By Patrick Patterson-Carroll
Marko met up with Bernadette at the urban market behind the library. They had planned to meet at one of the usually sun-soaked round metal tables with the uncomfortable set of chairs, but it had rained the day before and the sun hadn't been around in a week, so things were still pretty wet, but brave the elements they did. They covered the chairs and tabletop with pieces of the town's
independently distributed paper and sat tentatively, their collective focus torn between one another and their place in the universe according to the chairs and table. The wind was beginning to pick up and so they battled (only) briefly, then muttering "fuck it" to themselves and gathering the partially wet, partially fluttery paper and shoving it into the nearby trashcan.
"Now what?" Bernadette queried.
"I know a quiet place where we can talk. Come on."
They walked quietly west along the sidewalk, wide and empty; the traffic trickling in the street, running against them, eastbound. City busses appeared to lean on the corner like bums with their heads in dumpsters. Even farther in the distance, street preachers yelled the “word of god” as revealed by Christ, and panhandlers tested them in turn by requesting they make good on their exclamations in purely pecuniary gestures (after all, these Christians bandy about words like “charity” often). While people exhaustedly boarded the busses, Bernadette, unaffected by the urban spectacle ahead, commented on the dead air between them.
“I generally try to think before I speak. As my brain is occupied, so my lips are sealed,” said Marko.
“I do, too. I guess I’m being impatient.”
“I think you’re fine.”
“Good. Where are we going?”
There was a small park on the southwest part of downtown which was situated around a large serpentine sculpture that Marko had always found "ugly as fuck," but the benches were comfortable and obscured by trees. This, giving the clean green ground an intangible feel of intimacy, of easily traversed boundary, made him feel like an outdoorsman-- rugged, yet urban (or is it the inverse?), he could, in just a few steps, be his usual metropolitan self.
He gestured to Bernadette to sit. The wood of the bench damp but not wet, she dabbed her fingers at the ring-patterned surface, and then smiled and sat, crossing her legs ladylike. In the silence, he found himself being stalked by his
libido. Blinking several times and trying to focus on a thought to make into words for Bernadette, he knew that the task was futile. His
libido was fucking with him. Nude, pale, and poking its penis into a blow up doll that looked like one of the local weather ladies, this pathetic manifestation of his
libido smiled and winked at him.
“I’m thinking of quitting my job at Neiman,” she said.
“Huh?”
“My job? I told you about it. I do retail for Neiman Marcus. It pays the bills, but I get so sick of all the snobby old hags that patronize the counters, ‘I want this, and this and this just like this dear, and if you would be oh so sweet, could you wrap it and put a nice bow on it... maybe spritz some perfume on it.’ Bitches. I wish I could shop all day and still make money. It isn’t fair.”
“I sit in a cubicle all day and twiddle my fucking thumbs. I make shit for it, too. I’d rather flirt with old hags than be a hamster in a cage. Spinning and spinning and sitting and sitting and monotony the only constant....”
Through the gusts of wind displacing her hair, Bernadette looked at him expectantly as if to plead, “Yes...? yes? There’s more, I know there is!” But he just stared at the belly of the sculpture, trying to ignore his
libido as it thrust quicker and quicker into the doll. He tried to think of ways to recreate the sparks that flew the other night in the sports bar. His penis was beginning to knock on the door of the crotch of his jeans. Folding his arms into his lap, he said, “Have you ever known someone so attractive that the very idea of not being able to behold such a sight was heartbreaking?”
“No. I don’t care much about looks.”
“Hmmm. No... hmmm.”
“Yeah, I prefer guys with money,” she said, choking out laughter.
They were silent. The trees quivered with each bluster of air from the southwest. She settled her purse in her lap, opened it, and pulled out a shiny metal case. Inside were four cigarettes and one neatly rolled joint. Extruding the joint with a smile, she shifted her body-- legs still crossed-- toward him. Like in the bar with the cig, she pokes the joint in his direction, "Want a toke?"
"Nah. I'm already seeing weird shit." She crumpled her face, withdrew, and put the joint between her lips. Marko watched his
libido. It was done fucking the doll and was smoking a cigarette. He could smell the marijuana smoke and he could faintly hear her making excuses for why she does it. Of course, he didn't give a fuck about her justifications. A little pot every now and then never killed anyone.
He turned and smiled at her. For a moment he considered reiterating his previous question. His
libido was escalating the game by pissing all over the doll. Perhaps it was a bid for attention, or maybe a devolutionary swing toward
fetishism, but all the same, in that space of time he wished he were high, drunk or dead.
"Let me hit that," he said, and she gladly handed it over. He drew from the joint and pondered what all the fuss was about. He turned to Bernadette and said,
"The way lawmakers talk about this shit, you'd think it'd be more interesting. This has got to be the most boring, everyman drug there is."
"Are you badmouthing my weed?"
"Eh."
Silence.
"There was this one guy," she said, blowing away some ash that had accumulated in the cherry's wake. "He seemed to me like the quiet, mysterious type. At first. Had this very Slavic look about him. Angular, edged face, blue eyes, light skin, one of those Owen Wilson noses, and was very solidly built."
"Hmm. So what was wrong with him?"
"How'd you know?"
"How'd I know what?"
"That there was something wrong."
He thought about her question for a moment and then told her that in his experience, young women made excuses not to stick with men whom, to their own specifications, were physically attractive, but had some kind of nagging, perhaps even trivial personal issues. She laughed at the suggestion, and told him that he watched too much fucking
Seinfeld, which, to her mind, was a display of male pettiness and socially arrested neurosis.
“And don’t you dare bring up Elaine,” she added. “Females are outnumbered like, four to one on that penis fest.”
“Uh... I don’t watch that show. But your defensiveness is duly noted.”
“Whatever. Anyway, this guy. I used to follow him around. Stalk him. Kind of. Around downtown. Rides a bike, I know. So one day, I followed him into the coffee shop on Commerce and stood in line behind him. When he finally noticed me, he smiled...”
...
“And?”
“And I smiled back. He took this as license to sit with me by the window. We exchanged pleasantries, but the more we small talked, the more bored I became. I did the ‘uh huhs’ and stared into his beautiful eyes.
“Amazing thing is, I was back at work, leaning on the counter, daydreaming. I don't even remember walking back or even parting with the guy. You know? Like there was this large patch of time that I’d lost. Fell right into oblivion. I couldn’t remember anything of what he said. Not his name, what he does, or even what he thought about the weather. But I will always, always remember his eyes and his skin. And that nose. Mmm.”
Marko laughed at her swoon. The ridiculousness of that girlish expulsion of breath at the thought of a man’s large, crooked nose. He was a little annoyed, disappointed even, at the thought of the moments wasted in listening to her eventless story of aesthetic stimulus lost, and his
libido only sat naked, Indian style in the grass, hoping to get a peek up her dress.
Initially he thought it bizarre, this hallucinatory manifestation of his
libido, behaving as a seasoned fetishistic porn star one moment and in the next, as a child with a healthy sexual curiosity. But it made sense, because in his mind he was conflicted. He wasn’t quite sure how to view the woman sitting next to him. Possible on-again-off-again fling? One night stand? Unstable relationship characterized by frenzied, passionate sex with an underpinning of empty conversation and boredom?
The woman who at first so stunned him was beginning to, for reasons in that moment unbeknownst to him, grate on his patience. After a time, he blinked rapidly, hoping to shutter the pasty little fucker out of existence. Finally, she returned to his cognizance, offering him a cigarette which he declined as he stood up to stretch.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Nowhere. Just stretching.”
She lit the cig.
“So... what’s your story?”
To mention Denica, for him, would’ve been to once again tramp the fields of lonely disappointment. Bernadette observed him with intent, with demand. He didn’t think her revelation deserved that kind of “blood,” but as prevarication wasn’t an option, he decided to tell her. Fuck it. There was nothing to lose, and even less to gain, he’d realized.
“Denica.”
“Denica?”
“That was her name. She was beautiful. I didn’t really know her. She was an aspiring model from Mexico. An itinerant, she spent some time in my apartment. We didn’t talk lots, but when we did, it had an impact on me.
“She always had the sweetest way of describing me. In Spanish. I never understood any of it. She could’ve been calling me an emasculated momma’s boy for all I knew, but it was beautiful. And so was she. I was depressed for weeks after she left.
"The busker dude downtown played a lot of Rod Stewart tunes. Shit’s depressing to me. I must’ve dropped thirty bucks in attempts to shy him away from that particular part of his catalogue.”
“Wow,” she said in a voice tinged with boredom, exasperation. The conversational welcome between the two appeared to have worn itself out. There grew a tension between them suddenly-- though it’d been developing slowly over the course of their interactions-- that was neither sexual nor rancorous; it was somewhat indifferent, but altogether discomfited.
In the silence, she unearthed one of those cell phones that do everything but perform oral sex and began fiddling with it. Marko watched his
libido as it became more brazen, running its fingers along Bernadette's silken legs. He met eyes with the pallid form and they exchanged smiles. The
libido licked her knee with its tongue and said that the best thing about fucking a new woman was that she'd have no idea what a shitty lover you were until after the fact.
©Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)
