9:33 p.m. - August 27, 2001
remembrance
His hair was longish and golden brown; he kept shoving it out of his eyes as he wrote. His features were incredibly light, translucent; barely there really, except for his almost-black deep-set eyes. Shadows fell across his face and lifted again as the strobe lights flashed round and round, and yet he kept on writing as if possessed by some enraged creative muse deep inside of him.

Serpent�s guitarist began running his fingers up the board, producing this caged squealing chromatic melody, loud and pleading as the drummer leaned into the cymbal. It all rang in my ears and I turned for a split second, almost went back to dancing. But then the guy looked up. And I literally got drawn over to his table like a string was guiding me, hung somewhere from the ceiling. And I sat down across from him.

He half looked up, half saw me. Those eyes were so dark and so unusual. He chewed on his ballpoint pen, then looked the rest of the way up. Met my eyes. Waited.

�Hi,� I said, stupidly.

He just kept looking at me, as if I were merely a curiosity, an apparition come to give him more ammunition to write about. Then he turned back to his notebook, started scribbling again. �Hey,� I started. He held up one long finger, pointed at the ceiling. I shut up.

After what seemed like an eternity but must have just been about a minute, he slapped his pen down on the table with some finality. Slammed his notebook. Looked at me with that blank look.

�Doing a story on the concert or something?� I asked him. I don�t know, it just came out.

�Are you doing a story on me?� he came back, smoothly as pudding. His voice surprised me, tenor caramel and gravelly.

�Just innocent curiosity,� I told him, a bit defensively.

�Mhmm,� he said, not disbelieving, but just an acknowledgement.

�So are you? Just...�

�Life�s little questions, my attempts to answer them,� he replied. Kind of. �Not even that. Just illustrations of...pain.� He shrugged. �Not that it�s any of your business.�

�Then excuse me. For wondering why you�re on the edge of a mosh pit, writing stories and ignoring everything.�

�Then what do you get inspired by?� he asked me.

�Inspired?� He�d caught me off guard.

�Well yeah, you know that thing where you realize you have some creativity.� He looked me over. �Come to think of it, maybe you never did.�

He was interesting, I�d give him that. But god damn! It was hard to stay around and keep talking with that attitude of his. �What�s your point?� I asked him, and leaned closer. �Are you trying to carry on a conversation, or get rid of me?�

He tilted away from me. �Was that a conversation you were attempting? I thought it was just an innocent interruption of my muses.�

I stood up. �Fuck you, then,� I said, calmly as I could manage, and walked away. Back to the dance floor. Started pushing people around.

When I got out of the pit, the crowd around us had dispersed. The band was packing up. I grabbed my things from where I�d locked them up and combed my hair back with my fingers. I was halfway out to my car when I felt a heavy hand fall on my shoulder. I whirled around, and it was him. He was smaller than he�d looked at the table, a few inches shorter than me and small-boned. Suddenly he looked like a little kid, with the curved lips and the fragile face. All except for those eyes. They still flashed.

�I�m sorry,� he said in his rough voice. Looked me straight in the eye, reached for my hand. �I�m Ethan.�

I let him shake my hand, then let my own drop to my side. Looked at him carefully, remembered how he answered me in riddles, in sarcastic jabs. I left him standing on the sidewalk, drove away.

I didn�t tell my friends about Ethan. They were surprised. �You didn�t drag anyone off?" she mocked, flopping down on my bed after band practice the next night. �I thought such were the joys of the single life.�

�No one worth it,� I moved my shoulders in what I guess passed for a shrug. School was starting in three days. I didn�t have the energy for philosophy, and Ethan reeked of it. I mean, there�s a lot of other things he reeked of, such as rudeness, but there was something behind those eyes of his besides wanting to piss people off. The way he came after me and apologized.

I sat in my room and drew some hands, shaking hands and high-fiving hands, drummer hands and piano playing hands. Ethan had piano playing hands, long and impossibly flexible. Were there such things as artists hands? I looked at mine and drew, just to check the possibility. The Barenaked Ladies sang behind me. I think never is enough, I think never is enough...

Never was enough, it was enough for me in a number of things. Number one: emotion. I�d used to be literally an emotional waterfall, an outpouring of melodrama that just never ceased. It turned everything into a sitcom, a nightly episode of me. I was completely through with that phase of my life.

Number two: crushes. Oh, the unnattainable crush, the nights of fantasy, the heart madly pounding whenever there was a brush of the shoulders. The days of dialing his phone number and hanging up, discreetly befriending his friends, going to dances and scouting out the mens room constantly in hopes of catching a glimpse of him, redirecting routes to class as to walk down the same hallways. Last year�s lucky man was ______, the drummer for an alterna-band called Just Shriek, of all the screwy names. He was tanned and skinny, with cascades of blue-black hair, fat eyebrows, and a perpetual sexy pout. He was semi-popular but thought he was a god, swaggering around school looking pretty dumb indeed. Don�t ask me what I saw within that, but it doesn�t matter now. He graduated last June and good riddance to him.

Sometimes I still miss him. It�s so maddeningly stupid! We were almost on �hi� terms when he left. I hear people mentioning his freshman brother around sometimes and can�t stop laughing. The idea of a fourteen-year-old rock god brother is just hilarious. I hear he�s a great actor.

previous - next