I am yearning for some end-of-the-world sex, but so far I have had no luck. The art dealer I picked up at the New Museum a week after the disaster had nimble, slender toreador hips. He looked like he could maneuver well in tight places, but when we went back to his apartment he only wanted to do sixty-nine. I was bloated, swollen with sorrow and rage, all my juices bottled up inside me, and what I wanted was to be pierced, penetrated, and drained. I told him I have some wonderful lube with me, I got it in Amsterdam on the Street of Earthly Sorrows. He looked at me as if I had just told him I had an acrylic womb. “No way!” he says. “I know all about those lubes; they are full of estrogens. I’ve heard they can give a man breasts.” I’m astounded at his ignorance. “You must be kidding,” I say. “Very funny, ha, ha, ha.” I didn’t tell him that I think hermaphrodites are hot. If he had breasts it would make him really exciting to me, a lover for the new millennium. Instead, I put my jacket back on and went out the door.

When I got home, I stripped, fell into bed, and slept. I dreamed of men with breasts and hermaphrodite sex. I mated with a hermaphrodite with many sets of arms like a Hindu god and two cocks, one between his legs and one growing from the center of his forehead. Eight, ten, twelve sets of hands caressed me while I held his two purple cocks in my hands and pulled at them rhythmically as if they were teats.

There is a homeless man who lives in a three-sided packing-crate house underneath the BQE overpass. I always see him when I am coming and going to the A train. He is heavyset, and beneath his tattered sweaters it looks like he has breasts. Maybe he is a hermaphrodite. He often has his prick out and is stroking it with filthy hands. Everyone passes by, pretending not to notice. Since 9/11 I can’t stop myself from glancing over. His tool is uncut, huge, the size of my forearm; he could spawn dynasties, propagate thousands. When I look over at his terrible, fleshy baton, I become excited. A warm, liquid lava bubbles between my legs. I wonder if this is my end-of-the-world sex.

The headlines become more bizarre, more sensational. Mayor Giuliani announces they have not found any bodies for five days but they are finding more and more body parts, scam artists try to sell families of the victims dirt from the site, Taliban are infiltrating our colleges, gas mask sales soar…. The mayor says we should get back to normal, eat in our restaurants, take in movies and Broadway shows. When I go to teach my evening classes at the university in Greenwich Village, despite his urging, the restaurants are empty. The once-bustling streets nearly deserted.