I could not get to sleep. I closed my eyes and the song in my head turned into one, endless rift, as if I was a DJ meant to torture a flagrant with unreproachable sounds. I think the sounds had been originated from a Dandy Warhols song, "Bohemian Like You", I was telling Natallie that I was a Bohemian that wrote and painted pictures and personal belongs didn't mean anything. The song's instrumental part is an almost perfect rip off of a 60's era Rolling Stones song, complete with bluesy chords and "Woo hoo!" chorus endings.
I closed my eyes and just saw white, with a streak of sky blue in the center, that would turn into a guitar neck with some thin, depressing man playing the guitar, a cigarette held cautiously by both lips, him wearing a striped shirt and very tight jeans. I would open my eyes and see Natallie sleeping.
As the early day progressed, she kept taking off more and more clothes as my room was hot and has never been air conditioned. Our nighttime embrace was broken off slowly, we were both sweating with salty perspirance. I would open my eyes and peer at her body. The color of her skin was that of the crust of homemade bread, almost honey-colored. I looked at my own; it was pale from working indoors all the time, either on a computer at work or at a studio at school. The parts that we're bland were speckled with freckles. There are whole streaks on my arms and legs that are rosy pink, scarred from being too much of a little kid skateboarding; skating being trying to be that little kid again, a couple hours a week, a way to keep sane by escaping back in time to root in a totally different way; it has it's price.
I looked at the curves of her body. They weren't unlike some of the paintings I have had to research and study in paintings for art history, but her's was tight and fresh, obviously she worked out just to look good. I peered down at mine, all the way to my toes whose nails need to be cut, it's painful to walk even now but still I don't do anything about it. I keep buying clippers that will cut my ragged, thick toe nails, but I lose them.
I look at my legs, which have acquired the same auburn hair as my head and genitals. It doesn't seem thick but it's certainly present. I wonder who I should compare my legs to, to see if I'm normal, and thinking in a meta state, why did I want, need them to be so? There's darker hair that grows on my inner thighs now. I don't like it at all. I shift around and feel my arms, they used to be so strong, stronger than now and as hard as pure Colorado Yule Marble, I used to be a walking stone sculpture, not much larger than I am now, but a couple of years ago I swear I must have looked more like a triathalete, a Herculean man, as recently as when I was 16 or 17. I had sacrificed my health to live on my own, to spend hours hurting my hand, learning to draw, being as humble as I could about it. What would I be like in a few more years? I could only postulate one idea: completely different once again.
I wondered simply, who was I now and having Natallie next to me just complicated this thinking. I looked at her face. She had wanted me to draw her before, before I even met her. I needed the drawing for a class and I offered to buy coffee to anyone that would let me draw them. I looked at her face, really, for the first time. What was I looking at this entire night? She plucked her eyebrows, which left naked just a little bit of her brow line. starting from her forehead, I traveled down to her brow plane and swimmed in her eyes, then down her check, past her lips to her chin. She was very geometric, like a crude computer model of an avatar or a video game hero, but still not hard, her skin was soft and diffused the morning light that was coming from my two windows. I can remember my own face, except for my eyes, eyes with green, hazel blue and brown in them, wide and caring, except for those, I did not like my face. It carries the scars of being an adolescent and from family life, with creases that are much too immature to be wrinkles but carry weight, weight that brings me down and alienates me from people my own age, but fronting a mind that does not know how to deal with people much older. I looked at Natallie one more time and sighed. Why am I thinking of all this... do I always think this way? Was it the pills, the liquor?
Alcohol is used to forget, the pills just cloud everything. It must have been enough time for the alcohol to travel it's course and be slowly perspired out and I don't think those pills did anything. This is as intense as I always think and feel, it must! When I look at Natallie, everything that we don't have in common is reflecting back to me, I have found a transmitter of my feelings.
Damn, I don't even know her last name. I shut my eyes and hummed the guitar rift lodged in my brain for a few more hours. "I'm getting wise and I feel so bohemian like you, it's you that I want so please, just a casual, casual easy thing..."
My phone rang. I was puzzled but answered it, it was a little before eight. I had hummed that riff for a few hours it must have been. It was Jenn. Her number must have been dialed sometime last night and she had called me to find out who it was. She was puzzled at first but realized who she was talking to. We went to a Masquerade party a few weeks back. I dressed up as Alex from A Clockwork Orange and nailed the costume down. I asked her if she had gotten prints of the pictures we took. She had. I was delighted and told her I wanted to get some copies, told her I'd call her later about it. Natallie asked the alarm to be reset to 10:00 am and I obliged. I slept for another hour before it went off.
When it did, Natallie scooted out of bed to get fixed up in the bathroom, she had to go quickly to make her appointment, which was probably in Arvada and most definetly at 11. My roommate got up at almost the exact same time and plugged in the laptop right away to check her mail. I found that entirely curious and thought she must get some sort of life if she would wake up just to check mail. Why am I so judgemental today? I was in the living room with her and Natallie comes in. I remembered again to introduce the two, calling Natallie "Natasha" like a fucking idiot and Natallie asked me to walk her out, which I was going to do anyways.
She said something to the extent of, well, thanks for the night, it was amazing to have met, not skewing too much from that, she was drizzle with sleep still. Something about maybe I'll email you as I didn't give you my number (ha ha) and she came closer, presenting her check to me. She didn't look as beautiful as she did last night and seemed cold and in a slight panic. I kissed gently her cold, dry cheek and she was off.
I went back upstairs and got ready to get something to eat. I was full of energy whose source I could not trace. I collapsed in bed for just 5 minutes, trying to make sense of everything that had just unfolded. I realized that what happened a few hours ago was just a silly bus ride with a girl and I sighed.