I do not live at 512 W. 112th St. in Manhattan. I don't. I'm not even really sure who does live there. I suppose I could stand there in the foyer and call out possible names--- possible pseudonyms ---and see if anyone responds. All I know about 512 W. 112th St. is that it has a tiled foyer. Blue and white tile, in a pattern you see sometimes in older subway stations. Faux-Art Nouveau, maybe. Or even faux-Ottoman. Up a couple of stairs and into the building. I have no idea who lives there. Or what would happen if one stood there and called out Melia! or GlacialPeriod! or VarietySnow! or even just Twin!

Miss Ginny does need to add a certain musicology girl at bladeoftheknife to her friends, just as Miss bladeoftheknife in turn should add anatomyoflovers and emigree.

I stood there this morning at the mirror after a shower and realised that the face in the mirror would never kiss a girl again. That face showed too many years and too many failures both of life and design. A month ago a certain girl with green eyes told me that I was handsome and that I shouldn't worry about my hair going grey. She lied, of course. The face in the mirror has only Japanese Bulimia to look foward to. I ran my hand through my hair and felt how dry and brittle it was. All those horror films I saw long, long ago--- the hair on a corpse's head. There'll be a bald spot one day--- humiliating enough in any case. Take it as a given: no one with a bald spot can (or should) ever have sex again. No one who looks like me will ever have a girl in his arms again. Didn't I learn that last month?

512 W. 112th St. on the Skinny Island. I have no idea who lives there, but I know I'll never see the foyer. I'd thought that I'd be in Manhattan again this autumn--- thought that all summer. It won't happen. There's no girl in all North America who'd consider traveling with me or having a Hotel Adventure with me. There's not even a girl who'd be a Voice on the late-night aether for me.

My Lonely Planet Iran arrived today from Amazon. Which is of course a bitter joke. I want to see Alamut and Persepolis and Isfahan. I never will. I won't see Vienna again. Or Manhattan. Or anywhere else. Any more than I'll ever have a new car or a MacBook Pro. Other people--- e.g., WaterColorFire ---will go to London or to language school in Marrakech. I'll never leave this town again. No Reykjavik, no Montreal. No beaches with a lovely pale slender girl in a black bikini at dawn.

What's the horror film? "The Broken"--- Lena Headley. Break the mirror and the dark doppelgangers come through. I can look in the mirror and see Death already there--- risus sardonicus is there to look back at me and mock.

There are girls who can spend all day on a birthday in bed with a lover and smoke pot and listen to Ravi Shankar or At The Drive-In or Velvet Underground and make love all through the afternoon. No girl will do that with me. There are girls who can take Ecstasy and sit on laps at Russian bars and kiss and flirt. There are girls who can make out with lovers on the F train southbound or the Nr. 1 train back uptown at night. No one will ever do that with me. No rooms at the Pod Hotel, or Hotel Mela, or Hotel Opus in either Montreal or Vancouver. No subway kisses. No rented rooms above the medina in Marrakech.

There are girls whose lovers awaken to find them watching them sleep. "Just looking," those girls say. No one will ever say that to me. Just as no girl will ever add me next to "In A Relationship With" at Facebook or post a Facebook photo of herself next to me, grinning with a happy possessiveness.

No dragon boats, either. And no concerts at tiny venues in Chelsea. No walks along River Street in Savannah at dusk, or down rue Sherbrooke Ouest at night.

My name is Hapax Legomenon and I still don't live at 512 W. 112th St.

And no girl will travel to see me or travel with me. Risus sardonicus in the mirror--- the thing in the mirror can see that and mock me for it. No girl will spend 22. November in bed with me, stretched out naked and dreamy and happy. No girl will ever smile to see me in an airport or a hotel room doorway. No girl would ever find the thing in the mirror worth even a late-night phone call and wicked flirtation. No lighting a girl's Gauloise in bed. No watching a girl take off a charcoal pashmina to kiss me on that bench in Central Park.

And no girl will ever kiss me in the airport lounge at Reykjavik. Or in that tiled foyer at 512 W. 112th St.

Japanese Bulimia. And the mirror crack'd.