re looking for housing,

this might work.

We did not become roommates,

even though I combed listings into a spreadsheet

and surveyed the Brooklyn living room—

no windows—

She was trying to leave.

It’s fine, she said. I’ll stay with a friend for now,

that friend who happened to be a turbulent ex-boyfriend.

But we did become friends.

Before I knew any lesbians

I knew the girl with the ear gauges

so I ate my first halal with her in the rain

under the lip of a Midtown office building

the day before I began a new and terrible office job.

We rode the train-ferry-bus to the beach

that first summer of mine

where she lit a joint

and I floated in relief

on the stretch of sand

where my chest first met the sky.

The wobbly scaffolding of our friendship buckled

under the weight of housing horrors that crushed her,

of couch surfing stolen money landlord fuckery—

stories I did not know how to hold

as I rebuilt my life

inside the railroad apartment

with the queers from regular craigslist.

By the eruption of spring,

she disappeared down the stairs toward the 2 train

and returned to the corners of the internet

that first tethered us.

She has a new tattoo and maybe a new lover and

that is all I know now.

M. Rosenberg is a Jewish butch dyke writer and cartoonist living in Brooklyn.
She thinks about her fleeting queer friendships as intimate encounters that help us survive.
They like to write and make comics about everyday encounters with strangers and neighbors, queer survival, and what makes a “good life” in NYC.