ben
tapeworm’s
almanac

Nov—Dec 2025

nocturne for 2025

An old couple, some Italian place uptown. She orders scotch—Johnny Walker Black—and it arrives. He pours half of it into his empty waterglass. She frowns and pours it back. Get your own. He gets his own—Macallan 12—but, before it arrives, they both step out. The Mac 12 arrives and we watch as the enormous ice cube melts completely in the tumbler. When they return, she reaches over and takes a sip and winces. She finds her own glass but her ice has melted too. Suddenly it’s time for them to leave. The scotches, left behind, are swiftly cleared by waitstaff.

Drinking on another’s dime, exhausted by apophany, I still can’t help but think there’s something to it. The drinks ruined but harmlessly so, desires freely granted but badly followed through. Is this the three-cup monte of old age or of Manhattan? The cups are all clear and there’s no ball anyway, no reveal, just the ceaseless swish of glasses on the tablecloth. Outside, the lights from the fountain dance on the RentAFence barricades, which are stacked uselessly, like ladders.

Black plastic trays are whizzing past the heads of patrons, who watch the movements of their steak knives and the emptinesses just beyond the wallpaper. I’m crossing the street to the cinema, like always, or so it seems. Some peregrine, walking through steam, shedding his coat, awaiting like a dead man the messages of light.

ben tapeworm

ben tapeworm’s almanac is amateur apocalypse pamphletry.

To get new entries in your email inbox, please request to be added to the mailing list here.