(no subject)
My bike lock clangs as I maneuver it off the pole, and around the frame. I twist the little black key, securing the lock back together and drop it in my bag. As I stand I notice a little yellow rose, tangled in the brake cables, sticking up from my handle bars. I grin and secure a foot in the clips before mounting. I ride fast and hard. I have a million stories, fantasies speeding treacherously through my mind, and even though none of them are true, or will be true, they make me invincible. I look down and realize that my speed has left only a few flower petals clinging on for dear life. At each stop light there is less of a rose, and by the time I reach Patterson Street, nothing but a bare, dry stick remains. She probably, most likely, loves me not, but it was a nice thought.
"I've been meaning to ask you. Was it you who put the flower on my bike last week?"
She tells me she thought it matched. My bike is red and white and black. I do not understand, but I think it is funny and I tell her that all the petals blew off on the ride home.
At the end of the day, as I am leaving, I pick a tall, white dandelion from the overgrown backyard and stick it in the brake cables of her white cruiser. Now that matches. I am funny.
I, like Bethany, dream of New York. And if I am lucky I have the recurring best dream of my life, in which I purchase all of Times Square, and build a giant multi-story ladder which I then erect in the very middle. And when night falls in my dream, I climb the ladder, instruct one half of Times Square to be unplugged and proceed to project giant rabbit shadow puppets onto the unplugged side using the light behind me. Rabbits are the shadow puppet I could ever do.
I foolishly bit the bait and entered into a text war at 1:00 in the morning. She tells me, “Here’s my two cents. I’m not as bad a person as you probably think. I’m just a kid figuring things out.” I wonder when people started campaigning for the title of good or bad and then remember that it is often a subtle undertone of life. I am a good person? I am a bad person? Do I tell you or do you tell me? Do I determine your status? Does it fluctuate or does it harden like concrete over time? Tell me I am a good person. Does it matter? I am a person and I am attempting to DO good. There that sounds better, less self righteous. I am just a kid figuring things out as well, but I have learned and will never forget that process affects more than just me and if you can imagine me speaking this, I say it in a strained, desperate voice because I cannot understand how someone would think otherwise. And yet I know that at one point, I wore those shoes. You’ve got balls to tell me you’re a good person whose affect on other people is excused because you are learning. Mistakes happen yes, and that is how people figure things out, but until you realize that they impact others you will be figuring out the same things over and over again.
That said, I am going to New York in December.