Suzy knows she's not like other people. What she fails to recognize is that her mere presence is enough to render most men and some women paralized with lust. She just doesn't get it. She graces the sidewalks on her way to work and some poor sucker walks right into a no parking sign. No wonder she thinks people are weird. At Joe's, the coffee shop where she works, people are constantly spilling, or pouring obscene amounts of sugar in their cups, their minds slipping like a frogs on teflon. She worries alot that something's wrong with her. She gets fired all the time. It usually takes about two weeks. Busboys drop dishes, bosses get hard-ons, and delivery men run dollies into doorjams.
After getting in three minor traffic accidents in as many months, she gave up driving and started riding a bike, which turned out to be an even bigger hazard. She got used to the sounds of honking and tires squealing. She would just murmur at the fucking clumsy bastards, and get herself to work. I go to Joe's to write. I remember the first time I saw her. The whole town was off center for five clear minutes. The thick spring scent of lilacs mingled with motor exaughst already had me in a kind of frenzy. I walked through the door and saw her. I thanked god like five times and approched cautiously. I got my hand caught in my pocket trying to get my money out and started sweating because she was half smiling. I grabbed my cup and went to sit down with the book I always write in and began to compose this semi fiction.
The sound of customers streaming in and out of this place that looks more like a yuppie deli than a coffee shop sooths me. The sound of the espresso machine and the cash register and the lousy music station makes me feel like I'm in the belly of a beast. I love it. I sit here buzzed and obsessed and spy the dance she performs behind the counter. She moves effortlessly in chunky sexy black leather shoes with buckles just like the ones I wear, and hands over lattes and mochas with her perfect hands. I get to hear man after pathetic man try to order without slipping. They end up tipping like they just put a few quarters in a porn reel machine. I watch them come in and lay awkwardly delivered compliments at her feet, while I imagine things not fit to mention and try to assult her subconscience with the most delicate of lude suggestions. I get the notion that what she wants more than anything in the world is a freind. I'm still just this guy who writes furiously all the time.
I drank so much coffee, I had to piss four times. I finally realized that this was kind of ridiculous, and that if I was going to do anything about capturing this dove on paper, I'd have to be careful. Looking at Suzy is something like being pistol whipped. I got used to it after awhile. I made a point of not saying anything remotely like a compliment. I almost slipped one day when she had her hair in a bunch of knots with butterfly clips. My plan worked. I acted numb. I pretended she was about as appealing as a cop. I didn't give her eyes the chance to warp my face into an auto fear smile. I knew if I fucked that up, I would be just another customer, instead of the only boy in the universe who can stand looking into her eyes honestly. I'm still working on it. I'm just happy that I've made myself mysterious enough to peak her curiosity. She actually looks at me.
I thrill myself with the idea that she wants me. I'm the reason she dresses mod. It's me when she slips on her shoes. Me in the morning when she washes her face. She walks around her apartment brushing her teeth, following her cat named Nancy…fake kicking it from the bathroom to the hallway to the kitchen, thinking Max. Max. Max… I bet he's writing about me. What do you think Nancy? Meow. Yeah? He must be. Then she spits.
I hear all the static in her head, all the fuzzy threads from half a mile away. She hates dirt. She hates the couples who come in and talk stupid lies at each other. It's so simple with her. I ask what she likes. She likes the feeling of soft wool on her bare nipples, but it's too hot now, so she has to wear a bra and tank top and the four straps are always competing to be the most irritating to her skin. She has a violent side. She thinks about the scalding water and what she could do with it if she got pissed off enough at the sporty looking guy who stares at her ass too much. She wonders what the hell I'm doing in the bathroom. I tell her I'm fixing my hair for her. She says oh., and wonders if I wash my hands and I tell her I'm cleaner than the bathroom knob, so why bother? At least I don't piss on the seat. All this happen in channel mute.
Being psychic makes you wonder if you're just psychotic. It's a strange game we play. When you find someone who you can feel, you are like a spider with all your legs splayed out, feeling little pulses. You don't actually feel a fly… that would be a complete thought. You feel the vibrations of the web which your brain turns into a fly. Suzy is so strong at sending. The weird thing is that she doesn't even know it. There is a stark contrast between what we do overtly… all the things we can actually observe in the concrete, and the subtlties of mind fucking. She hands me change and our fingers touch and I pick up a sensation of her sucking the roof of her mouth. I follow her lead, and the contact gets more complete. That's pure linking, nothing seen, nothing said. But when I say thanks and lick my lips, thats obvious flirting. Its the line we skirt. In combination, we compose a whole array of cues and clues. That's pretty normal. It happens all the time. And friends know this when they finish each others sentences and drink on cue and smoke in a rythym of call and response.
You should understand that this thing with Suzy is way different. She's a monster made of contagious sensation. When people encounter her, they unwittingly walk into an aura of psychosexual chaos. She explained to me over the weeks without a word that she knows full well she could have any man she wants. The last few days, she's been in a fury. She's like some pissed off computer, hitting the fuck button in an endless loop. Her movements are hurried with every customer, and the half smile is gone. All she wants is to have nothing to do so she can clean things and obsess about fucking me. Now I'm the only one in here. And a sort of actualization is happening with every word I write. She glares at me and I just keep on writing. She's coming over here. She's sitting across from me watching me write this and waiting for me to finally look at her.
Suzy, I think if I kissed you I'd have a stroke. I think somehow we have hypnotixed each other into true love.
That was when I looked up and into her blue eyes with the yellow stars in the center. I didn't die when I met her at ten that night, and took her out to drink. Sometimes luck can have its way with you. The moon was at like two thirds and the night was brisk and rather windy. I watched her close up the shop. Everything in it's place. After she locked the door she slammed me with the softest and most powerful lips I've ever had the opportunity to ravage.
The kiss was fast and vicious and tasted like hazelnut syrup. She framed me in the door like I had just saved her from the coffee nazis and now she had a valuable prisoner. Leaving the battlezone where we had dueled for a little more than a month was liberating. Now we could breathe together and walk the same stride holding hands, disarming each other with honest bits of disclosure. We both knew how much we had won with cold war tactics. Now it was down to bodies and damage and issues which were really just nonsense because we had a wicked case of true love. I wrote the words on paper. I dared her into this. I guess she wanted to make sure I don't taste like an ashtray before she commited the most fatal of sins by saying I love you too, Max.
She seemed so happy just walking along, doing what we've been doing for weeks, fucking each other's minds. Now there was the touch of walking close in the dark and very cautious language. We didn't want to wreck what has been the most important relationship ever, no matter the fact that it was virtually anonomous. I couldn't figure out what to say. I asked her how old she was. She said how old do you think I am? I said twentyfour and was right. She said I had exaggerated alot but was oddly accurate about the kinds of things I wrote about her. She said she meant what she said and just kind of shut up. I kept myself from gushing and saying I mean it too. We're very used to saying alot by saying nothing. She had no disillusions that we were in it for anything other than perfection.
Writing while she sleeps is interesting. She moves when I write the truth. I want her to be still so I'll fabricate something. She's wandering down a hallway full of people dressed in the finest of Victorian threads. She's sleeptalking, answering yes and no with varied enthusiasm like she's having trite thoughts hurled at her. I watch her eyebrows tense and twitch. This is like picking apart a bug under a microscope. And it makes me wonder if this is detachment or entanglement.
She doesn't mind. She's a space cadet. We laugh alot when we fuck.
She makes fun of me now when I go to Joe's pretending to write furiously when all I want is to make this last forever. It's like spending the same quarter over and over again for free. It's like being made. We keep the ruse of being strangers for the sheer thrill of knowing what noone knows. I act like a customer. I want to scribble nonsense and know she's swiveling her spine. It's an understanding we have. She's the only person to ever really believe that this is my job. Most poeple seem to think its just a hobby or a malady. She works. And I mine her. The price of beauty is going up and I can't pick without hitting paydirt every time. One day we will leave for nevernever land , half smiling and won't tell a soul where we're going.
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~enjoy~ *•.•*
Very charming. Lots and lots of superb lines and glowy vibes. *
Yes, glowy vibes indeed!
" The whole town was off center for five clear minutes. The thick spring scent of lilacs mingled with motor exaughst already had me in a kind of frenzy"
I love it. *
...a-and I love your name. Makes me hunger for a cool, crisp salad!
Somehow my first comment failed to stick. Alas, it was silly, and I forgot it entirely. But I loved the silliness of this piece. Your voice is infectious.