Short stories, my own moments, from a life less ordinary.
Young Man, I Am
(Brooklyn, February 2005)
Young man I am (he is), 24, aspiring writer, types letters lost letters demonic letters to all different people all around the world, the diffident and the difficult. Why not? His fingers click words out like the flapping sounds of a thousand iridescent butterflies in the silkish breadth of the apple morning glow, and he feels fine, as he should. But, after several knocks on the cardboard window, his head outweighs his pulpy heart in meandering streets so far apart; his cracked testimony to night-bearing insects and lonesome winds that whistle frightening things between the nostalgic towers of hunger and art. He is starving for a better job, this one here….what’s this — Planet Near and Far, the forever shining bright beacon of hope in his ever promising future. Hasn’t he heard of this, this, this — Planet Near and Far before, while kissing around in the round about – a hushed dream of decadence and steady staring? What happened?
To this poor young man. After all, he’s no rich boy, but rather a boy who prefers to be around enriched people. But it’s true! Oh, but dear dear reader how can this be? When most of the time he tallies his hard-working and miserable moments dishing out soup and glutinous oatmeal to hundreds of erudite faces whose ears are most always plugged with the squirming white worms of electronic mush, that stalwart and radiant iPod blaring pop-hits he’ll never understand nor care to fondle. He strives hard, his cafe job. A place that is far too expensive for any one person without one of those electrical jewels of music invention, he finds nothing but steady deterioration: the complete works of maculated frustration. Though, has not this palace of healthy treats sustained his gut to this very moment, why should he speak of such irreverent details, when his belly is full? What, rot!
Answer: BUT he is exhausted. He must get away. He loathes ladling soup from those dreadfully toxic hours between 7am and 2pm, six days a week. These afternoons, instead of writing masterpiece plays, radioactive novellas or short winded tales of suspense, his mind sways and swoons in the general direction of such fantastically boring rent mongers who clog his mailboxes and plastic hallways with incessant, maudlin chatter. In reasonable response, he slams that door shut.
He wants better work, He pines for a better job, a proper flow of something honest… Young man, 24, aspiring writer, needs a good atmosphere, and good people. He performs the required work so much better and, with such bright and elated eyes when within the realm of good people. Presently, he contains these feelings deep inside his chest: enslaved, barracked, and shackled at the waist. All which will be released into the air with the wave of a hand if Planet Near and Far, the only paper he would ever write religiously for, desires it so. Nonetheless, young man, 24, aspiring writer, is arduous, willing, wanting, burning for a real job. He even has experience in a high-volume work sphere serving terrifically drunk human ears delicious waves of the ever so laden, human spirit, at the singsong hour of ‘4-in-the-morning.’ Oh Planet Near and Far, what say them in these encroaching times?
The Language of Color
(Brooklyn, March 2005)
She splashed about the warm woods in an aqueous manner, while it rained green from the overflowing glow of a smashed sky. Sheet lightening slithered about like lavender dragons amongst the heavens, the air smelling softly of crushed chrysanthemums. A pair of pallid legs sprawled lightly over a wood-soaked log, and a neck of fine porcelain rolled back to look through the canopy of translucent, glittered leaves. The sounds of small puddles collecting could be heard all throughout the afternoon hours.
She had been out for a while now, collecting samples of earth, leaves, rocks and an array of multicolored flowers that had freshly bloomed to the world; a burst of enjoyment throughout her vivid imagination and youthful meanderings. Her mind wandered superfluously about, while she picked up her samplings and began to make her way back home.
Of late, she had been disenchanted with something, a tickle in the back of her every thought, which never allowed her completely to delve freely into the vitrified folds of her lemon-sweet mind. The forest she would frequent when at her parent’s summerhouse took her far away, into a split reality of time and space, disallowing the daunting contentions of an inglorious lifestyle to wash ashore her waking life. She was older. An adult? Sure. She lived far away, deep within the city – the belly of the beast if you will, most always performing the same languid dance: working at the theatre, meeting one-minute people that came and went, day in day out; time being such a bothersome necessity (one could easily see the formations of her tired eyes as soon as she engaged in her early morning embrace of the specific kind of Chinese adagio tea: oolong, the smell of the vespertinal jasmine flowers flooding her nostrils so tenderly – so suddenly!) Her eyes lit up at the thought. But that thought was not for this moment?
Ah yes, because this preserved moment was in fact the melting forest, where she had essentially memorized every tree, flower, and passing animal since she had first encountered it several years ago in a childhood haze of incessant and frolicsome entanglement. As a girl, her mother and father had taken her to the bulky pink house, so conveniently located in an endearing enclosure, for the sake of summering lovingly, as a family of three. The thought of her parents made her smile, as she walked further into the clearing. Ever forthcoming, her thick eyes could see the slump of the apple red rooftop above the dripping trees, and her thoughts caressed the fondest memory of when she bravely climbed onto the blunt of that hidden bastion in hopes of having a small cigarette: her rosy red kneecaps and thin scraps of the wrist relishing in such smug remembrance. Wittingly, she grinned.
Entering the bottled glass doors, she noticed a distinct ping of lush hunger, and placed her collection of woodlot crumbs upon the black divan. No one was home; a much preferred accommodation than most would believe. And outside, the rain pinched the wooden panels, a soft thundering, though it sounded more like heroic voices from another world calling comfort on her thin shoulders. Unbelievably considerate, she toppled the thought with the idea of having fresh fruit. It was a fine day! Though while looking through her parent’s lovesome kitchen, it was impossible to be found, in her case, the iridescent slices of a juicy orange, “…what a volatile appetite…” she said smiling into humid air. Instead, she focused on a bowl of plump and purpled grapes, and watched through the window the blustery sky turn a lovely jade, a sky full of piano foam that reminded her instantly of a lost love, a winter so impossibly wanted, though perfectly reserved deep within her winding reflections of a the same warm welkin that colored her spirit so long ago.
She finished the last grape and felt fantastically euphonious, presenting a smile while cleaning out the frosted pink elephant bowl her grandmother had received for her birthday shortly after the Great Depression. It seemed as though in this house, a lovely disconnection grew from the ground up, a declawed reality that separated her from the other side of the forest; although she had work do and living here is what she truly wanted, her sentiment was composed, healed and not for sale like all of the advertisements that the great grey city professed.
Entering the living room and squeezing droplets of rain from her dark hair, she casually looked over the presents she had found: a variety of bioclastic rocks (mainly noted for their texture and smoothness created by organisms and the compression of water from rivers, which is why she enjoyed them so wonderfully), several purple lilacs, wild white roses, and few snapdragons. But her main find, one that would surely delight her brown eyes, as it did when she found it under the rotted tree, was an apple of golden amber. It seemed to glow from the inside, as she palmed its’ cool texture – it appeared to be perfectly translucent, and void of any prehistoric dust.
A real treasure! She was instantly reminded of her grandmother, a Russian immigrant that had made it to America just before Hitler’s armies arrived and the Iron Curtain dropped. Her grandmother had told her such vibrant stories of a pre-war Russia, enchanting tales of summer picnics and long days reading under the oleaster olive trees with her sisters, who had sadly perished in the fires of the Nazi retreat in 1945. But she had also told her of a room, a gift to Peter the Great in 1716 for an illustrious peace between Russia and Prussia, a room made entirely of amber. “Oh how it glowed,” she would say, while lifting delicately, her sinewy arms above long white hair. Of course, the Nazis had dismantled the Amber Room and had the many panels transported to Germany under Hitler’s command, where it has since been lost through the ravages of war. She reiterated the mystery of this room of rooms, saying it was in fact still floating around, and that its destruction was a delusional conspiracy.
Between her forefinger and thin thumb, she could see thousands of flecks in the amber, as its brilliance appeared a golden orb. She was instantly attached to this find, putting it on her face, neck and gracefully rolling it around on through her arms, ensconcing it to her gentle spirit.
Plopping down on the blue velvet couch, and outstretched her long legs, feeling a great amount of exhaustion taking over. She had to leave soon, a heavy hand resting on her eyes. Her parents wouldn’t be coming back for a while – but she had work. A lifetime of work ahead of her, and things she didn’t wish to reflect on at the moment. The theatre was consuming her, the theatre of life, the act of living…a society that strongly paled in comparison to this ambrosian shelter of solitude and contemplation. On the outer ring of the forest, there awaited strife, bad weather, a mélange of disappointment after disappointment, after disappointment. But she kept going back to heart city. Each time, every time. Her eyes fell back into her last thoughts, as she curled her legs around, both hands clasping the amber ball to her cheek. She fell into a deep sleep that courted her thoughts of never having to return to a world she never felt apart of to begin with… and in the soft distance she could hear her grandmother playing Satie’s ‘Trois Gymnopedie’, a long lost memory inside her thoughts, wanting desperately to be alive as much as her.
When she awoke moments later, she could still hear the subtle chords of the grand piano, and could smell the rich blend of jasmine and bergamot of her grandmother’s Russian perfume. Sitting up, she looked at the clock on the mantle, and with a sigh, sulkily lifted her long body. The rain had stopped, but it was still opaque outside the crisscrossed window frame. Her truck stood perfectly still, waiting, as it would forever and a lifetime, until she gave it life once more. The golden thickness of the amber still remained in her hand, as she was afraid that if she put it down for one second, it might disappear. But the thought was silly, and she left it resting on a puffy blue cushion before heading off to retrieve her bags. When she returned to the living room, the amber was not on the cushion, but instead found resting peacefully on the grand piano. The young woman with dark hair and maple-brown eyes, smiled, and lightly walked over to the piano, bent down to the glistening amber, and planted a mellow kiss. Leaving the amber upon the creamy surface of the white piano, she picked up her things and that of what she found earlier that afternoon in the forest, and took one last look at the piano, before closing the door and walking to her brave future.
Christian Brother
(Manhattan 2005)
Once I remained in the longing lobby of some hotel that made no sense. A man named so-n-so caught me by the arms and his voice crawled into my ear, “What are you doing here, yu little shit!” I didn’t know, I really just wanted to see something new. “God told me to do it. Fuck off,” and I shoved him away, walking out the revolving door to the subways. New York. Fuckers. The air was biting, and hung around my neck like a dead mans fingers. I thought of nothing but lies and turmoil as I skipped up and down the Union Square. I passed a cathedral and went inside. It was a catholic church and I was racked with guilt from something I had thought so hard about that I had forgotten. Being catholic once, I stampeded into the grand chamber full of people and children and convicts who braved Christ’s teachings of love and peace.
Turning around and walking right out from where I came, busting open the 36-foot doors and into the street, I was approached by a yellow taxi cab. “Take me to the belly of the beast!” I shouted. I must have flew about 7 different miles, because I landed in Times Square inside of a garbage unit. It was green, and I was truly on my own. Beclouded with pain, I urged myself to arise and face the storm of people that were continuously going nowhere. It was raining, and my shoes were shredded from intense walking. Didn’t especially matter because it was slightly sunny, and the blue blood in my arm sockets supported my want for true sunlight, as I raised them to the sky for an answer.
Why did you settle for this? I thought. This palace of death is horrible, but it sounds good. It tastes good. It feels right. But why does that even matter? Doesn’t I suppose. I walked into the middle of Times Square and opened my arms to the world. People honked their cars and bus horns at me, while tourists wearing orphan children on leashes looked completely baffled at my demeanor. A man in to my left threw his afternoon coffee at my face, and I could taste the punch of the papercup on my broken lips. The street was greasy, and smelled like a busted up harmonica. I hated it, but loved it. Someone tossed me a crumpled dollar, and I took it without even thinking. I was lonely. Why not? ”Lonesome, all alone, all alone. Why – Why - Why?” sung the music that roared at me from a little store that promised to make us all lose weight and be honest with ourselves. A woman in a furcoat and lots of diamonds saw me walking back to the sidewalk and asked me my name. But eyes were glazed from indifference and replied, “IT’s spring, are yu happy?”
She looked at me, and helped me up to my feet. ”Little boys shouldn’t be playing in the streets. Their mothers might get worried.” Something about her voice said she’d done this before. But I could have been wrong. She took me home to her brownstone house somewhere in Uptown, me not saying a word the entire time. When we got inside, she requested kindly that I take off my clothes in front of her. I hadn’t showered in days, and I didn’t want her looking at my embarrassing body. But, I was dead inside. She smiled, and directed me to her shower. It was about five p.m.
When I finished with this bizarre offer, I reiterated my urgent need to be alone, but she wouldn’t have it, waving her hand and gesturing me to sit with her at the kitchen table. It was warm, and I was still naked.
“Who are you?” she asked, unbuttoning a gold button on her blouse. ”I don’t remember, can I go now?” I said admiring the well-polished wooden floors. I crossing my arms. She crossed her golden legs and around her ankle was a diamond bracelet.
She noticed me looking at it, and then reached down to take it off. “Do you know where I got this from?” “I really don’t care, do you have anything to drink? any whiskey?” “My late husband got it for me, before he died. Listen, are you partial to literature, my pet?”
Oh jesus. I knew it, “Yes, and I am not your pet, because I don’t even know who I am. So how can I be your pet, if I can’t remember what I am doing here, in this city?” I got up and began to make my way to the door, grabbing my clothes. ”Sit, Down!” she screamed violently, I could feel the blood engorging my lower half. She was pointing to the oak chair that surely must have been just as expensive as her ankle bracelet.
I sat back down and she looked at me. Her eyes were crystal clear, and I could tell she was ‘looking’ into me. She had jet-black hair and a thin face. It felt good, that she was doing this, but I didn’t want her to know it. “What are you doing here, my pet?” she uncrossed her legs and reached into her purse,
“Cigarette?” she asked. “Yes, that’d be nice…” it took me a moment to light it, and then I took a long puff of smoke not inhaling, but tasting the black-papered cigarette. “I don’t know what I am doing here, God told me to do it. I’m just following orders.”
“Don’t be foolish, my pet, tell me — What are you doing here, in my house?” she smiled. I sighed, “I don’t know. You helped me out, and … I don’t know why. You wanted me to sit down, and the least I could do was this…” She grinned like an add-dult, put her unfinished cigarette out, and motioned for me to follow her to the bedroom.
When we entered, she closed the door, “I want you to be my pet, I have been watching you for a long time.” She said, while taking off her shoes. Where I could’ve been worried about this, I wasn’t. Instead, I was actually a bit hungry, pizza… “I want you to be mine tonight.”
“But, I can’t — I have to meet a friend for a drink in an hour.. he’ll be um, upset if I didn’t follow through…” She didn’t care, because she kept taking articles of her lush and ridiculously shiny clothes off. Scores of diamonds seem to fall off her body like stupid rain, and I turned around. I looked out the window, it was open. We were two stories up. I could ostensibly make it.
“Where do you think you’re going? Out there?” she laughed, and sat down on the bed, naked. She pushed out her full breasts, and rolled over, showing me her flawless body. This is crazy, I thought. I looked at the door. It was bolted shut, and the sound of dangling keys could be heard to my left. “Well, I’m sick of this kind of love, lady,” and I walked over to the window. I guess I could scale the wall?
“Get over here now!” she barked. I turned around, and smiled. I shrugged my shoulders.
From Elliott Elliott: Mask, and Beware: Introduction
(Paris, Compiègne, France; Brooklyn, NY, 2003-2007)
It’s funny, because I remember having this dream where I was in France for some reason or the other, shooting a big fucking American gun. I thought I had killed someone, and was cracked out on cloying paranoia – I was going down for good. It was the end. The police came to arrest someone, anyone – it was going to be me, why not? They passed me, and instead I smiled because I really did kill him. But it wasn’t me they were after, and I soon found myself strolling through a labyrinth of lagoon people and into a large room where a Halloween celebration was taking place. I felt strange for some reason, going through this throng of nightglowing color costumes and loud, French pop music. What was happening? Where was I, and how did I get there? It was madness, and the ceilings were too high. I saw Marie walking with Rodge from Magical-Makeover Land, and I offered her some destroyed chocolate that I for some reason or the other meant to give to her a long time ago, back in some other lifetime. She politely refused and continued walking towards the exit of the cafeteria-like complex I was suddenly aware of… By the gods, we were in a box! By this time, I felt death’s cold reality, and I couldn’t at all justify it. The enirvonment had tricked me, and I was naked with abandonment, covered in the sauce of red rejection.
All of the sudden, like a bizarre twist of fate bursting like a fat grape, she came running back to me, crying courageously, claiming she was an alien from some faraway planet. I was stunned and her eyes looked like the end of the world. In the background, music thrashed and pulled, some frantic kid in a blue hat the size of the moon was trying to escape an awful nightmare, but he was sucked up in an air vaccuum, never to be seen again. The insanity expanded like perverted mushroom explosions, and the lagoon people began to glue to one another. I remember wondering how ungrateful this place was, how twisted and gruesome it had become. Marie was talking, but no sound was coming out. She was crying, her face twisted with pain. The world collapsed, and nothing made sense any longer.
I woke up, grabbing my sheets like some sick person, and trying hard not to forget the pickled paranoia that kept flooding through the walls of the dreamworld. It was daylight out, and I could hear the sound of a bustling Broadway day. For some reason, I got up and looked through my closet frantically, trying to arouse an idea as to why I was doing this. I tossed clothes everywhere, some boxes of something, all of it, into the air. Finally, I found what it was I was looking for – an old picture book, pregnant with pictures of my youth and young adult years. My teeth ached, and I wanted a cigarette.
I saw an entry of writing next to a picture of a girl with dark brown hair, accompanied by dark drooping bangs. The entry was called “Marie”, and it had to do with a costume party I went to years ago. It was called Disco Night, and was strangely taken with this fond memory – this woman who I never knew.
The party had been at this hapless lunatic’s apartment somewhere in the belly of Bedford. I remember feeling the urge to vomit violently when I accepted the invitation. And, even then I’m not really sure I knew as to why I should want to vomit. I recall a make-shift make out closet in the back room, and I strongly believe everyone there, the entire flood of dressy and sharp-shiny people had had the fine and reserved opportunity to take part … except me of course, however cynical that honestly seems. It was a bastard thing to think, but these people were way out of my league, true hipster creatures — on the verge of complete extinction. I was a thing an impish butterfly of the twilight forest, and nothing but.
I had gone out to the outside to the patio-balcony that night, and smoked a smoke or two, or fucking five, I couldn’t possibly remember because I was so cluttered in my thought spasms. I had seen Marie there a little earlier leisurely floating throughout the sticky bodies of dancing freaks, decked out in this amazing outfit, tight and ugly eighties jean shorts, wild punky Brewster hairstyle that was surely draining every one of their drunken and sweaty eyeballs including my own. I had this furious crush on her for some reason but I never got to know her like I wanted to… a descent and logical conversation never took place, never materialized. Instead, all I got were these bits of broken concentration and bumbling laughter that seemed to tinkle out of her mouth like crushed diamonds. She seemed to do that very well and there were many moments where I thought she was an irreverent street urchin, always laughing and stealing your money or pants.
I saw her on the balcony and completely ignored her because I thought, and thought rationally mind you, that she was for some reason or the other, disgusted with me. But I think I might have been mistaken, because a ping of unwarranted self-righteousness reverberated through my body like a collection of embittered sweetness, as she booted me in the leg with her tiny girlfoot, signalling a red flag of interest.
“My god!” I beeped, standing there looking at her picture – this goddam single picture I found in my back pocket one evening years into the past. Somehow, I managed to think that she might have been into me, but was at the time entirely too shy to do anything about it due to her substantial lack of self-esteem, which was clearly stated to me, Elliott, by Rodge the Model, once before.
I thought, while crumpled on the floorboards in such early morning nonsense, that perhaps if I would have just given her the time at that party, where we had this time to talk, where it was right there, right in front of my nose, my gawking mouth, the opportunity to actually talk with her! And all I could do was dwell on her innocent handicaps like one does to a doe-eyed girl that surrupticiously scratches her pink mosquito bites …Gosh, it was all there and my fucking pride decided to make its debut appearance like a big and flopping moron riding bareback into the sunset thinking heroic thoughts of manly resistance against female rationale. Where the hell was my sidekick then to tell me what an ass I was making out of myself? Who is this sidekick anyway – does he speak English?
There was a connection there. I remembered it clearly. I felt connected to her before I even saw her, as though there was most definitely a history that was to be created … something magical, even. There were times and moments when I first started thinking of her before I even talked to her, before I even knew she was friends with anyone I knew for that matter. There were things that ended up overlapping each other, creating all kinds of hidden meanings some like to call quietly: intuitive coincidence. The mere brush of her image soaked me in an overwhelming burn throughout my body, a crimson flush of want and the blood soaked desire to fall in love with her like never before and never again. It was a maddening, slippery, soapy infatuation!
That night, she left early, and I hadn’t noticed until it was far too late. I had missed my chance, that’s for sure. I was left feeling tricked and ugly for some reason, my senses disconnected and defused, spattering electro-juice from my android arms: an incredibly depressing mess of robotic supply. I had to know why; there was no way to know.
A friend of mine, long gone now, said I shouldn’t have gone and beat myself as I did. I was taking it too seriously, and I looked washed out, similar to some beaten boxer who tries endlessly to destroy that old Everlast punching bag circa 1984 with sweat stained knuckle imprints on the brass ring chain supporters.
In the illusion of my mind, precisely one week later, or was it the next night? Maybe it was the next evening, a summer Saturday. This love-inducing siren had invited me to some party called “Aquatic Afterlife.” I remember feeling strangely blessed and revived thinking, yeah, I’ll go and I’ll see her and I’ll just tell her everything. I’ll just tell her what I really think and all that good stuff …
The next day rolled around and located all around my hands were bad gestures, silly feelings and frozen foot positions that I couldn’t seem to grasp. The moment I set out to look for this supposed terra, I immediately managed to talk myself out of going. I was scared, unlucky with women, and sweating so fantastically bad. I remember the air was nervous that warm and warlike night. In an hour, I was sure I’d be a miserable wreck. And, to my amusement, I was.
That night, before going to the party, I was going to have a few drinks, to kind of settle down my stomach, which was twitching and bleeding from fear of being grossly rejected. I was with Tracy “tits” Witherspoon, the vanilla village blonde girl, who was going to be accompanying my unsteady hands that evening. She was nice enough to drive, but was entirely wasted. I had no complaints. At the time, I could tell she was apprehensive of this situation that I was in, and that she wanted to see me score with this mysterious woman of the hip. She wanted to see me saturated in her fumes, and to come back telling tall-tales of the nights’ never ending possession.
When we arrived at Marie’s place, a house in the farthest corners of Brooklyn, where the trees were black-green and scattered wide and thick, we gawkily proceeded to walk down into this elfin meadow, catching twisted glimpses of enchanting multicoloured love stars twinkling in huge, ancient wrap-around oak trees. Butterfly fairy children were dancing all over the dampened thicket, which was littered with half-naked bodies and glittering laughter in every direction known to man. In the far right corner, a drum circle of a most amazing quantity of drugged and damaged orphans pounded away to a beat long dead since the late sixties early seventies. But, it suited them well, and I walked pass their buttery eyes, looking for the one. But she had been absolutely nowhere to be found, and I think I began to sob quietly like a lost applicant in some big city nightmare. Tracy the spectacular replica of a bad actress on Black Sunday, had abruptly decided to let the alcohol affect her walk and crispy voice, as she arrogantly, foolishly and recklessly even, began barking words that no person could even begin to understand. In her mid-ramble, people started to eye us, like we were troubled youths coming back from doing cocaine in a bathroom stall in elementary school – suddenly marking us as obscure and ridiculous creatures with no hidden fashion intelligence or starry obsessions. We were lock-in as troublemakers!
By the gods! And then the world, where everything was produced through redcracked, redglossed lips and glittered eye sockets, began to formulate into a bewitching gesture to leave at once without any further sounds, save that of the broken car door slamming alongside the engines groan as it reached forty-five miles an hour in three seconds leaving the midnight dust to fall by its lonesome to the tangled, mossy earth. In the moments to come, I became childishly dilated with anger as we left the fairy playground full of neo-hippies. Again, I was left feeling odd, self-loathing even. The entire evening, and the disco party the night before began to create an intense pain in my head while I was fervently chewing bloodied thoughts of inky despair…and I felt like a teenage girl curse, whom was to inevitably be misdirected into a maze of hapless endings and beginnings, on some strict and unabridged purpose to tire me out – to utterly exhaust my vehement pursuit.
I lay there now, on the floor, holding the orange photobook, recalling the times where I cared enough to think passionately for some girl. It made me sad to be this way at this ungodly hour. I felt alone, and dry. Like some kind of old costume, never to be used again, and put out with the Friday trash. There, in the window of my little room, I croaked at the suns’ light, and refused the hand of god to continue reading more into my old memories. It had been years. I felt old, and used up. Caressing the orange block was like looking at pictures of dead family members, because the person that took those pictures and wrote those entries, words, meanings and nonsense, was long dead. He died out with the few that were like him…in a terrible snowstorm that forever blinded his passion and heart. I picked up the photo album, and just looked at its’ torn cover. The front had been entirely abused by the elements. Withered and insubstantial. To my demise, I kept swelling up the past.
I never connected with her, but I did saw her one last time in the first week of the April 2004. Anyhow, I had agreed to meet Charlie-Boy and his super-friends at this shady home located around the Greenpoint area, in which I kind of had this considerably attractive feeling that she would be there, and I felt like having a laugh, or being ardently disgusted, or both, whichever came first really. It’s all the same when the feelings mix together like putrid wine down your throat…when you’ve nothing to lose except consciousness.
I first saw Charlie-Boy sucking a cigarette down like he was marked for certain death, a Coor’s 16oz in his left hand, and a quick salutation with his right as we casually landed eye-contact. I quickly scanned for this estranged love of mine, and caught her nearly fifteen feet away, parked on a wooden swing, or some tacky outdated wicker chair of sorts. I looked at her and she totally and wonderfully noticed me as clear as a sunny fucking picture-fucking-perfect day in the park. I quickly and stealthily looked away so as to not notice her and become stupidly embarrassed or fall up the steps to the porch or something. Strange.
Anyhow, she was there surrounded by her usual flock of intoxicated sycophants, who had been feather-fanning her and feeding her some goddam awful amount of red and green grapes. For no reason into the spring air, Charlie-Boy voiced that there was a much better party occurring somewhere else in the far environs of an east Williamsburg apartment, and that it would be most important to hurry and leave, as this place was, in his opinion, gradually depleting in intelligence anything. I completely agreed, and puffed down my poisonous Dunhill.
But first, he had to go inside and get his bag. Moments passed. And. Of course, by the gods, it was calculated, and secretly I think he was taking his sweet cookie good goddam, gracious time and I almost couldn’t take it anymore man! I was seated in this flimsy chair that should have broken upon impact so as to torture me even more with the dark and crooked marble gaze of this girl and her forever unfashionable followers, which were now lying around her like flaccid playthings waiting for their next command. Unfortunately, the creaking chair hadn’t collapsed like I’d perpetually hoped and foretold, no. I just sat there and smoked another smoke, like a classic nobody should and would.
I just about smoked it down to the filter before a bewildered Charlie-Boy materialized from the creaking doorway, holding the little hand of some little girl who looked like hell were inside her pretty little belly. I thought, finally, it’s over – this rancid and decomposed party is shutting down.
But to my affably drooling surprise, he began to get caught up in a fantastically meaningless conversation with this tiny demon he held so close to his side. I decided my palpitating brain was suffering stupidly, and I slowly began to make my way to the white porch steps of which I must have gone over at least fifty times in my head — the humorous and fabulous concept of a wonderfully graceless exit into the muddy sepulchre of my life’s end. Ha. The timing would have been wonderful, had it actually happened.
I had begun to start making my way to down the steps when out of thin air, a fragile young boy-child with an underdeveloped fuzzy face stopped to inoffensively harass me, as I most always try ever so quickly to dodge his eagle eyes. But he had this sick mutant ability to find me within seconds of my first breath at a social gathering. Such a disturbing young person! At the time, he proceeded to graciously irritate me directly in front of my last exit. At the time I wasn’t sure if I utterly detested the boy, or if I generally enjoyed his predilection in the performing arts, as the boy-child had some experience and even landed a few small-time plays around town. But right then and there, after annoying me with this five-minute long conversation about anything stupid you name it, I eventually surrendered to the inane and inescapable situation I was in and decided to smoke another cigarette. He took one look at them and noticed they weren’t the cheapish kind, but nice ones wrapped in carefully crafted golden foil, and he posed almost perfectly, the leading question that would set me free of his absurdly intempestive presence.
I gave him three and then quickly walked off, leaving him smiling generously into the direction of Charlie-Boy, who was trailing me with a sick smile only men of pure wickedness could ever possibly care to display. I waited for him to hurry his trot and after a quick and undeniably accurate exchange of ungodly exciting glances from myself and Marie (for I was suddenly a mere four feet from the swollen sounds of her associated floor supporters); I said goodbye quickly – loudly, to the young idiot savant who was all ready smoking one of the cigarettes I had given him: “Goodbye!”, and made my way across the street to practically jump through the tinted window of my car and speed away into the street glow of the metal moon nightfall. Luckily, I was parked quite far and out of site from anyone that would ask why I was beginning to weep absurdly at the bulging pop in my chest.
Absurd because there was never anything there except “feelings” “intuitions” and/or garbled and strangely misleading “words-of-mouths.” My reasons were purely justifiable in the name of cosmic force! It was love. Some form of it. I don’t really know. But it was love… and I had no idea how to handle it.
Sitting against the wall, I thought of only coffee. I needed it. Something, I needed something, and reading into all of this memory was somehow ridiculous to me. I was twenty-three, and exhausted from the working week. But I had this god forsaken photo in my hand, and wanted to know more of what was going on in that head of mine. And the sun was not helping me get up: place ultimate and beautiful blame on the sun. Looking at the window in my little room, I thought back on this woman, and all that sort of silliness that young people are fully capable of – I smiled when I remember how serious I was about her. I mean I was after all, leaving (although I didn’t know it at the time) and would have ended up creating a purely treacherous situation for us both. I mean, if I had fallen in love, I wouldn’t have left. Besides, I would’ve most expectedly been a mess of bad thoughts, sadness and a possibly raging ulcer of spine-splitting and uncertain catastrophe. I think secretly, I think she really liked me a lot, but had some strange intuitive dream that I wouldn’t be around for too much longer…and it would’ve been a terrible situation to endure for the both of us, of which we both understood and both successfully avoided on a subconscious level. Bullshit. Gosh.
She really got to me, and I didn’t even know her. But I’m thumbless in matters of handling love in this bucket of a city, and it sucks. Perhaps, it was her movements that got to me; her face, hair (as equally superficial as that was), and her reticence that paved a road for anyone and everyone to not ever get to know who she really was – like I said once in a singsong reflection: ’she would most definitely lose that all if she were to let me into her life.’
I seemed to do that often way back when. For instance, I’d see a certain someone, that I obviously could never date or have an anything with, and all of the sudden a part of me goes off like a goddamn fire alarm at four in the morning, all senses rotating disgustingly, waiting for the real answer as to whether or not there’s a fire near, or it’s just a false fucking alarm. And usually, nine times out of ten, it was a just my imagination. I remember I’d always feel really strange when the thoughts of raging love would take place, always thinking things about her, “feeling” her swimming around in my head, wondering whether or not I was overturning in her mind or not. It was all so vexing to the point of sticky insanity.
Like I said, it’s been years since I had seen this photograph and little entry, Marie…what does that even mean to me now? Who was this person? It happens all of the time – her memory popping in and out of my life like some kind of mechanical phantom. She would always return in one fashion or the other. And just when I though I was free of her mental claw, the feelings, the strangeness of it all – it sunk right back into me, when I would least expect it. Like always. You know, earlier this week it happened: I was taking the L into town for some reason or the other, some meaningless excursion of work, grocery waiting, or what have you, and then I see this girl who looks just like her…she looks just like my Marie: reddish blackish brownish lioness hair cropped so endearingly above her sinister stare, the classic coloured hair band, the wonderfully attractive hairband of a lifetime, the layers and layers of clothed personality – all of it, back and forth, back and forth…untouched shipwrecked feelings meandering like ghosts in a town where no one speaks the same language. She had those eyes again too…the exact unutterably knowing eyes of a woman that sees all that goes on behind the the walls of metaphoric absurdity; she spoke only in action. And you never heard a word.
And then I started to wonder if Marie ever thought of me at all. I wonder if she’s been sending heart-waves from a lonely FM signal into the dry and caked sky above. I mean. Does she love at all? Can she feel me thinking of her – even though I never knew her? I wonder if she had those moments of reflection, or if she would become unhinged at the root like some other-worldly obstacle of peace and ennui, and into the unlikely outcome with an unlikely situation…My life, my warp speed mind wonders about her as though we were in love, an intense and longing love, undying and imperfectly precise. It is this moment specifically, that turns me to believe that my head is stuffed with impossibly thin feathers – and I’m gradually losing all sense of my accumulated reality.
I wouldn’t put it past my own self-awareness to tell you the truth, it drives me insane to take delight in such topics of the wishful mind, and I suppose it might pain me to delve any further, were I to continue this strange area of contemplation. I mean really, should I mull over her without her consent, or dream even of what kind of love it would have been or could be? Why the hell am I so intrigued by this? It makes no sense. It’s truly senseless and counterproductive to my life. I am an accomplished college graduate, and working not!
Besides, what difference does it make, she never really cared in the first place, and I knew that first hand, now didn’t I? I pull out a cigarette from the drawer on the kitchen table, and that was that. Lit it, and engaged in smoking. Ah, perhaps if I’d a way to communicate with her. I walk over to the coffee machine and flip the kitchen light on while doing so. Hm..but would it even be emotionally worth it to employ the energy of an uncertain and yet beloved fascination that would ultimately be an empty endeavor, but satisfying nonetheless? Hmm… These are purely satanic thoughts and should be forced out by an abandoned back-alley catholic priest. Surely, I’d really be better off listening to a television explain the most deformed ideas of cooked history and geopolitical la-la. It would definitely have more of a pull on my thinking and productivity than wishing and waning over something that obviously will never happen in a thousand and one metro cards.
I put some coffee in the filter, dump it into the coffee maker, and turn it on. Jesus, I wonder what everyone must have thought, or even if they really cared at all, as to what my intentions and feelings were for this woman. Man, when does one stop and grow into new ideas and rituals? Is there like a form you have to fill out? How much is it, and when is the due date? The coffee maker halted with a cluck-cluck and a steaming poof. It was 11 a.m. I put my cigarette out and put the picture of Marie on the counter. But I pick it back up after a few sips from my mug. How do I fix this?