Very Little Fanfare Chapter 1
Mustapha Mond
Disclaimer: There's no naughty bits but the following is pretty bad and you could probably find a better way to spend your time. Steal and distribute freely; I wouldn't know anyway.
My eighteenth passed with very little fanfare; we went to an under-21 club in Chelsea - me and my straight friends, mind - and huddled in the corner while lithe young things did as dervishes all around us. I enjoyed the sights but I'm no dancer. The kids I was with, Tom and Katie, Lyle and Shannon, Jake and Helen, kept egging me on. Ooh, he's cute! Wait, didn't he just wink at you? I just smiled a little and sipped my water. After a while they stopped; we left before midnight. None of us smoked but we all smelled like ash, weirdly sweet (this was pre-Bloomberg of course). A somber ride uptown. The train was one of those new ones, where the lights are too bright; no atmosphere, no romance. Like riding in a cubicle. I imagined some Martha Stewart-as- God-figure, straddling the city and pissing the streets clean, searing the graffiti off the trains.
Baby blue tiles meant home. We parted and went our separate ways under a sky far too clear, a moon far too beautiful and crisp. Considering. The couples went their way, I went mine. Happy Birthday. Dark room, empty bed. I stood next to my window for a while and watched the lights across the street, perfect little rectangles when there's no curtains and shit, and understood how a moth feels. It's that terrarium feeling - not voyeurism - but more like, I don't know - ownership. No, more...maternal. Fuck. These little people buzzing around, heads and shoulders mostly, on the computer, watching the TV. You can't wait out the lights in New York so I went to bed instead.
This is my life.
So some other day. Beautiful, painful, searing blue skies, clouds like white phyllo, flecked flour. Spring but felt like fall, don't ask me. A day like today once convinced me that God didn't exist, or if he did he must be a real fuckhead. Let's not get into that shit - suffice to say, a lot of people died, and heaven kept smiling. This day, I went to the park just cause. Dreading to meet any of the couples. I walked around for a while, stuck to the paths, glared at bikers in candy spandex, glared at morons spouting out drivel on their cell phones, assholes holding other assholes' hands, more bullshit.
Nice days bring out the worst in me. Fuck you.
...
Ok, it's ok.
I'm good.
...
I was saying. Still just a few days eighteen, same pretty day, same schmucks in the park. Off the loop, up in the northern end of things, there are these scraggly hunks of woods clinging to the hills; I think they call them the Romp, or the Roam, or something equally ridiculous. But a good feel out of those trees. By off the loop I mean off the beaten path: not so far, just far enough. You see some shady characters in there. I decided I had enough with the yuppie set and went romping myself. It couldn't have been much after noon, my wallet was empty, and all my clothes are old and raggedy anyway. Not much to worry about.
It was wonderful, actually, passing under that canopy for the first time, like burying myself in shadow. The park isn't big so there's only so much kicking around you can do, but I did it, winding in and out of the trees. I still hadn't seen a soul when I started retracing my steps. A goal: that's what it was, some kind of search, though for what I couldn't have said. An ultimatum; love; death; something massive enough to smother me, at least for a moment, from hair to toes. I've never had that.
On the way home I stopped into a soul food place and got pork barbeque. Not as good as my uncle used to make it, but still. I bit through potato bun, coleslaw, and the tangy, spicy, juicy meat, pulled straight from a dead pig in endless spiral dance, and finally realized: I'm getting old.
No messages blinking. No surprise. I took a quick shower that ended up a long one. Being naked and in private made me feel obligated to try jerking off, but after a few half-hearted strokes I gave up and just slunk to the bottom of the tub. Dorm baths don't give you stoppers so I lay there on the porcelain and let the water just wash off, and off, and off. If somebody hadn't knocked I might have stayed in there forever. The sweet steam, whirring white noise...the wings of angels...
I couldn't figure out what else to do so I went to the library. It was about as full as you'd expect on a Saturday night. Still, I know a little corner where the air is the worst and lights the dimmest, where you actually feel like you're inside a grainy movie from the twenties; there are two chairs, surrounded by empty metal shelves, tucked way back behind the microfilm area. I got there and started reading.
Just when the really good part about historical dialectic came up, I heard some light noise from behind me, nothing really, but enough that I was suddenly very, very awake. I looked back towards where it came from, but I couldn't see anything: the lights in the stacks were all on timers, so of course, nothing but darkness and the weak submerged glow in the aisles, half of those bulbs burnt out anyways. I stayed there for a minute, anyway, bulging my eyes out. I've seen enough zombie movies. It's always after the false calm that they get you - Boom. But I couldn't see a damn thing. After a while even the spines started to bend and wave, blurring, until they looked like jagged skylines of red leather, green leather, black leather...
I must have fallen asleep. With zombies around (maybe), believe me, I didn't mean to. But libraries have this power over me; stronger than a crate of NiQuil. Stale air, heat, acidifying paper, I dunno. Not the reading, certainly. I love reading. My face, in fact, was still planted firmly between two pages of Hegel, having by then crushed out most of its shape. One footnote was obliterated in a pool of saliva. As I was moving to wipe it away, I suddenly noticed a new addition to my workspace. A scrap of paper, in fact, jaggedly torn from a lined notebook. I didn't recognize the handwriting:
Guess I'm not the only one who comes here. Which is a pity because I really needed to get some work done. But it's balanced by this: you're really cute when you're asleep, stranger.
I bit into the meaty part at the base of my thumb until I couldn't stand it anymore. It left a small ring - surprisingly regular - these little rectangular indentations, bordered in violet. I was alive, and awake, and against my deepest wishes felt a few drops of hope trickle through the dam around my heart. Then I tore that little scrap of paper into shreds, and went home.
Mustapha sez: I vomited this out one dark and gloomy night when life was seeming sour to the point of burning off my taste buds. Yeh, I'm exaggerating, so sue me. I wrote a good chunk of an epic thing for Nifty before (unfinished, sorry) called 'Blues of Summer;' search for it wherever if you're curious. It's pretty wretched. Not that this is much better, but hey. Honestly, if anybody likes the style and wants to hear more, I'll probably keep writing. I'm pretty curious myself about the mystery boy in the stacks...yeh, it's a guy...I'm not screwing with one of those 'oh no, it turned out to be a girl, what is one to do?' type things. So, XmustaphamondX@hotmail.com. Be there or be square.