By: Gary Smee [2006-03-30]

Obviously Fake

You walk quickly, sure strides and all, across the room to the door. You have your robe thrown over your arm, and when I look up from where I am tying my shoe you are gone and you have left the door wide open.

I sit on the edge of the bed, which has been hastily unmade and rolled around in. I hear the shower spark to life and the sound of water hitting your soft flesh wafts steamily through the bathroom door. Cleanliness, in your opinion, has always meant a certain superiority to people like me who don't see the necessity of being immaculate at all times. There is an inherent honesty in your desire to be clean. When you shake a hand or handle some bit of other people's property you do it with an unspoken assurance that you will not communicate some foreign filth to their possessions or their skin. People probably like you better for it, in a hermetic way.

I think for a moment about joining you in the shower, but I know that it is more a tem ple for you than a playground. I would be hustled out of the tub, driven forth by a flurry of soapy hands loath to be contaminated again so soon. I would be called names and made to feel small, like a child being chastened by an appalled maternal figure for some innocent wrong. I finish dressing and throw the sheets and blankets on the bed into a semblance of order.

I don't know where this is going. As I fluff the pillows I try to define just exactly what it is that's brought me here. You're not the kind of girl I usually go for, and I'm pretty sure that with a chin covered in brusque whiskers I have childishly neglected to remove, I am not your usual catch either. The things in your apartment are too nice to have regular visitors as slovenly as myself, and you yourself are too perfectly arranged to be someone I can stand for long.

Why am I here? We weren't drunk or desperate; charming conversation was a non-starter, and yet I wind up here in your apartment with you, half heartedly making your bed. Were you seeking something new, something polo shirt-less? Lord knows that the money you've got invested in furniture and its feng shui arrangement could probably pay for several months worth of what I owe. Was I seeking to assure myself that someone so completely glazed with in-style fashion was a living breathing human being underneath the veneer? Probably.

I leave your room and sit on the couch for a few minutes. I rub my hands over my face, pushing fingers into eye sockets, applying pressure until red circles appear behind the lids. You've been in the shower for almost fifteen minutes. I dread being here when you come out, and maybe you do too, which would explain why you've been in the shower for so long.

I almost leave a note, but then think better of it. I know exactly what this is, has been, and will be remembered as. Sentiment or thanks is unnecessary and would most likely be more insulting than appreciated. I let myself out, lock the door and close it quietly behind me. I stand on your porch for a moment.

Now, where the fuck did I park?
Dude! Where's my car!?!? [2006-03-30 00:18:19] König Prüße, GfbAEV
Wow! It's abstractly touching, and I think that it's a salable (sp?) story! I don't know whose writing to compare it to right off, maybe in between Kerouac and Updike. A weird combination of angst and whimsy.
Very good! [2006-03-30 11:14:15] Dedas
For once someone with skill write for us. I'm very grateful, yes sir.
But, too... [2006-03-31 11:28:28] König Prüße, GfbAEV
I have that effect on women! They want to take long showers!
Touching. [2006-04-01 17:36:38] The_Cheat
I liked it.
it must be something in the name.... [2006-04-04 07:24:03] gary smee
i could have written this, but didn't. it could be about me, but wasn't, it must be something in the name...
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