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Just One Kiss
Jul. 15th, 2011 01:29 amJust one kiss. That’s all it takes to make the vital difference.
***
Summer, 1994 and the world couldn’t end soon enough for me.
After a months’ long draught of unemployment I had finally managed to score myself a customer service gig in some cube farm up in Ty(rus) County, named apparently after the infamous “Georgia Peach” himself – Ty Cobb. My temp agency hooked me up with the gig. Paid decent, more than my previous assignments as a ‘Corporate Ronin’, that’s for shit sure. All you had to know how to do was wear a tie and read from a of list prepared responses to auto-insurance inquiries. A fucking monkey could do it if they could’ve gotten one to sit still long enough in his cube. It was the dream job supreme – big money for little effort. Things were finally starting to look up for me, now I’d be able to move out with my mates and prove to the little lady I wasn’t a complete fuck-up artist after all. So naturally, in order to celebrate, I allowed my friend Tom to ‘convince’ me into tripping balls with him the night before my first day at the job.
Swept up into a Technicolor whirlwind, traveling on currents of impulse and epiphany around the neighborhood. Giggling maniacally at absurd revelations and marveling before the holy litany of angels revealed in the gleam of a street lamp’s cold luminescence. There were four of us – though originally we began with just Jeremiah, Tom and I - but somehow a ‘fourth’ person manifested themselves at the periphery of our consciousness. A Trip-Tulpa maybe, or a vicious dream demon released by some trick of the third eye, or an ultraterrestial life form revealed to us in our collective chemical gnosis… or maybe I was just fucked up after taking three fat drops of liquid forever for my Sunday Eucharist.
The three, or four as it may be, of us embarked on a Dadaistic commando raid through the streets. We hopped fences, ghosted past large, sleeping dogs, stepped gingerly around the illuminated puddles of motion detection lamps, crouch-waddled through shrubbery… all so we could randomly change the patios of every house on our block. On some we’d do simple reversals – switching the plants and patio furniture from left to right or from forward to backwards. On some houses we’d perfectly switch the arrangements from one home with a neighbors.
It was fucking brilliant, the best idea in the history of man, or so it seemed at the time.
When I came back with the boys and staggered into bed, which at the time was a fold-out couch with a mattress flatter than six day old opened beer, my girlfriend, Sophia, was sitting up waiting for me.
“You’re supposed to be up in three hours, y’know?” Her tone wasn’t pissed off or anything. More worried.
I told her I was fine. I told her about the time I was on the ship tripping twice as hard this and having to wrestle a runaway hose viper hissing 500 PSI of steam at me. I told her about dodging the law through a cemetery down in Liquordale, hopping over tombstones and putting serious distance between my potential arrest.
I held her in my arms. Her skin glowed the soft blue of the dwindling moonlight through the window. Her sweat intoxicated me with an overwhelming scent of vanilla and musk. I told her to get up. To get dressed. We had to get out. She had to see the universe the way I was seeing it. Just one quick glance, I swore, then we’d come right back to bed so I could crash some before work tomorrow.
It took a lot of cajoling and sincere if not bad poetry to convince her.
I launched out of our shitty apartment on the corner of North and Euclid, trailing Sophia behind me by the hand, as we crossed the street over into the park. Once we were there, I released my hand from hers and turned around to see her running after me still, squealing laughter and little girl smiling from the bottom of a place too long unvisited. I went to say something to her and my step rolled off a wet branch and I went toppling down the slight valley of grass before skidding to a stop right before the empty cage of tennis courts.
Sophia, now laughing even harder, kicks her legs out and goes into a perfect homerun slide down the hill to grind to halt right before me.
“What?” She chuckled at my open astonishment, casually brushing a bang out of her face, “I told you I used to play soft ball.”
“I uh, yeah… you didn’t say anything about being good at it though.”
“Maybe I was waiting for you to ask.”
I gulped. My nervous system shuddered under an ice cascade of electric pin pricks. Guilt slithered through the heart, entered the blood stream and dispersed itself across the currents of my thoughts. “I’m sorry, Soph… I know I don’t… do a lot of things you need me to. I know I, I know I get so wound up into myself sometimes, that I forget to show a little gratitude or respect to just how fucking amazing you really are.”
“Heh,” she snorted and her smile tightened a fraction, “well I appreciate the thought, there Timothy Leary, I just hope it’s one you’ll remember to share again after the fireworks are over.”
I smiled sheepishly and nodded sadly, knowing I wouldn’t.
“Hey,” she said and I looked over.
She was holding a dandelion plucked between her finger and standing on the firing line before pursed lips.
“Make a wish.” I whisper and she blew me a kiss.
The dandelion exploded in slow motion between us. An armada of florets ignited with a celestial radiance, a diamond microcosm dispersed across the brief gulf between us, illuminated with countless possibilities before their constellations flickered back into the dark.
I turned around to say something to Sophia… and when I did her lips were already pressed against mine.
Sophia leaned in and I collapsed under her weight. I fumbled with her buttons and hissed my intentions. She insisted we stop… even as she swatted my hand away to unhook her bra. Then… the world didn’t end but rather evaporated around our bodies; the skyline melted into the trees, the trees melted into the grass, the grass into the earth, the earth into the shadows until the stars extinguished above us.
***
It was an easy job. All you needed was a tie and the ability to read a page of script to some schmuck straight out of fly-over country. Even a monkey could do it… provided the monkey woke up on time.
I was on the phone with my ‘handler’, my temp agency rep who got me the job in the first place. One she went on a limb to do, or so she explained impatiently on the other end. I implored her that it wasn’t my fault. I told her how Ty County, in order to keep the ‘wrong’ element (i.e. the poor and the minorities) out, allowed limited public transportation into and from its white picket borders. There were only two buses that left from Midtown Station at 8 and 8:15 in the morning and two out back into Terminus at 5 and 5:15pm. I told her how the bus I was on broke down. I told her how I managed to hail a cab with the last of my money to get to the station, only to see the Ty Express roll out at 8:14 prompt. I told her it was just an oversight. I told her I would compensate for the bus next time. I told her how much I really needed this job… and she told me, in so many words, to go fuck myself.
I just stood there with the landline receiver pressed to my ear. That was that, then… back to square fucked. I leaned back against the wall, the strength drained out of my legs and I slid down the surface into a crouch. I dropped the phone. How could I be so stupid? How could I fuck this up? How could I let everyone down? How could I do the one, and only, thing that could stop me from living comfortably for awhile. A scream began to wail up inside me. Instead a whine grinded between bared teeth and I started pounding the sides of my temple with my fists.
At some point the tears began to roll and the blows I self-administered began to pound harder against the skull.
Until my wrists were grabbed and yanked from me.
I looked up.
Sophia was crouched there right in front of me.
“Look at me!” she barked.
“I’m sorry…,” I whined, eyes screwed tight, too scared to see the rage and pain I had inflicted.
“Look at me.” She says again, much softer.
I blink my eyes open.
Sophia smiles – “It was worth it.”
“What?”
“It was worth it. Last night… you had a realization. Do you remember what it was?”
A brief flicker. A promise unspoken but communicated clear, now dream vague and memory wiped.
“No.”
Sophia winks: “Well, I do… and it was pretty, heh, pretty fucking amazing.”
“Really?”
“Shut up, Jack...,” and she leans in towards me and something flickers from the night before and once again I close my eyes.
Just one kiss. That’s all it takes to make the vital difference.
Summer, 1994 and the world couldn’t end soon enough for me.
After a months’ long draught of unemployment I had finally managed to score myself a customer service gig in some cube farm up in Ty(rus) County, named apparently after the infamous “Georgia Peach” himself – Ty Cobb. My temp agency hooked me up with the gig. Paid decent, more than my previous assignments as a ‘Corporate Ronin’, that’s for shit sure. All you had to know how to do was wear a tie and read from a of list prepared responses to auto-insurance inquiries. A fucking monkey could do it if they could’ve gotten one to sit still long enough in his cube. It was the dream job supreme – big money for little effort. Things were finally starting to look up for me, now I’d be able to move out with my mates and prove to the little lady I wasn’t a complete fuck-up artist after all. So naturally, in order to celebrate, I allowed my friend Tom to ‘convince’ me into tripping balls with him the night before my first day at the job.
Swept up into a Technicolor whirlwind, traveling on currents of impulse and epiphany around the neighborhood. Giggling maniacally at absurd revelations and marveling before the holy litany of angels revealed in the gleam of a street lamp’s cold luminescence. There were four of us – though originally we began with just Jeremiah, Tom and I - but somehow a ‘fourth’ person manifested themselves at the periphery of our consciousness. A Trip-Tulpa maybe, or a vicious dream demon released by some trick of the third eye, or an ultraterrestial life form revealed to us in our collective chemical gnosis… or maybe I was just fucked up after taking three fat drops of liquid forever for my Sunday Eucharist.
The three, or four as it may be, of us embarked on a Dadaistic commando raid through the streets. We hopped fences, ghosted past large, sleeping dogs, stepped gingerly around the illuminated puddles of motion detection lamps, crouch-waddled through shrubbery… all so we could randomly change the patios of every house on our block. On some we’d do simple reversals – switching the plants and patio furniture from left to right or from forward to backwards. On some houses we’d perfectly switch the arrangements from one home with a neighbors.
It was fucking brilliant, the best idea in the history of man, or so it seemed at the time.
When I came back with the boys and staggered into bed, which at the time was a fold-out couch with a mattress flatter than six day old opened beer, my girlfriend, Sophia, was sitting up waiting for me.
“You’re supposed to be up in three hours, y’know?” Her tone wasn’t pissed off or anything. More worried.
I told her I was fine. I told her about the time I was on the ship tripping twice as hard this and having to wrestle a runaway hose viper hissing 500 PSI of steam at me. I told her about dodging the law through a cemetery down in Liquordale, hopping over tombstones and putting serious distance between my potential arrest.
I held her in my arms. Her skin glowed the soft blue of the dwindling moonlight through the window. Her sweat intoxicated me with an overwhelming scent of vanilla and musk. I told her to get up. To get dressed. We had to get out. She had to see the universe the way I was seeing it. Just one quick glance, I swore, then we’d come right back to bed so I could crash some before work tomorrow.
It took a lot of cajoling and sincere if not bad poetry to convince her.
I launched out of our shitty apartment on the corner of North and Euclid, trailing Sophia behind me by the hand, as we crossed the street over into the park. Once we were there, I released my hand from hers and turned around to see her running after me still, squealing laughter and little girl smiling from the bottom of a place too long unvisited. I went to say something to her and my step rolled off a wet branch and I went toppling down the slight valley of grass before skidding to a stop right before the empty cage of tennis courts.
Sophia, now laughing even harder, kicks her legs out and goes into a perfect homerun slide down the hill to grind to halt right before me.
“What?” She chuckled at my open astonishment, casually brushing a bang out of her face, “I told you I used to play soft ball.”
“I uh, yeah… you didn’t say anything about being good at it though.”
“Maybe I was waiting for you to ask.”
I gulped. My nervous system shuddered under an ice cascade of electric pin pricks. Guilt slithered through the heart, entered the blood stream and dispersed itself across the currents of my thoughts. “I’m sorry, Soph… I know I don’t… do a lot of things you need me to. I know I, I know I get so wound up into myself sometimes, that I forget to show a little gratitude or respect to just how fucking amazing you really are.”
“Heh,” she snorted and her smile tightened a fraction, “well I appreciate the thought, there Timothy Leary, I just hope it’s one you’ll remember to share again after the fireworks are over.”
I smiled sheepishly and nodded sadly, knowing I wouldn’t.
“Hey,” she said and I looked over.
She was holding a dandelion plucked between her finger and standing on the firing line before pursed lips.
“Make a wish.” I whisper and she blew me a kiss.
The dandelion exploded in slow motion between us. An armada of florets ignited with a celestial radiance, a diamond microcosm dispersed across the brief gulf between us, illuminated with countless possibilities before their constellations flickered back into the dark.
I turned around to say something to Sophia… and when I did her lips were already pressed against mine.
Sophia leaned in and I collapsed under her weight. I fumbled with her buttons and hissed my intentions. She insisted we stop… even as she swatted my hand away to unhook her bra. Then… the world didn’t end but rather evaporated around our bodies; the skyline melted into the trees, the trees melted into the grass, the grass into the earth, the earth into the shadows until the stars extinguished above us.
It was an easy job. All you needed was a tie and the ability to read a page of script to some schmuck straight out of fly-over country. Even a monkey could do it… provided the monkey woke up on time.
I was on the phone with my ‘handler’, my temp agency rep who got me the job in the first place. One she went on a limb to do, or so she explained impatiently on the other end. I implored her that it wasn’t my fault. I told her how Ty County, in order to keep the ‘wrong’ element (i.e. the poor and the minorities) out, allowed limited public transportation into and from its white picket borders. There were only two buses that left from Midtown Station at 8 and 8:15 in the morning and two out back into Terminus at 5 and 5:15pm. I told her how the bus I was on broke down. I told her how I managed to hail a cab with the last of my money to get to the station, only to see the Ty Express roll out at 8:14 prompt. I told her it was just an oversight. I told her I would compensate for the bus next time. I told her how much I really needed this job… and she told me, in so many words, to go fuck myself.
I just stood there with the landline receiver pressed to my ear. That was that, then… back to square fucked. I leaned back against the wall, the strength drained out of my legs and I slid down the surface into a crouch. I dropped the phone. How could I be so stupid? How could I fuck this up? How could I let everyone down? How could I do the one, and only, thing that could stop me from living comfortably for awhile. A scream began to wail up inside me. Instead a whine grinded between bared teeth and I started pounding the sides of my temple with my fists.
At some point the tears began to roll and the blows I self-administered began to pound harder against the skull.
Until my wrists were grabbed and yanked from me.
I looked up.
Sophia was crouched there right in front of me.
“Look at me!” she barked.
“I’m sorry…,” I whined, eyes screwed tight, too scared to see the rage and pain I had inflicted.
“Look at me.” She says again, much softer.
I blink my eyes open.
Sophia smiles – “It was worth it.”
“What?”
“It was worth it. Last night… you had a realization. Do you remember what it was?”
A brief flicker. A promise unspoken but communicated clear, now dream vague and memory wiped.
“No.”
Sophia winks: “Well, I do… and it was pretty, heh, pretty fucking amazing.”
“Really?”
“Shut up, Jack...,” and she leans in towards me and something flickers from the night before and once again I close my eyes.
Just one kiss. That’s all it takes to make the vital difference.