Confessions of a Fuck Up Artist:
Sep. 26th, 2014 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalon"What are you getting up to this weekend?" The Little Baller I work with at the office asks. "Hanging out with your friends?"
"I don't really have friends anymore." I muse looking up from the bills. "Just people who agree that we know each other in public."
This gets the chuckle I was hoping for but the kid presses the point. "C'mon everybody needs friends."
"Batman doesn't need friends." I wink. "Friends need Batman."
More laughs and the Little Baller just shakes his head walking away back to the job at hand.
Hours later. On the Southbound sitting next to some exuberant young man living in his ear buds singing along to the beats playing off his phone. "... 'cause if your ass ain't bigger than a yardstick... then you can't get none of this hard dick!"
The ancient gnome of a woman sitting across from us peeks over a tawdry paperback thriller and looks with horrified amusement at the impromptu MARTA karaoke going on. The train stops. Mister Yardstick gets off. I try to focus back on the Chandler when next to me sits a ghost. Tall, lean and with a gunfighter's squint.
"What brings you out to these parts?" I smile amused staring at the page of the book I can no longer focus on. "Got bored kicking around the same old memories."
"Well," the ghost chuckles lighting a cigarette up at the MARTA with an impunity afforded only to phantoms and hallucinations. "Since you're too 'busy' to call me, I guess this is the only way I can talk with some 'I agree to know in public'."
"Tch," I roll my eyes still refusing to shift my focus out of the peripheral knowing he'll disperse if I do. "You're not a 'friend', man. You're my brother."
"Yeah, well what about the Princess?"
"If Jughead and Veronica Lodge were ever brother-sister..."
"Yeah, I'm starting to see a pattern here. Okay, then how about Magpie?" He blows a ring of smoke into the face of a napping executive, "Or Teddy Bear?"
"Magpie's my... Magpie." I say as if I shouldn't have to explain this again. "Teddy Bear's, Teddy Bear. They're allies of the secret heart, fellow soul gangsters and collaborators of the absurd fuck you to the powers that be. My appreciation for that goes way beyond 'pals' or 'buddies' or..."
My congenial apparition laughs good naturedly and chides me. "Alright take it easy there, Baudelaire... you're forgetting to talk to me with thought balloons."
I mouth a 'shit' into the page when I see the alarmed gazes beaming off the other passengers around us.
"There have been others." I smile into the page silently. "More than I deserved. A time dispersed squadron of guardian angels with hidden scars where soon their wings will grow. A lot of them the friends of friends now gone. Men and women who've been there for me during a dark time. They know who they are. If the time comes and should I be needed, I'd be there for any of them in a New York Minute."
"Sounds to me, like I dunno... maybe you have a lot more friends than you think."
"I hope not. " I whisper to the page. "Friends are people who at some point will have no choice but to say goodbye to you one day. Friends are people who have to move on or they'll be trapped in the dream of what they could have been. Friends come and go. But brothers? Sisters? Allies and Guardian Angels? If you cherished them right, if you held them close in your heart without regret... then in one way or another they'll be there until the grave... even if they should have arrived there before you. Even if age should steal our memories of them, their influence on us measures our lives in ways beyond recollection alone."
I wait for the ghost to say something and when a moment passes that he doesn't I close the book. Knowing he's no longer there, faded back into the realm of memory and imagination, I shrug a 'see I told you so'. Still, unable to stop smiling I shut my eyes, lean my head back against the train's bulkhead and count down the moments until tomorrow night when I see her again.
It doesn't matter what I call the people in my life, what matters is that I'll be there when they call.
"I don't really have friends anymore." I muse looking up from the bills. "Just people who agree that we know each other in public."
This gets the chuckle I was hoping for but the kid presses the point. "C'mon everybody needs friends."
"Batman doesn't need friends." I wink. "Friends need Batman."
More laughs and the Little Baller just shakes his head walking away back to the job at hand.
Hours later. On the Southbound sitting next to some exuberant young man living in his ear buds singing along to the beats playing off his phone. "... 'cause if your ass ain't bigger than a yardstick... then you can't get none of this hard dick!"
The ancient gnome of a woman sitting across from us peeks over a tawdry paperback thriller and looks with horrified amusement at the impromptu MARTA karaoke going on. The train stops. Mister Yardstick gets off. I try to focus back on the Chandler when next to me sits a ghost. Tall, lean and with a gunfighter's squint.
"What brings you out to these parts?" I smile amused staring at the page of the book I can no longer focus on. "Got bored kicking around the same old memories."
"Well," the ghost chuckles lighting a cigarette up at the MARTA with an impunity afforded only to phantoms and hallucinations. "Since you're too 'busy' to call me, I guess this is the only way I can talk with some 'I agree to know in public'."
"Tch," I roll my eyes still refusing to shift my focus out of the peripheral knowing he'll disperse if I do. "You're not a 'friend', man. You're my brother."
"Yeah, well what about the Princess?"
"If Jughead and Veronica Lodge were ever brother-sister..."
"Yeah, I'm starting to see a pattern here. Okay, then how about Magpie?" He blows a ring of smoke into the face of a napping executive, "Or Teddy Bear?"
"Magpie's my... Magpie." I say as if I shouldn't have to explain this again. "Teddy Bear's, Teddy Bear. They're allies of the secret heart, fellow soul gangsters and collaborators of the absurd fuck you to the powers that be. My appreciation for that goes way beyond 'pals' or 'buddies' or..."
My congenial apparition laughs good naturedly and chides me. "Alright take it easy there, Baudelaire... you're forgetting to talk to me with thought balloons."
I mouth a 'shit' into the page when I see the alarmed gazes beaming off the other passengers around us.
"There have been others." I smile into the page silently. "More than I deserved. A time dispersed squadron of guardian angels with hidden scars where soon their wings will grow. A lot of them the friends of friends now gone. Men and women who've been there for me during a dark time. They know who they are. If the time comes and should I be needed, I'd be there for any of them in a New York Minute."
"Sounds to me, like I dunno... maybe you have a lot more friends than you think."
"I hope not. " I whisper to the page. "Friends are people who at some point will have no choice but to say goodbye to you one day. Friends are people who have to move on or they'll be trapped in the dream of what they could have been. Friends come and go. But brothers? Sisters? Allies and Guardian Angels? If you cherished them right, if you held them close in your heart without regret... then in one way or another they'll be there until the grave... even if they should have arrived there before you. Even if age should steal our memories of them, their influence on us measures our lives in ways beyond recollection alone."
I wait for the ghost to say something and when a moment passes that he doesn't I close the book. Knowing he's no longer there, faded back into the realm of memory and imagination, I shrug a 'see I told you so'. Still, unable to stop smiling I shut my eyes, lean my head back against the train's bulkhead and count down the moments until tomorrow night when I see her again.
It doesn't matter what I call the people in my life, what matters is that I'll be there when they call.