I couldn't help myself.
I really like sharing what I write, and this one of the best ways to do so. On that note I guess I am back on livejournal. Here are some pieces I wrote tonight to finish the story of a piece I wrote many months ago.
Summer:
He sits in the rain, atop a roof standing solitarily in the woods. No other house can see it through the thick trees. He looks into her as if to say, "I Love you." The two talk for an infinity about all matters while the rain soaks them. The two straddle the crest of the roof facing each other. Before he sloppily chooses his next words, his memories of her unfold within his mind.
He met her at a party, a small get together amongst friends. His words were poisonous to her. Each word of his stinging deeper, releasing affection. He showed the girl a nearby factory whose history is unknown and the glory of an enterprise lays in small pieces on the floor. With flashlights from the trunk of his car the two found many trinkets long forgotten. She reached for him in the dark when his flashlight had died. He knew he could have her.
Sex. Sex had been on his mind for a while now. He had been with many girls in the recent months. No relationships, just many one night stands plagued by meaningless copulation. She was another cute girl he could get with and he had no ambition for processing his future with her.
On the roof, beneath the cloud-covered stars, cold with night and rain, she challenged him. "Do you ever get tired of it?" She asked him.
"Tired of what?"
"You know... this-this lifestyle you have."
"Well, um, I don't really know what you mean- I like my life."
"No, that's not- these girls you're always with, do they mean anything to you?"
"Oh... I guess they mean something to me at that moment; but it's hard to explain, you know?"
"Don't you ever want anything more from them? You can't do this all the time."
"Ummm, I- I don't know. I suppose I want more, I just can't settle down yet. I don't know. I haven't really thought about it."
And with his last words, he realized she had him. The game was all wrong; he had fallen for a girl. She- with simple words under the rain had changed his heart from cold misogyny to a warm love looking to be shared. In an instant he came to love her. He has never tread lightly in the matters of love.
With such simple grace she inspired him to want so much more out of life. He was sure the two of them would be very happy in that cold rain. After awhile, after many deviations and stimulations, they were back on the topic of love. He admitted, "I like you," understood in the romantic sense. She smiled, and agreed. He leaned in to kiss her with the rain washing both their innocent faces. When their lips met the world melted away as it does in storybooks and TV sitcoms. There was only she and he and the sound of hearts beating. Suddenly, amidst a most perfect moment she pulled away. Darkness reappeared. Clouds returned. The roof was underneath them again. He looked at her in disbelief, she responded to his eyes softly, but not sparingly. "I-I like you, really." She lightly punched his chest. "I just, I just can't do this. I mean, I leave for California in a few days, and I can't really get into anything. I'm sorry. Do you think you could take me home now?"
He had never felt such an embarrassing pain before. Soaking wet, they hopped into his blue Subaru Impreza and drove into the dense suburban environment surrounding the woods. When they reached her house, she turned to him as he was struggling to become cold to her existence and she muttered the first words of the hour, "I need to know you, how about a hug?" He obliged, and watched her close the car door, walk to the side of her house and open the screen and nudge the wooden door open, never looking back at him.
-----
They sat in her attic passing a rolled cigarette between the two of them. “So do you know me enough yet?” He asked her. “Um, I don’t know yet, I’m learning, but I don’t know.” He told her how he still liked her regardless. The two then dropped from their chairs and lay with their heads together staring at the ceiling, still passing the cigarette. In between drags she begins to tell him one of her theories on love. She believes that whenever someone admits their affection for another, the only necessary response is to hit them with bruising force. “Why?” He asks intrigued. She explains: “Because, saying you like someone is- is such an extreme. You can’t just say you like someone. It-it has to be intense. And it’s the same with violence- you need that intensity and viciousness to hit someone. You are doing the same thing even if you don’t realize it. So you have to hit someone when you like them, because the two need to have a balance.”
He didn’t understand, so he just smiles and reaches for the cigarette, as it burns closer to the filter. He licks his hand and pushes the cigarette into the wet skin to extinguish it. Flicking the butt into the corner, he decides he wants to try and kiss her again. She apparently has the same idea. They simultaneously turn their faces towards each other and move closer with eyes slowly shutting as the gap between lips disappears. They kiss, and almost immediately she punches him in the chest.
“Fuck! What was that for?”
“Because I like you, don’t you understand?”
He doesn’t need to think, all the pieces fit together from her previous riddle. He felt fantastic. He understood fully the bizarre and unexpected elation derived from the intense expression of love and hate. He was the boy she likes but wants to hate, just as he hates his love for her. He hits her back, and the two giggle and shout and whimper and sigh with the feelings of deep affection and pain and hostility.
Panting from an affectionate fight, the tone draws back to a surreal seriousness. They take turns asking each other questions about their lives: firsts, how many’s, lasts, have you ever's. Certain questions are amusing; others strike deep into places they have struggled to hide. “Who was your first?” He asks her.
“Um…it’s embarrass- it’s- I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“It’ll be fine, I’m not proud of my first if that means anything.”
“Well, promise you won’t change your opinion of me?”
“Yeah.”
“It was my cousin.”
He doesn’t know how to respond. He is revolted, but still curious. She unfolds the story for him and he only respects her for it, and the taboo of cousin love begins to fade for him. He reveals that he lost his virginity to an ex-girlfriend while dating a girl he could not seem to please emotionally.
She asks him about what drugs he has taken all too enthusiastically. He recalls what he can from a decently sized list. Her eyes open wide with innocent curiosity when he mentions heroin. She fires off dozens of questions all pertaining to the drug and he answers regretfully. Despite the misery of his past relationship with heroin, he is too caught up in her energy to refuse her a door into the junkie lifestyle.
-----
He parks on a small one-way street near what many have nicknamed the, “Heroin Houses.” He looks up at one with chipping paint and old concert posters on the door. He was very familiar with that house, but the people who once hung those posters had long disappeared and on the porch stood a woman of the night- at 5:34 in the afternoon. “Whatchoo need honey?” She asks upon his approach to her steps. “I’ve got five dollars if you find me what I want.” He responds while pointing to the dark red bubble under her skin reflecting a recent needle going through her vein. At first she doesn’t know how to respond, then she understands he is not a young cop after glancing at his own veins. “Wait here boo.”
She came out boldly with a gum wrapper filled with what he assumed was black tar. “100, and that 5 for me.” One hundred dollars for a gram, maybe it was pure. He thanks her, and with crooked teeth that reflect decades of hygienic neglect, she smiles and promises good business between the two. He nods and walks away.
-----
Driving quickly to loud music he rushes to a medical supply store. He looks into the rearview mirror. He clean, it shows, he is happy. He walks around the shop looking at scrubs and different tools of nurses and doctors. He doesn’t see what he needs. He walks up the counter and asks the woman if they have syringes. She shifts her weight back in her chair and in a grimace he has never seen a white girl make, she asks, “What for?” He replies without missing a beat, “Oh, I am working on a sculpture project that is a social commentary on drug abuse. It’ll look like a big needle monster.” He lies. She likes the idea of a medical sculpture, and smiles with motherly affection. She makes small talk about sculpture as she digs under the counter for a box of syringes with hypodermic needles. During the awkward conversation, they learn he goes to the same college as her cousin’s son. He doesn’t know her cousin’s son. They have different majors. He pays $13.01 with exact change and politely dismisses himself from the shop without rousing any suspicion. Junkies can get needles for free, but he doesn’t want to be considered a junkie yet.
He rushes to her house and sees her smoking a rolled cigarette on her front steps. She sways up to the car and sits down next to him moving CD cases out of her way. “Hey, I have something for you.” He says while reaching under his seat to pull out a pair of red vintage Espirit sunglasses. “Awww, thank you so much, you didn’t have to.” She hugs him around the neck, cigarette still dangling between two fingers.
He drives the two back towards the city. Before too long, he parks his car at a local bar, closed during the midday. He leads her over the nearby railroad tracks and through a hole in a rusted chain link fence. There is an old house with boards over the windows on the bottom floor. The upstairs’ windows have never been boarded and consequently the panes of glass stand shattered to time and vagrants. She is enthralled by the complex graffiti on the walls outside the house. Holding her hand and glancing over his back shoulder he nudges one of the window boards to the side. She questions: “Hey, what if people come?”
“They won’t”
“How do you know, people have obviously been here?”
“Not in a long time, the graffiti is old and the original squatters left by train months ago.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“This isn’t my first rodeo cowboy.”
He adds an interesting pronunciation to rodeo and she just smiles, kisses him and then punches him accordingly.
He pulls out a woven blanket from his backpack and lays it down on a striped mattress left in a room on the second floor. They sit on the blanket, preparing for a picnic of sorts and watch as a train drives by and shakes the broken shards of glass left on the windowsill.
-----
He tightens a dirty blue tourniquet around her arm without tying a knot. She looks at him with a confused look, “Shouldn’t you tie it tight?” He shrugs and explains to her how knots are for amateurs and Hollywood, by clasping down on the strap between her arm and upper body she won’t accidentally pinch off all circulation indefinitely. He grabs the syringe filled with what he ironically calls, “My personal Jesus,” shakes the air bubbles out and carefully aims for a throbbing vein in her forearm. Before puncturing the skin he asks her if she is sure. “Well, no,” she responds, “But do it anyway.” He nervously smirks, halfway between commitment and reluctance. He slides the needle into a vein, pulls back the plunger and waits to see the blood flow. He shyly presses the plunger down halfway- she winces. She opens her eyes and then they roll back into her head with a rush of euphoria. She collapses onto her back with her legs still crossed.
Half a dose was enough and he pulls out the syringe carefully. The tourniquet fell lose to ground as expected and he grabs the latex strap and gives himself the same treatment he gave her, only more convincingly. He drops back slowly and calmly laughing with the needle still in his arm. He stands up and it drops onto the floor. He leans over her while she mutters phrases and variations all intending to simply say, “Wow.”
He leans in for a kiss, so proud that he has been able to offer something to the girl who seems to be beyond everything worth wanting. She stops him with her hand; he feels as if he is floating above her and his euphoria turns to gloom. He understands what he is to her. He has been nothing but a conduit for her- a doorway into a world she understandably and unwittingly belonged to. He was still floating above her and unconsciously sat at her feet. “I know,” he admits. “I just-It’s not you- I am leaving in two days now- I just…” She cuts off.
“No, I know, it’s okay.”
“I just don’t think I should be with someone.”
“You know, I wasn’t asking for much, maybe a phone call.”
“I don’t know if I can even do that.”
“I understand, it’s okay, really.” It wasn’t.
“I still want you as a friend.”
“Of course.” He lies, but so did she.
The two sit in silence for hours. Minutes to him, days to her. They both understand the other’s discomfort but neither makes an effort to break uneasiness. They both know where they stand in each other’s life. They drive home when it begins to get dark; both are still shaking with heavy narcotics in their systems. He drives carefully, but quickly as the uncomfortable silence eats away at his sanity while his mind over analyzes his situation. He wants to be rid of her, as she is already pleased she has gotten rid of him.
He pulls up to her front porch as she lights the cigarette she has been rolling. He looks solemnly over to her but before he can say goodbye to her for what may be eternity, she pulls out a small knife he sharpened for her the day before. She smiles adoringly-, which hurts him- and quickly cuts his arm leaving a cut that begins to pool with blood. She cheerfully adds, “I hate you, and it’s okay.” She escapes around the backside of her house to play with the neighbor’s dog.
He drives away in what he wants to believe is bitterness, but in actuality he was experiencing the overflow of a broken heart. He turns on the stereo, the singer’s voice is heard saying: “Is it just the pains in your head, that are thrilling me?” He thinks that life is funny for working out this way, and agrees with the singer on the radio. He stops at a gas station and purchases a pack of Basic Lights. He drives home and automatically begins to pack his things- chain-smoking for the first time in a year. He unknowingly came to the conclusion that this town no longer has a home for him, just as she realized she had no home in him several days before.
The two cross county lines 13 minutes apart from one another on a Sunday afternoon. They left in different directions, with her thinking of California and him thinking of her.
-----
He was visiting his parents in the town he said goodbye to eight months earlier. Sipping on an overpriced black coffee at a Café that was currently overrun by musicians, yuppies, and the teenagers who he felt will one day sacrifice their potential for pregnancies and mortgage loans. He smiled, as any misanthrope would while listening to cafeteria drama being told by a particularly plain seventeen-year-old girl behind him. He looked up from an Aldous Huxley book and his heart pounded nervously. He saw her, she turned, his heart dropped immediately. She was evidently a slender gay man with a plaid shirt fitted for a slightly curved girl. He was privately embarrassed.
Several chapters into his book, while he scribbled notes onto a paper bag; a familiar face approached him. It was a mutual friend of his and hers. Small talk.
The friend pulled out a laptop and the computer started whirring and searching for a wireless connection to the virtual world that has become all too real in the past years. An awkward moment ensued. It was the type of awkward moment that exists when one with an electronic manifestation of the mechanized world snatches attention away from the written tangible interpretations of reality that is presented by a good book. The two understood that the computer was inferior in artistic grace, but superior to the book by mainstream conventions. Bystanders stopped drinking and they too understood this relationship, as every one’s eyes glanced from his defeated face, to the book, to the laptop, and ending on the friend’s sympathetic face.
The awkwardness passed and everyone began sipping the expensive drinks again. The friend showed him pictures of her trip to California. She was gone a month, and returned as the same beautiful girl, but with more experience in her eyes. He could tell without asking that this was true.
He did not want to unmask his obsession for her by asking about her, so instead he just stared at the grains of coffee that were left in the bottom of his paper cup. The friend spoke about her without noticing the pain he felt at her every mention. The friend painted dozens of memories that he wished he created. He hated the friend, but silently encouraged the friend to continue. Before long, he blurted out, “So, um, what has she been up t-like I mean… where is she man?”
The friend understood he has not gotten over her yet and the friend’s tone dropped from nostalgic to an antagonizing mournfulness. “She did some more traveling, all by plane though I don’t know where she gets the money though, she has no job. But anyways, I haven’t seen her in a couple weeks. Last I heard she was staying with that one friend,” he knew exactly which friend, “but I don’t know if she is there anymore, she is always off to something or someone else.”
He unlocks his bicycle that has since replaced the blue Subaru and heads off into the evening traffic of downtown. He takes a detour and rides quickly before the sun officially sets. Determined, he swerves around cars occasionally smacking the windows of vehicles he deems too close. He turns down a street popular amongst college kids from the nearby university. His pedaling slows down and he comes creeping past the house she allegedly stays in. He sees a light on in the attic, but lacey burgundy curtains cover the windows. He is unsure if she is there. He begins to peddle faster and glances over his shoulder one last time. He notices one of her typical rolled cigarettes smoldering on the porch. He clips his arm on a street sign and the scar she left him is now bleeding in a new shape. He swears and continues riding through the city.
Summer:
He sits in the rain, atop a roof standing solitarily in the woods. No other house can see it through the thick trees. He looks into her as if to say, "I Love you." The two talk for an infinity about all matters while the rain soaks them. The two straddle the crest of the roof facing each other. Before he sloppily chooses his next words, his memories of her unfold within his mind.
He met her at a party, a small get together amongst friends. His words were poisonous to her. Each word of his stinging deeper, releasing affection. He showed the girl a nearby factory whose history is unknown and the glory of an enterprise lays in small pieces on the floor. With flashlights from the trunk of his car the two found many trinkets long forgotten. She reached for him in the dark when his flashlight had died. He knew he could have her.
Sex. Sex had been on his mind for a while now. He had been with many girls in the recent months. No relationships, just many one night stands plagued by meaningless copulation. She was another cute girl he could get with and he had no ambition for processing his future with her.
On the roof, beneath the cloud-covered stars, cold with night and rain, she challenged him. "Do you ever get tired of it?" She asked him.
"Tired of what?"
"You know... this-this lifestyle you have."
"Well, um, I don't really know what you mean- I like my life."
"No, that's not- these girls you're always with, do they mean anything to you?"
"Oh... I guess they mean something to me at that moment; but it's hard to explain, you know?"
"Don't you ever want anything more from them? You can't do this all the time."
"Ummm, I- I don't know. I suppose I want more, I just can't settle down yet. I don't know. I haven't really thought about it."
And with his last words, he realized she had him. The game was all wrong; he had fallen for a girl. She- with simple words under the rain had changed his heart from cold misogyny to a warm love looking to be shared. In an instant he came to love her. He has never tread lightly in the matters of love.
With such simple grace she inspired him to want so much more out of life. He was sure the two of them would be very happy in that cold rain. After awhile, after many deviations and stimulations, they were back on the topic of love. He admitted, "I like you," understood in the romantic sense. She smiled, and agreed. He leaned in to kiss her with the rain washing both their innocent faces. When their lips met the world melted away as it does in storybooks and TV sitcoms. There was only she and he and the sound of hearts beating. Suddenly, amidst a most perfect moment she pulled away. Darkness reappeared. Clouds returned. The roof was underneath them again. He looked at her in disbelief, she responded to his eyes softly, but not sparingly. "I-I like you, really." She lightly punched his chest. "I just, I just can't do this. I mean, I leave for California in a few days, and I can't really get into anything. I'm sorry. Do you think you could take me home now?"
He had never felt such an embarrassing pain before. Soaking wet, they hopped into his blue Subaru Impreza and drove into the dense suburban environment surrounding the woods. When they reached her house, she turned to him as he was struggling to become cold to her existence and she muttered the first words of the hour, "I need to know you, how about a hug?" He obliged, and watched her close the car door, walk to the side of her house and open the screen and nudge the wooden door open, never looking back at him.
-----
They sat in her attic passing a rolled cigarette between the two of them. “So do you know me enough yet?” He asked her. “Um, I don’t know yet, I’m learning, but I don’t know.” He told her how he still liked her regardless. The two then dropped from their chairs and lay with their heads together staring at the ceiling, still passing the cigarette. In between drags she begins to tell him one of her theories on love. She believes that whenever someone admits their affection for another, the only necessary response is to hit them with bruising force. “Why?” He asks intrigued. She explains: “Because, saying you like someone is- is such an extreme. You can’t just say you like someone. It-it has to be intense. And it’s the same with violence- you need that intensity and viciousness to hit someone. You are doing the same thing even if you don’t realize it. So you have to hit someone when you like them, because the two need to have a balance.”
He didn’t understand, so he just smiles and reaches for the cigarette, as it burns closer to the filter. He licks his hand and pushes the cigarette into the wet skin to extinguish it. Flicking the butt into the corner, he decides he wants to try and kiss her again. She apparently has the same idea. They simultaneously turn their faces towards each other and move closer with eyes slowly shutting as the gap between lips disappears. They kiss, and almost immediately she punches him in the chest.
“Fuck! What was that for?”
“Because I like you, don’t you understand?”
He doesn’t need to think, all the pieces fit together from her previous riddle. He felt fantastic. He understood fully the bizarre and unexpected elation derived from the intense expression of love and hate. He was the boy she likes but wants to hate, just as he hates his love for her. He hits her back, and the two giggle and shout and whimper and sigh with the feelings of deep affection and pain and hostility.
Panting from an affectionate fight, the tone draws back to a surreal seriousness. They take turns asking each other questions about their lives: firsts, how many’s, lasts, have you ever's. Certain questions are amusing; others strike deep into places they have struggled to hide. “Who was your first?” He asks her.
“Um…it’s embarrass- it’s- I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“It’ll be fine, I’m not proud of my first if that means anything.”
“Well, promise you won’t change your opinion of me?”
“Yeah.”
“It was my cousin.”
He doesn’t know how to respond. He is revolted, but still curious. She unfolds the story for him and he only respects her for it, and the taboo of cousin love begins to fade for him. He reveals that he lost his virginity to an ex-girlfriend while dating a girl he could not seem to please emotionally.
She asks him about what drugs he has taken all too enthusiastically. He recalls what he can from a decently sized list. Her eyes open wide with innocent curiosity when he mentions heroin. She fires off dozens of questions all pertaining to the drug and he answers regretfully. Despite the misery of his past relationship with heroin, he is too caught up in her energy to refuse her a door into the junkie lifestyle.
-----
He parks on a small one-way street near what many have nicknamed the, “Heroin Houses.” He looks up at one with chipping paint and old concert posters on the door. He was very familiar with that house, but the people who once hung those posters had long disappeared and on the porch stood a woman of the night- at 5:34 in the afternoon. “Whatchoo need honey?” She asks upon his approach to her steps. “I’ve got five dollars if you find me what I want.” He responds while pointing to the dark red bubble under her skin reflecting a recent needle going through her vein. At first she doesn’t know how to respond, then she understands he is not a young cop after glancing at his own veins. “Wait here boo.”
She came out boldly with a gum wrapper filled with what he assumed was black tar. “100, and that 5 for me.” One hundred dollars for a gram, maybe it was pure. He thanks her, and with crooked teeth that reflect decades of hygienic neglect, she smiles and promises good business between the two. He nods and walks away.
-----
Driving quickly to loud music he rushes to a medical supply store. He looks into the rearview mirror. He clean, it shows, he is happy. He walks around the shop looking at scrubs and different tools of nurses and doctors. He doesn’t see what he needs. He walks up the counter and asks the woman if they have syringes. She shifts her weight back in her chair and in a grimace he has never seen a white girl make, she asks, “What for?” He replies without missing a beat, “Oh, I am working on a sculpture project that is a social commentary on drug abuse. It’ll look like a big needle monster.” He lies. She likes the idea of a medical sculpture, and smiles with motherly affection. She makes small talk about sculpture as she digs under the counter for a box of syringes with hypodermic needles. During the awkward conversation, they learn he goes to the same college as her cousin’s son. He doesn’t know her cousin’s son. They have different majors. He pays $13.01 with exact change and politely dismisses himself from the shop without rousing any suspicion. Junkies can get needles for free, but he doesn’t want to be considered a junkie yet.
He rushes to her house and sees her smoking a rolled cigarette on her front steps. She sways up to the car and sits down next to him moving CD cases out of her way. “Hey, I have something for you.” He says while reaching under his seat to pull out a pair of red vintage Espirit sunglasses. “Awww, thank you so much, you didn’t have to.” She hugs him around the neck, cigarette still dangling between two fingers.
He drives the two back towards the city. Before too long, he parks his car at a local bar, closed during the midday. He leads her over the nearby railroad tracks and through a hole in a rusted chain link fence. There is an old house with boards over the windows on the bottom floor. The upstairs’ windows have never been boarded and consequently the panes of glass stand shattered to time and vagrants. She is enthralled by the complex graffiti on the walls outside the house. Holding her hand and glancing over his back shoulder he nudges one of the window boards to the side. She questions: “Hey, what if people come?”
“They won’t”
“How do you know, people have obviously been here?”
“Not in a long time, the graffiti is old and the original squatters left by train months ago.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“This isn’t my first rodeo cowboy.”
He adds an interesting pronunciation to rodeo and she just smiles, kisses him and then punches him accordingly.
He pulls out a woven blanket from his backpack and lays it down on a striped mattress left in a room on the second floor. They sit on the blanket, preparing for a picnic of sorts and watch as a train drives by and shakes the broken shards of glass left on the windowsill.
-----
He tightens a dirty blue tourniquet around her arm without tying a knot. She looks at him with a confused look, “Shouldn’t you tie it tight?” He shrugs and explains to her how knots are for amateurs and Hollywood, by clasping down on the strap between her arm and upper body she won’t accidentally pinch off all circulation indefinitely. He grabs the syringe filled with what he ironically calls, “My personal Jesus,” shakes the air bubbles out and carefully aims for a throbbing vein in her forearm. Before puncturing the skin he asks her if she is sure. “Well, no,” she responds, “But do it anyway.” He nervously smirks, halfway between commitment and reluctance. He slides the needle into a vein, pulls back the plunger and waits to see the blood flow. He shyly presses the plunger down halfway- she winces. She opens her eyes and then they roll back into her head with a rush of euphoria. She collapses onto her back with her legs still crossed.
Half a dose was enough and he pulls out the syringe carefully. The tourniquet fell lose to ground as expected and he grabs the latex strap and gives himself the same treatment he gave her, only more convincingly. He drops back slowly and calmly laughing with the needle still in his arm. He stands up and it drops onto the floor. He leans over her while she mutters phrases and variations all intending to simply say, “Wow.”
He leans in for a kiss, so proud that he has been able to offer something to the girl who seems to be beyond everything worth wanting. She stops him with her hand; he feels as if he is floating above her and his euphoria turns to gloom. He understands what he is to her. He has been nothing but a conduit for her- a doorway into a world she understandably and unwittingly belonged to. He was still floating above her and unconsciously sat at her feet. “I know,” he admits. “I just-It’s not you- I am leaving in two days now- I just…” She cuts off.
“No, I know, it’s okay.”
“I just don’t think I should be with someone.”
“You know, I wasn’t asking for much, maybe a phone call.”
“I don’t know if I can even do that.”
“I understand, it’s okay, really.” It wasn’t.
“I still want you as a friend.”
“Of course.” He lies, but so did she.
The two sit in silence for hours. Minutes to him, days to her. They both understand the other’s discomfort but neither makes an effort to break uneasiness. They both know where they stand in each other’s life. They drive home when it begins to get dark; both are still shaking with heavy narcotics in their systems. He drives carefully, but quickly as the uncomfortable silence eats away at his sanity while his mind over analyzes his situation. He wants to be rid of her, as she is already pleased she has gotten rid of him.
He pulls up to her front porch as she lights the cigarette she has been rolling. He looks solemnly over to her but before he can say goodbye to her for what may be eternity, she pulls out a small knife he sharpened for her the day before. She smiles adoringly-, which hurts him- and quickly cuts his arm leaving a cut that begins to pool with blood. She cheerfully adds, “I hate you, and it’s okay.” She escapes around the backside of her house to play with the neighbor’s dog.
He drives away in what he wants to believe is bitterness, but in actuality he was experiencing the overflow of a broken heart. He turns on the stereo, the singer’s voice is heard saying: “Is it just the pains in your head, that are thrilling me?” He thinks that life is funny for working out this way, and agrees with the singer on the radio. He stops at a gas station and purchases a pack of Basic Lights. He drives home and automatically begins to pack his things- chain-smoking for the first time in a year. He unknowingly came to the conclusion that this town no longer has a home for him, just as she realized she had no home in him several days before.
The two cross county lines 13 minutes apart from one another on a Sunday afternoon. They left in different directions, with her thinking of California and him thinking of her.
-----
He was visiting his parents in the town he said goodbye to eight months earlier. Sipping on an overpriced black coffee at a Café that was currently overrun by musicians, yuppies, and the teenagers who he felt will one day sacrifice their potential for pregnancies and mortgage loans. He smiled, as any misanthrope would while listening to cafeteria drama being told by a particularly plain seventeen-year-old girl behind him. He looked up from an Aldous Huxley book and his heart pounded nervously. He saw her, she turned, his heart dropped immediately. She was evidently a slender gay man with a plaid shirt fitted for a slightly curved girl. He was privately embarrassed.
Several chapters into his book, while he scribbled notes onto a paper bag; a familiar face approached him. It was a mutual friend of his and hers. Small talk.
The friend pulled out a laptop and the computer started whirring and searching for a wireless connection to the virtual world that has become all too real in the past years. An awkward moment ensued. It was the type of awkward moment that exists when one with an electronic manifestation of the mechanized world snatches attention away from the written tangible interpretations of reality that is presented by a good book. The two understood that the computer was inferior in artistic grace, but superior to the book by mainstream conventions. Bystanders stopped drinking and they too understood this relationship, as every one’s eyes glanced from his defeated face, to the book, to the laptop, and ending on the friend’s sympathetic face.
The awkwardness passed and everyone began sipping the expensive drinks again. The friend showed him pictures of her trip to California. She was gone a month, and returned as the same beautiful girl, but with more experience in her eyes. He could tell without asking that this was true.
He did not want to unmask his obsession for her by asking about her, so instead he just stared at the grains of coffee that were left in the bottom of his paper cup. The friend spoke about her without noticing the pain he felt at her every mention. The friend painted dozens of memories that he wished he created. He hated the friend, but silently encouraged the friend to continue. Before long, he blurted out, “So, um, what has she been up t-like I mean… where is she man?”
The friend understood he has not gotten over her yet and the friend’s tone dropped from nostalgic to an antagonizing mournfulness. “She did some more traveling, all by plane though I don’t know where she gets the money though, she has no job. But anyways, I haven’t seen her in a couple weeks. Last I heard she was staying with that one friend,” he knew exactly which friend, “but I don’t know if she is there anymore, she is always off to something or someone else.”
He unlocks his bicycle that has since replaced the blue Subaru and heads off into the evening traffic of downtown. He takes a detour and rides quickly before the sun officially sets. Determined, he swerves around cars occasionally smacking the windows of vehicles he deems too close. He turns down a street popular amongst college kids from the nearby university. His pedaling slows down and he comes creeping past the house she allegedly stays in. He sees a light on in the attic, but lacey burgundy curtains cover the windows. He is unsure if she is there. He begins to peddle faster and glances over his shoulder one last time. He notices one of her typical rolled cigarettes smoldering on the porch. He clips his arm on a street sign and the scar she left him is now bleeding in a new shape. He swears and continues riding through the city.