"It looks fine to me." Melissa turned her hip to the mirror and slid a hand down the front of her lower abdomen. "Doesn't appear warped at all and I would know." "You sure?" "Why don't you just get a new one if it's that big of a deal? You can get one just like that at Wal-Mart for almost nothing. What the hell would you care anyway?" She pulled her hair back, cocked her hip to the side, and then let the hair fall across her neck. John smiled and snuffed his cigarette in the ashtray. "I thought about it and shit but I like this one. It's been around my doings for quite some time - seen things you know?" He slid off the bed and approached her from behind. "You mean reflected your doings," she asked? "Sure," he said. "If that makes more sense to you." He looked at her eyes in the mirror. "You interested in seeing something that you could never see anywhere else in the world at any time. In fact no one has ever seen it before including me." "It depends. Are you about to share something personal with me or are you being facetious?" She was excited and also afraid. A small drop of urine escaped her. His approach had been more forward and honest than anyone she had met in months. His remarks were harsh but funny. There was a twinkle of madness in his eye that intensified each time bigger words were thrown into the air. His manner was brash but founded. She wouldn't necessarily admit that she wanted to feel him inside but something tickled and it was new. "It will be personal to us both. Can you deal with that?" He pressed his head against her shoulder and tugged on her sleeve. "I hope so." "Okay," he said, and slipped out of the bedroom into the hall. "Are you ready?" He called around the corner. "What do I do?" She asked. "Whatever you want but I would prefer that you continue to look in the mirror. You ready or what?" "You're making me nervous," she said, and reached for her purse. She was thinking about her boyfriend and if he would somehow, through telepathic means or the like, know what she was doing, uncertain if it was innocent or wrong, and equally uncertain which of the two she preferred. "Don't be nervous. Just do what you are doing and don't mind me at all. No one can hear us and we haven't done anything bad." With caution he slid the side of his face around the wall and issued a wink. She turned away and grabbed her drink from the dresser as if to leave the room. He stopped her before she got to far and placed his hand on her cheek. As it happened his thumb held the back of her ear, his two bottom fingers squeezed her lips together, and his forefinger touched her tear duct. It was one of those things that could be construed as either passionate or aggressive, depending of course, upon the interpretation and those defining it. She sucked a quick breath of air and remained motionless. Her tongue grazed her top lip, kind of stayed there for a long moment, then withdrew slowly into the depths of her mouth carefully tracing the contours of her teeth and the palate above. "Shhh… Don't look at me. Look at yourself." He moved behind her, placed his ear against hers, and then shifted his head to the other side. "What do you see?" He asked. "You," she said, "And I am wondering what you are doing?" "This." He moved around to face her and massaged his chin. His eyes remained upon her, not really focused on one aspect of her body, rather her wholeness as it were. "Like I said I am showing you something," he stepped between her and the mirror and lowered himself to his knees, "That you have never seen before and never will again." "What?" "An interaction that…" He paused and touched her zipper flap with his nose hoping to steal some pheromones in a breath of air. "A diamond in the rough. Magnificent," he whispered. "I'm not wearing diamonds," she replied. He leaned back on his elbows and crossed his legs casually. "Sure you are. I am looking at it now - kind of - more like the absence of a diamond where one should be - like empty diamond space - right where your thighs meet nearest the spot of yourself that you protect the most." She looked down at her crotch, raised an eyebrow, and challenged his eye. Her hips swiveled as she evaluated the void in the mirror. "See it?" He asked. She reached down and it disappeared, plugged by two fingers. He wondered how much blood flowed there because of all the attention and what the rise in temperature might equate to in terms of degrees. "Don't hide it. I happen to think that it is faultless." He shifted his weight and smiled. "You're making me uncomfortable. I…" "Shhhh… It's okay. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, I just happened to notice that it was a beautiful spot. No shame. It's just a void in space and time that happens to occur between your legs. I won't try and fill it with any part of myself." He rolled across his back to his belly, propping his head upon his hands. "But I will remember it forever. And for the record, yours more than anything, if I was normal I would do anything, say anything, to try and convince you let me see it in the raw." "Are you crazy?" "Yes. But differently than you might imagine." He stood up and walked behind her. She pulled her hands from her pockets. She grabbed timidly at the denim on each thigh and slid her hands, now back to back, up the ever so slightly widening space between her legs. "Like I was saying this is simply an interaction that you cannot have anywhere else. I am looking at you with no bias at all - simply loving the fact that you are there and I am here, and that we can, or at least I can, relish the fact that it is happening and not something undesirable instead. Know what I mean?" "I don't know. Like is this your weird way of trying to get me in bed?" "Maybe. Maybe not." He moved around breathing deeply the musty fruit fragrance of her long sandy blond and stringy hair. "But I would fuck you like crazy if it was right." He lifted her shirt and slid his hand across her belly. "But then again this interaction," he feigned a double quote in the mirror, "Is not what this is about." She leaned her head back and turned towards his face. "What is this about then?" "Small changes. Circumstance. Me. You. Doing things that we don't normally do." "I don't understand," she whispered. "Does it matter?" He asked, and sucked the better part of her ear while slipping his hand down the front of her jeans. He felt the warmth, the slope, and the dream. He felt that everything that every man desires all day long from every woman he observes that is even remotely attractive. "Tell me something important," she said, and turned to him. "No." He squeezed her firmly. Her temperature increased and he could think of nothing more than moisture as an adjective. "You are so interesting it freaks me out. Why did you really bring me in here for real?" "Because I decided about 30 minutes ago that I am not afraid of you. That's all." "Afraid of me?" "Yes. Well no, I am not afraid of you." He stepped back slowly and turned her toward the mirror. "Can you see it now?" "What?" "The problems with this mirror." "No." "Do you feel like you look?" "I don't know what you mean." "Have you ever felt like you look right now? Standing with someone beside you looking you in the eyes having considered you from multiple perspectives and having just touched you intimately but gently and taken it no further?" "I don't know." "You haven't. You have never felt like this before and you will never feel exactly like this again, most importantly because I won't be there. Isn't that kind of neat?" "Are you just fucking with me or is there a point to all this shit?" "The point is that you never really know what is going to happen from one moment to the next no matter how hard you try to prepare. Beyond that I think that I love you." "You hardly know me at all." "I prefer it that way. Perhaps you will think that of me someday. I'm sorry if I have confused you." Having done those things to Melissa, John left the room rather quickly and became invisible in the midst of an absurd party that threatened to continue until all the drugs were gone, or at worst, until the sunlight appeared and reminded all of the crazy night people that there is always an end to everything. And much later, after everyone had gone, he awoke violently from a terrible dream. Beads of sweat covered his entire body. He was overwhelmed with the feeling that there was something inherently evil about vaginas and that his penis had been rendered completely inert. He stood in the mirror and stared at a physical presence he could not believe was that of his own. *** "Absolutely anything," he said, and tapped a cone of ash from his cigarette. "I still don't understand. Why do you want me to do this?" "It's not so much that I want you to do it, I'm just giving you a chance to do it and watching to see what will happen." He pulled hard on his cigarette and sent a plume of smoke over her head. "However, I am interested in what you might have to say in this format if anything at all. Take your time. I'll be here awhile." John sat and listened to socialization in action. It's always perfect he thought to himself. A beer bottle hit the floor and shattered. A pool ball cracked sharply before dropping into a distant pocket. Ice jingled in nearby glasses and spoken words floated about with music and smoke. He caught every other word as the woman next to him explained to her friend what John had just asked her to do. …not really sure. …girly words… …yeah right here on this notepad. …what would you write then? Go ahead. …etc… …girly words… …No. Right beside me. "Yeah," John interrupted, "Go ahead. You can too if you want. There's plenty of paper and enough ink for everyone." The friend pushed her way in front of the girl next to him and said, "What the hell are you going to do with this stuff?" "Read it and think. You don't have to sign your name or anything. No one will ever know who wrote it except for the author if they remember or ever see it again, which is very unlikely. I'm experimenting you know." "Fucking weird experiment." She laughed. But it was not a funny laugh. "I know it is. Don't do it if you're scared. I'm not trying to make anyone uncomfortable." He paused and swallowed a drink. "I just noticed that your friend looked like she had something to say. Funny thing is, now you look like that too," he smiled, and left their attention dangling while fishing for another cigarette. "Like what?" She asked. "You tell me," he said without looking, "Write it down if you can. I'd rather read it later." She grabbed the notepad and said something to the other girl that he couldn't hear. Young and sick is how he considered the grimace on her face, but she began to write so he kept at smoking and being lonesome. A few moments later she threw the notepad on the bar in his direction, said something else he couldn't make out, and walked to the back of the bar. He picked it up and read it. I feel like dancing all night long! Oh yeah! Prick. Quit wasting our time. He turned to the girl next to him. "You're friend is very blunt. She doesn't seem to like me tonight. Although, I must say she has very nice penmanship." "She has an agenda if you know what I mean. Things must go as planned." She looked down and laughed as she shook her head at the drink on the bar. "I'm Devin." "John," he answered, "Nice to meet you Devin." Silence. "I just…" "I was…" "Sorry go ahead." "No. You go." "What were you writing before we came in and sat next to you?" She asked, and swirled her drink. "Just some things that I wanted to remember - reflections of myself you might say." He turned towards her and lifted his knee to clear her legs. "I always carry a notepad and write stuff down as I am thinking about it. I have a tendency to forget some very important things." He raised his glass and drank down the remaining whiskey. "Know what I mean?" "What do you do?" She asked. "Almost everything I have time for." He smiled, and waved at the bartender. "I mean for real. Like for a living." "Promise you won't ask me to help you if I tell?" He asked. "Promise." "I make sure that certain computers are happy and tell all of their secrets painlessly when select individuals sit in front of them." "And you like to be obscure on top of that?" He laughed, "I have a hard time helping myself actually. I just do what people ask, whenever and wherever. Somehow it has worked out pretty well." He thrust his fist into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled a mess from within. "I have enough money to drink because of it. In fact I have enough money for you to drink too. May I?" "Yes." "Trade you for some words on that pad." "Jesus, what is it with you and this notepad?" "I'll go to the bathroom and leave you alone. Here's some money get whatever makes your fingers loose." He stood up and walked away. When he returned she thanked him for the drink and excused herself. The notepad was closed and sitting next to his glass. He watched her walk away holding back some words he'd dreamed up in the bathroom. They sat on the edge of his lip and then fell onto the floor between his legs. He opened the notepad and read: It was 8:30 AM Monday morning and I was watching the working class rush to God knows what jobs while I sipped my 9th beer. Something always seems terribly wrong when that happens. The Girl Next To You "Devin" Remember If You Can He read it three times and then twice more. A hollow feeling grew within his chest as he scrambled to light a cigarette. The profound impact of the simplicity wreaked havoc on him. He looked frantically for her, needing to know that she was not apparition. She played the game he thought, no one plays the game. He found her at the back of the bar standing next to the friend that had shunned him just moments ago. "Fuck you," he nearly screamed, "Is this some kind of set up. Who sent you here to do this to me?" But he didn't. He sat and stared. It was a motionless affair on his behalf and as each second passed he felt more and more transparent, like fog on a windshield receding fast in the face of warm air. Chance had decided that this situation and this woman was something he needed to explore. Chance. Chance. A drink would be nice; he'd been thinking earlier, a drink or two and then some sleep. But she had teased him. She had roused the beast. Whether or not that was the intention the results were pure. He took the pen and wrote: Everyone is beautiful and I suck terribly, but I will brush my teeth in the morning and be certain to smile at all the eyes I can find while waiting at red lights in the morning. Remember these eyes if you happen to see them at 8:30 AM when things are strange for you. He ripped the paper from the notepad and handed it to a passing waitress. "Can you give this to the girl I am pointing at and tell her that it is from the dude with the notepad? Thanks." He handed her two bills for the trouble and stared at the ice in his whiskey. Sometimes thoughts blow by fast and are gone, hardly noticed at all. Sometimes they blow by fast, but noticed, and become fugitives that are eventually forgotten. Sometimes thoughts rip through a brain and rub the edges of permanence, leaving behind a sticky residue that is not readily removed by cautious recollection. A man can feel such things. He will know when this has happened, albeit in a manner not suitable for words, because more or less the whole idea means nothing to anyone and lacks tangibility. Yet these thoughts remain stuck there like dirt in the corner of one's eye. Unfortunately you cannot clean memory with a rag, and to date no one has discovered an over the counter brain cleaning solution. Fearful of such things, John waited for something to happen. And he waited. And he waited. Finally he rose from stool, feeling crazy as hell, and prepared to deal with anything as a result of his actions. Piece by piece he gathered himself - smokes here - lighter there - phone check - pen - notepad tucked neatly between his jeans and the small of his back - one foot after the other - again, one foot after the other - keep thinking that - that - foot - pad - phone - mystery woman - home - try - smoke - suddenly mouth… "Hey Devin, I feel like you snuck up and left a message at my back door and like a chicken shit I returned the favor." He looked at his shoes. "Don't want it to be that way between us," he said, and realized suddenly he was exactly where he wanted to be, but not really. "Us?" She asked without looking. "Yeah, us and not the spaces in between." He plugged his word hole with a cigarette and waited for the worst. She turned to her friend and whispered. They exchanged a few whispers then she turned and walked towards the door. He followed closely behind, so close in fact that had she stopped for any reason he might have knocked her straight to the floor. A cold wind greeted them rudely outside the door. He shivered and made sure he looked as though he might walk in any direction at any moment, perhaps to go home. "Now what?" She asked, and moved very close to his face. He said nothing, frozen in the realization that her lips and eyes were wet and set apart from the rest of the world. She did not see what happened next. No one did. Not even God or the ghosts of his past. A promise disintegrated into the vacuum of passing time and he continued to act like someone he was not certain he believed in. "You interested in seeing something that you could never see anywhere else in the world at any time," he said, "In fact no one has ever seen it before including me." "And just where do I have to look?" "Not far," he said. "Are you going to write something about me in your little memory pad?" The lips moved closer. "I can if you want me to." "I can't say for certain that I am not interested in what that might be." He felt slow. His motions seemed retarded by the passing of milliseconds. Eventually his lips made contact with hers. He tasted her topically then looked into her eyes and absorbed things about her that she had no idea were there in the first place. "I have some ideas we can toss around. I just realized that I am not afraid of you." "Good," she said, and pressed herself against him, "You don't scare me either." *** "They are beautiful. Baby you should be proud of those breasts." "The ass definitely needs some work. I mean what's with the little purple dots near the inner thigh." "Howard, she was also hit by a car and in a coma three years ago." "Obviously the tires didn't…" John smacked the snooze button and fell back to the mattress. He woke with achy joints and very cold feet. Through an icy windowpane he could see the whiteness of a world in the dregs of winter. It had failed to magically be summer again, as it had everyday for two weeks straight, in spite of his mental demands. He hadn't braved the cold for days having opted to remain in bed for the weekend simply reading and thinking about reading and thinking. Once or twice he'd cracked the door while smoking but taking air from the outside was much different than submitting one's body to wholeness of it so he felt kind of like a scared kid walking a high dive, or at least he desired a feeling similar to that anyway. Actually he was trying to find a suitable excuse for not going to work. And that seemed like work, so he quit and headed to the shower. He stared at the streams of water filtering through his pubic hair and running from the tip of penis. He held his hand beneath it and let it fill. Each time it filled he opened it abruptly and let the water drop loudly onto the shower floor. Gradually his hand began toying with his penis. At first he grabbed the head and pulled on it. He held it and twisted. He tickled his scrotom. He doused it with conditioner and tried to drum up visions of naked women with faces that changed by the stroke. Then he went to work feverishly. He switched hands and bent his knees. He bit his lower lip and tried to pull ecstasy from within. Finally he stood with his hand at his sides, exhausted and sweating in the steam. His red penis pointed at a spot high on the wall but it was apparent nothing was going to shoot from the end. He readily accepted defeat but harbored strange feelings of wasted opportunity, like finding a pack of smokes in the pocket of your favorite jeans while transferring them to the dryer. He flicked the head of his penis out of spite, regarding it as foreign to the rest of his boy, and then wrote his name in the steam on the glass door with the tip just because he could. The remaining tasks of grooming, it must be said, were carried out with heavy hands and no anticipation of any good on the horizon. Hindsight might reveal that he had failed to dry his feet completely. This oversight forced him to hop around on one foot while pulling at a sock on the other, at which time, he happened to step on his notepad. Immediately it splayed like a fan and sent him flying through the air. Helplessly he jumped harder and harder as his body became increasingly more and more parallel to the ground. His arms grabbed desperately for a grip in the empty air. Finally he crashed heavily into the wall mirror and slid down as shards of glass fell on him, around him, and beneath him. Lying there on the floor he could feel the dull sensation of minor cuts spread across his back. Instinctively he remained still while trying to understand what had just happened. The sharp and fearsome sound of broken glass under pressure deterred his body from taking the full breath of air he desperately needed. He gently placed his hands on floor to lift himself but retracted them quickly in response to the shards of glass. Carefully he shifted his weight to the hip and cleared a spot on the carpet with his elbow so that he could sit upright. His eyes surveyed the area surrounding his half dressed and wounded body. They stopped abruptly at a pile of glass next to his elbow and remained focused as he considered the spliced reflection of his face. It moved in imperfect perfection between three pieces of glass, each section off set slightly from the true lines of symmetry in a Picasso like distortion. His left eye appeared as cut in half, one side just slightly higher than the other. While considering himself as cracked and askew he realized, having relied on fantasies rather than reality his entire life, that he liked his face better this way and this once in a lifetime perception would end the moment he walked away. He wanted to stay there forever but that made no sense. On his way out the door he paused for a moment realizing that he had forgotten a belt, but didn't think it important enough to go back inside. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because Barry, his neighborhood nemesis, had already begun to act like he was too busy toying with a hose to have seen John come out and John was not about to bested in ignorance. He walked down the steps and turned his back to Barry, who timed such things, and got into the car. Pulling out the drive he looked in the mirror at Barry and wondered why the hell the bastard acted so oblivious. Barry, on the other hand, wondered why John acted so reclusive and why the hell there was blood on the back of his shirt.