“Why are you looking at me like that?” She asked.
“Like what?” I returned.
“I dunno.”
I put my head back down on her breast. I wondered what my face looked like. I wish I had more control over my facial expressions for those moments when I retreat in to my own mind. But instead the sadness is projected on to my face without my permission.
| — | Rainer Maria Rilke. (via slychedelic) |
Dear Ayn,
I’m dating a man who I think I love, but I’m afraid he’s having an affair. He comes home late, he acts suspiciously, and he even has red lipstick on his collar. Should I confront him or just hope for the best?
- County Af-fair
Dear County,
Red lipstick? Your husband is a…
She was a nice girl. She was very sensitive though —almost crazy —which only bothered me some of the time. She didn’t like that I was always drunk. But on this occasion she had been drinking too, so she wasn’t too concerned with it. I was depressed as usual. She let me hold her and I tried to kiss her. Her lips were closed tight and cold, so I just held her. I told her that Bukowski had the right idea about a lot of things. She asked me why I thought that. I said, I don’t know, but I just relate to him. She told me that maybe I had just been romanticizing him. That really bummed me out, because she was right.
-Justin Soileau, March 2012
I needed some fresh air. I walked out of the bar with my energy drink.
“Is this okay?” I asked the bouncer.
“Yeah, it’s non-alcoholic.”
I lit my cigar and looked both ways down 30th street in San Diego.
“Hey, you!” A voice came from behind me, in the doorway of the adjacent, now-closed business to the right of the bar.
“Hi.”
“Come talk to me.” She slurred.
“Okay.”
“What’s your name?” She drunkenly looked past me and then centered in on my eyes.
“Jim.”
“And what brings you here, Jim?” She said carefully, as if she were reading it from a book.
“I played my music here earlier. No one was here.” I said as I gave her one of my business cards.
“Oh, this is nice. Really nice. Can I keep this?” She asked.
“Yeah, of course. You can put it on your bulletin board.”
“I’ll put it on my mirror. That’s what I do with nice cards.” She smiled.
“Oh okay. That’s good too.”
There was a moment of silence. She was sort-of dirty. Her hair hadn’t been washed in a while. I wondered if she was on heroin or something. I didn’t really know what people on heroin looked like. I wondered if she was a prostitute. That might explain her forwardness. She may have just been drunk. Regardless, she had a kind face.
She would glance at the ground every minute or so. When she’d do this, her face would fall sullen and sorrowful. I noticed that I had been tensing up. So, I breathed in deeply.
“What’s your name?” I asked her. I wanted to distract her from whatever painful memory that she had been replaying in her head.
“Gemma.”
“How do you spell that?”
“G-e-m-m-a.” She pronounced each letter playfully and sweetly.
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah. My real name is Britt-AN-y.” As she said this, she put an emphasis on the “AN” to make it clear that her name had an extra syllable than other spellings of the same name.
“Oh, okay. Well, it’s nice to meet you…Gemma.”
She looked at me for about a minute. Then she slowly and awkwardly stood up from the ledge she was perched on. She walked over to where I was standing against the front door and she stood next to me. As she inched next to me she looked in to my eyes. She smiled sympathetically as if to acknowledge that I was nervous.
“You better watch out. I might take advantage of you.” she said.
“Oh?” I held my breath.
She kissed me on the cheek, looked at the ground, and walked away.
I lifted the corners of my mouth to smile at her and my heart broke.
-Justin Soileau, March 2012
