I.
March 22, 2020: today is my 25th birthday. To celebrate, I watched tanks invade the east coast from a senile lighthouse sinking into the grains of sand beneath it. I was there with my lover, Sophia, who wasn't really my lover. She was merely there to pass the time. In bringing her, I had to listen to her preposterous ramblings about the beauty of war. I nodded, even though there wasn't an ounce of me that agreed with her.
It wasn't officially prohibited to stand on the abrasive harbor, but the event of being in the midst of a ripe outbreak of foreign conflict so detrimental and so virgin to this country... it was a paramount pursuit written in my genes to watch this.
March 22, 2020: today, America is invaded by the French army.
Sophia and I have been dispassionately fucking for five months now, and the only thought I have at this time is how much I want a god damn cigarette.
I watched Sophia's soft brown hair dance wildly in the matching wind, and I brushed a few strands from her face. I watched her smile. I smiled back, and I told her I loved her. I didn't, not really. I was generally contributing to make her life as picturesque as her livid mind expected it to be; I wasn't the villain here.
-
I had only ever been in love once. My chemistry teacher in my junior year of high school. She was 45 years old and married with a drooling, shit head son just like me. I had dreams about her constantly, almost all resulting in an erection and mostly damp sheets.
So helplessly in love with this woman 30+ years my senior, I had written her anonymous poems on the white board describing the shape of her breasts and the curve of her lips under the projector screen in the mornings, and when she would write her new lesson plan she would inevitably have to erase my confessions of love. It was an odd thing to do, and I did it repeatedly, until the principal found it and filed a sexual harassment lawsuit. She was fired, and they moved away to Michigan, which I found hilariously depressing; because no one moves to Michigan, and how she would never know it was me.
-
Sophia's face was tinted pink; mouth moving fast, hands lying in the folds of her jacket.
She kissed me on the nose, and whispered, "Happy birthday," and I smiled, because how can you not smile at something like that.
We sat slumped against a wall, listening to the sirens ring.
II.
Much like the bustling crowd on a cold, rainy day, I was trudging about, determined to create the atmosphere of anger around me, so those who approached would defer I wasn't meant to interact with. This also meant that I in turn wanted everyone who crossed my path to share the same amount of discomfort and unenjoyment I had. Great minds think alike, and all of the city was fuming. The best part of days like that, was the bus ride. A compact of metal holding angry and unfriendly urban dwellers to travel through distasteful stops and 30 minute traffic.
As I ascended to the bus stop with the least amount of grace and pleasantry I could muster, the rain began to lighten and I watched out of the corner of my eye a young man sit down at the bench of a piano. I don't remember there being one on this street, and so I stopped and turned, intrigued.
I can't remember if I was dreaming or under the influence of a potent drug, but then he started to play.
Long fingers danced across keys and snugly joined together in harmony with the help of a pedal. I had never heard the piece before then, and I hadn't heard it since, but it's still there, buried in the back of a dresser, dangling from a wire hanger or collecting dust on a top shelf, hidden from plain sight.
Shortly after, the sounds of a violin reached my ears, and a young woman was clutched the neck and gracefully pulling a bow across strings, the wind pushing at her hair. And then behind me, a second violin harmonizing, neck gripped by the bulky man I saw on the bus yesterday, who I otherwise would never pay attention to. The music filled the air, and it was joined by a flute, two flutes and a clarinet; a street orchestra.
-
I ended up missing the bus, the mesmerizing twinkle of the finished piece distracting me. Had it been the crescendo of a filthy fuck or a dirty melody, I'd have ambled on the bus, raging off the fumes of a sleazy city and its tax-payers, forgetting the performance intrinsically. Instead, the piece caved in on itself in a gracious avalanche of notes- raindrops of a harmonious affectation- and settled, disappearing and leaving the morning dew in its wake.
A few who were at my stop remained and applauded, filling the block with cheer. The musicians had disappeared, back into the nondescript crowds of tourists and businessmen. The pianist, however, had stayed, wrapping up his instrument as he could not as airily cart an upright piano away with him. He had a handsome face, cheekbones and nice eyes, a widow's peak and long, blond hair pulled behind him. Clever lips quirked into what suggested a smile; I returned the gesture.
III.
"The stars are bright and shiny, much like your eyes, my dear." A romantic fantasy. Blond hair and nice eyes.
"I could mark your skin, fuck you for ages-"
"Are you even listening to me?" Sophia's agitating voice cut through my tendons and I blinked once, and she was right in front of me. Brown hair. Cold, cold eyes.
"What were you saying? I was stuck in my head for a moment."
She shoved a fat envelope in my face and expected me to take it. So I did.
"What's this? Look, I've paid the rent, they don't need any trouble-"
"It's from the government. Looks like you're enlisted. Congratulations." She stood now, her green eyes full of tears. I watched in awe as she crossed to the bedroom and slammed the door so hard it bounced off the frame.
I went after her.
"Hey, hey, look." I shushed in a comforting tone, hovering over Sophia. The window that faced our bed was open, blowing the curtains in and out, and permeating the room to a sweet and ashy mess. In the distance were bombs, close enough so that the light reached us and flashed in our eyes, yet far enough away to tell it was only the small towns going up in flames.
She was still crying, damn her, and shaking the bed with her sobs. I pressed our bodies close and played with her hair.
"It's going to be fine. It isn't an immediate course of action; it's only when deemed absolutely necessary. We have months, don't worry about it." I said this aloud, talking to myself more than Sophia, who only happened to be in the range of my self-reassurance.
IV.
Little girls look up to pornstars and Martha Stewart, boys follow the steps of their corporately poisoned and domestically violent fathers, and the rising political leaders are the piss and shit of my generation. High schoolers are being sent to kill and get killed, and I'm hiding from my girlfriend.
Sophia had anxiety disorder. She thought this made her more appealing, but in reality it was the opposite. I kept her around because she made me feel better about myself; and for the sexual relief.
"Did you hear me? I said I was going out." I nodded and she put on her coat and went out the door. When she left I jerked off and watched the news. I had realized two things in those moments: the first, was that the draft was very much a real thing, and I felt sorry for the poor bastards that were chosen. The second, was that I was one of those poor bastards.
-
I've been thinking about marriage, yanno?" Sophia said as she entered the door, my vision from the cramped position on the couch obscuring her face. If I could keep it like that, Sophia on one side of a wall and me on the other, maybe it could stop me from wanting to bash her brains in every time she opened her stupid mouth. She went to take a piss and then collapsed on me, filling the air with smoke.
We decided to have sex, and she was on top of me, sweating and moaning, and I squeezed my eyes shut, reciting Dr. Seuss' rhymes and thinking of home.
I would have sighed if I weren't on the verge of orgasm.
I sat on the sheets and looked at Sophia. By now my breathing had subsided, and I lightly panted and hung my head in my hands, almost as though I was trying to keep my post-coital mind from drifting away. Sophia's breaths had turned to sobs, and I turned my head, mildly concerned.
"Did I... hurt you?"
Of our sex, the meaningless physical act, neither of us are satisfied. She had just come to realize this.
"Are you seeing another..." She trailed off, unsure if I was cheating on her with a man or a woman. It was safe enough for her to leave it open ended.
"No." I said with disdain, almost wishing I were cheating on her. Was I? Does my mental realm truly effect the man I project?
"Do you love me?" Her mistake. I didn't think she was ready to hear it.
"Yes." I said, true to my word of deceit.
"Are you lying to me?"
"Yes."
"How long have you been lying to me?"
"All of my life." I wasn't talking to Sophia. I was talking to every human being I had ever had any contact with. I was a disappointment.
There are tulips in Holland, and my mother used to tell me that each one of them bloomed when someone did something kind.
In those vast fields laced with enticing efflorescence, there was no petal I could claim.
Sophia smiled now, stretching the freckles around her eyes.
"I'm leaving." Now she stood, naked and pink and soft and willowy, and she was beautiful. She slipped on a sock, then another. Slowly packed a bag of her things.
"I'm sorry." I was looking at my crotch when I said it.
"No one's telling you to be."
V.
I'm puking in a parking lot. A man had just shot himself in the face, and the blood was dripping down his rolled up windows.
Government papers stuck to the blood on the windshield, and a woman was screaming, and I was on my knees retching onto the gravel, being petted by a stranger that winked at me in the convenience store.
I passed out before the ambulance came.
After Sophia left, the apartment was lonely. The air was cold and damp and I woke up later, and sweated more often.
I stayed up all night thinking of blond hair and nice eyes and a world upside down. I would walk on the ceiling and feel the plastered texture under my bare feet, and I would dance with the chandeliers.
Bombs went up, up into the sky and popped like balloons, falling lightly into abandoned fields and golf ranges.
Sophia's eating a cheesecake with Emily Dickinson, and I'm in the launderette folding our dry sheets.
I started to listen to classical music, hoping somehow that would lead me somewhere. It didn't.
My walk was beyond the strips of possibility.
VI.
You can't predict the best moments of your life. You can't even predict the bad ones. In all silver linings, in all epiphanic journies through time, the best people are the ones you hold on to through every moment. We all need a flying partner. And in the bomb-shattering wake of this beautiful city, hundreds of people passed by, not acknowledging a single human soul. But with the hi-definition technicolor of the world I seemed to have woken up in, The Great City passed in perfect time.
"My name is Vincent. And you are?" The flash of a smile bigger than any nuclear threat.
"Jeremy. You don't have a cigarette, do you?" I shrugged.
"This is my last." I said. A moment passed before he slipped his slender fingers into my pack and reached for a Parliament. It flopped from the corner of his mouth.
He fumbled with the documents in his hand, chucking them in the nearest waste bin. In a second the papers burst into flame, as though laced with gasoline. They curled into grim smiles and tarnish. The air was thick.
I smiled and smoothed my hair, and he mimicked my expression, his eyes roaming from my neck to the top of my forehead to the darkening sky.
In this silver lining, inches from death and advancing toward life by the closing distance of two grinning mouths, the last great war stomps his heavy feet on Earth.
Heavenly noise shatters the line between Earth and space.
The end of a skyscraper that seems to tower into oblivion, the make-up of tiny shards that were never important, because they would always reach the point of nonexistence some time turn to nothing but dust's cells and human flesh.
I can't tell you where it leads, just that it stretches painfully and wraps itself around the universe, and if I had the chance to think about it when the world imploded, there would have been no doubt that I enjoyed every second.
