Thank You for the Hotdogs
by Lisa Cochran
Hello Hugo,
I am writing to you from a big, dark museum, Hugo. A big dark museum with big dark paintings of men contemplating in big dark fields in the Netherlands. Once in Amsterdam I went to the Stedelijk which is another museum that is not big and dark. I took shrooms there so that it’d feel big and dark – like our relationship – but instead it was labyrinthian, with Dutch words all over. Then there’s this room in which Sonny and I danced to a man shouting “GET OUT OF THIS ROOM, GET OUT OF THIS ROOM.” But we didn’t GET OUT OF THAT ROOM. We danced in it.
I saw your face there, Hugo. I saw your face in the museum when I was tripping. I cried.
I remember that you keep a little ceramic crane heroically under your lamp even though I’m in Berlin and just fucked an Argentine who I met at an abandoned East German listening station. Of course I pretended he was you. Of course I did.
I’m just a pulp at this point after all the blue Vogues. Do you like pulpy girls? Do you like girls who set thin papers on fire and suck on them?
I would do a lot of things if you liked them. I would put myself in a little curvy vase like an octopus. Apparently, octopuses are so smart but people often disregard that because they are not-so-smart, which is alright since I am one of such people and I can at least recreate the eyeshadow look from The Love Witch.
I wish you’d introduce me to your parents. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, like those people who are the last to get on departing subway carts and have to do that dehumanizing little shuffle so the door doesn’t crush their heads.
My friend Cecily, who worked at Whole Foods, said there was a couple who always came in. They were both blind and deaf and yet somehow managed to communicate with each other. And it doesn’t make much sense but they were in love and now Cecily, Sonny, and I say “that makes sense” every time something makes the least bit of sense. Sometimes I think you and I are them, Hugo. The couple who always came in, both blind and deaf, and yet somehow managed to communicate with each other. How did they find each other? We are not blind and deaf but we might as well be. We are mirrors mirroring each other. It’s too bad that a mirror looking at another mirror is as far from productive as I am from you. Please tell me you agree, Hugo. You are someone who makes a lot of sense.
I am a terrible person, Hugo. A Romani woman came up to me asking for directions because I was the only one to speak Russian. All I did was squeeze my purse and hand her a cigarette.
Remember the ferrets on the New York subway? On the way to my second vaccine appointment in my hungover stupor the day after my 21st birthday? In the pink and yellow dress resembling a pink lemonade QR code?
Ferrets are illegal in New York, you know. I don’t know why.
Remember when you moved in and Ralph peed off the fire escape and I couldn’t stop crying. You asked if you could hold my hand. At that point, all I could say was, Did you know it’s impossible to dance to Joy Division? It makes a lot of sense. And you said, Didn’t someone make a song about that? Then we found it and played it aloud as we sat on your mattress not speaking, squeezing the padding between our fingers.
Now, please, let me leave before it stops being good.
And I know you beat yourself up constantly for never finishing The Bhagavad Gita then telling everyone it’s your favorite book. There was a big church fire two doors down yesterday. As usual, I slept through it, dreaming of persian bread. Now, please put that belt in the suitcase before you get outdone by tears.
You are 4,000 miles away and yet I feel like I’m constantly inside an opaque bubble made out of you. Berlin spat you out in its form just like it will me, and then the next person will go to Berlin and feel as though they are living inside an opaque bubble made out of me. Then you and I will just be two Berlins walking around New York.
The garbage cans here are so funny – do you remember them? They say things like “Thank you for the hotdogs” and “Museum of Modern Trash.”
I’m writing to you from this dark museum but the second floor is well-lit and I’ve been walking behind the same guy for twenty minutes by accident. You know how annoyingly intimate that feels. Not as intimate as hugging you in front of the wax leg with the candle in it at The MoMa, though. There is a Manet here. The guide I eavesdrop on says it’s a little out of place and Kaiser Wilhelm II didn’t want it. I love you, Hugo. But that’s not your problem.
I just woke up remembering the German word for “nipple” – Brustwarze – which you taught me once in a context that’s escaped me. German becomes easier when you realize it’s the language equivalent of sticking Crayola markers together by the caps. And I’m in the Argentine’s bed. I pick up Hopscotch by Cortazar (a book you recommended) which is the namesake of a bookstore here that you never recommended but you might as well have.
I shove the book under the Argentine’s nose saying, Like you! Argentina! And all he says is Why’d you bring a book to our fuck? And it makes a lot of sense.
Lisa Cochran is a senior at New York University studying literature and creative writing. She grew up in Ames, Iowa to a Russian mother and American father, making her sympathetic to both sides of the Cold War. She can be reached via email at mlc716@nyu.edu or via Twitter @lisaacochran.