I’ve been in this new place for about a month. New country, new people, new everything. Many things are nice but still foreign. Even the thought about an ice cream back home on a sunny day brings pain in my chest. The ice cream here is also good, but the air just doesn’t smell the same.
At 2pm I was more or less better. I found myself going to basketball practice. I met the others, we started warming up. Naturally, I was watching the guy leading practice. Turned out I’d seen him before while studying. Weird, I didn’t know he would be here (Okay, I knew, but that had nothing to do with why I came to practice). He is quite a wide guy, I usually like skinnier ones. There is a warmth in his eyes saying he will not cause you harm unless you annoy him. He knows his worth.
Still, there is something so sexual about him. Maybe because he looks straight ahead or because his posture keeps an air about his body. About a minute after he starts moving across the court, I know I am attracted to him. I begin following his presence, absorbing his movements, his facial expressions, his voice. All this stirs me and tells me to act. Based on experience I say, no, sit still, don’t act different from normal, when you do, it always fucks things up. So now I am trying to be me while absorbing every scent of what he is. Shit, this is bad, and I laugh nervously under my breath. He is running, and the animal inside him starts to breathe. His arms become tense, his body moves skillfully, like a flowing river. His ass is also excellent, slightly wide. It suits him, you know it’s tight, and I can only think of how it moves forward and backward when he fucks. Oh God, I’m sorry, I missed the last set of instructions he gave.
He shows us what to do and goes to each person to tell us whether we suck. I have a question, I really do, so I ask and keep my voice steady. He attempts to touch me and correct my position; he pauses, as though waiting for approval, and I nod my head with an unconcerned expression, yeah, I don’t care. He stands behind me, holds my arms and aligns them, correcting my body posture slowly and firmly. He controls his strength, and his movements are so clean that I cannot help but admire his skill. The animal strength is evident in the veins of his muscular arms, but that doesn’t make him less warm or caring. His skin touches my skin, his thighs touch my butt, his chest touches my back.
I’m sitting in an armchair facing a huge window. I watch people walk up stairs beneath the green-red-yellow crowns of enormous trees. Red trees is all I see. I don’t know why they are so beautiful, except that they are red, but that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason. Gray squirrels seem like ants hopping about their business. I watch and sit, sit and watch, and then just sit, unable to do my work because warmth and sex are on my mind. Damn, I feel like a kid blessing each second of attention the awesome guy gives me. I don’t like that. It’s not like when I’m in love. When I’m in love, the feeling has become inherent, it is no longer a surprise that I melt away when that person is near. While in this case, with this sudden rush of anticipation, I have to remember my crush every morning: oh, that guy, yeah, and feel my insides turn in agreement. I like it, but it also annoys me. Sex is on my mind. Him having sex is on my mind. The two of us having sex is on my mind.
As I sit in my armchair, I stretch to grab my bag. I feel the muscles in my arm contract, and I smile conceitedly: I like the strength, although I know it’s actually of no use. It feels like my body is working for me and I am working for my body. I learn to accept it and work with it or make it look pretty, and I’d better because I’m not getting a new body at least until the afterlife comes about. I decide to go work out, so I go across campus. I love the narrow gray paths connecting everything to everything. Now they have yellow and red leaves all over, the gray path a canvas, and the leaves painters exposing their own bodies. I want to learn to expose myself in the same way.
This place is not home yet. Back home, I used to know tall, gray, ugly buildings staring into each others’ windows. I used to play in the parking lots between two tall buildings because a garden was too rare of an occurrence. As a small, chubby girl, I used to go up and down an enormous elephant-shaped slide, and every time I was at its top, I wondered if I would land on Earth unharmed. Some ten years later, it turned out the slide was pretty small. At that time, we drank beer from big, plastic bottles, and when we finished half the bottle, the stuff left inside tasted like pee, but we’d never have admitted it. Maybe sometime in the night we’d go up and down the slide again to make sure we weren’t too full of ourselves. Weird: going up a slide, going down a slide, going up a slide, going down a slide. It’s quite pointless.
I used to know illuminated night streets after a disgustingly hot day, after a light rain, or in a snowy fog. These night streets flash softly with their shop signs, their street lamps, their reflections of car lights, while a car rolls along them, pushing the concrete back into the ground with its weight. Along these streets I’ve ran to catch the bus, I’ve walked with someone or with an endless pack of people, I’ve walked alone with my music or the city noise. In these streets, I found out what spring sun means, and I learned how slippery mud takes you to the ground. The mixture of old and new buildings never managed to be beautiful, but it did get under your skin. I could look at it and wonder why anyone would ever create it, but then it turned out I liked it. It’s like when my little brother helps me reach new levels of annoyance, but when I shout at him to leave and I see the door close behind his tiny back, I instantly call out to him to get back here.
At the new place, I could still find some rusty buildings and illuminated streets if I need them that badly. I’m sure I could also find someone to annoy me, but I doubt he’ll be as skilled as my brother. So I go on to more mundane items. Oh, yeah, that guy. I don’t like being pushed around by my own romantic whims, so I try to make the desire for him disappear. It doesn’t really, I still want to see him naked and hard, and he sends my blood spinning whenever he is near me, but I want to be happy just because he is somewhere there, doing his own things. It’s tough, I’m not going to pretend it isn’t, because I still admire his flowing movements, his skillful strength… damn it, I should just take a shower and make myself happy.
But, a friend exclaims, “What is wrong with the world? Seriously, red trees! What the fuck is wrong with this world?!”
I shift one step to the side and the sun appears, blinding me, in between the thousands of leaves. The tree is not brown and gray anymore, it is bright red, almost orange. I stand directly below the branches with my eyes fixed on the leaves. They sail upon the wind, and I look. My hands in my pockets, I teach my eyes to drink, in and in.
Well, what can I do. He’s a nice guy, I’ll wait for the whole love thing to go away and then I’ll tell him, hey, do you know I had a crush on you? He will say, whatttt???? and we’ll laugh about it.
It’s not painful anymore to be in a new place and not in the old one, it’s just a matter of habit. When I arrived, my bed was stiff, but a few nights later it began to show mercy. My balance began to fall into place. Tonight I am walking out of a building, and I stop. At first, I don’t know why I stopped, but the moment whispers to me, see, that’s why. In front of me this new land is revealing itself. Its grass is black in its sleep, and the concrete paths flow like silver rivers. Each silver river bounces off of another silver river like a ball on a pool table. I attempt to take a picture, but I can’t find any resemblance between what my eyes register and what the camera registers. That’s right, this same tale will never unravel itself in the same way, but that’s how everything works. I walk away to my dorm with the beige walls that carry the marks left by many others before me. I smile as wide as my mouth allows me. I say bye to the red trees. Their crowns are hunched over in their sleep like babies snuggling under their pillows. I’ll go now, but tomorrow I’ll come here again to smile some more.
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