Sentence Auditions

Driving to NYC with P, we are quiet. I want to be laughing wildly like the people I see around us, and then of a sudden I realize we are and it is refreshing, it feels right, everything with him so smooth and comfortable but still surprising. Our moods always vacillate but we do not impede each other, we feel our own way through angst and glee and observe the other when there is nothing we can do.

Our eyelashes interlace as we kiss closely for the uncountable’th time. To have him pressure against me, not perfect, sometimes clumsy, but with sincerity. Clumsy because his guard is down, and I would rather that than rehearsed finesse. He can be guileless with me, there is an inchoate something that I find in his smile. What?

When I am out alone, solo social calls with another, I feel halved. To not know where one begins and the other ends, I have seen that writ and I do understand it. Do the people around love as we do? They seem other species compared to him and I.

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We arrive and find K at a bar she chooses. Sometimes I worry about her, but when I see her she is fine, and I remember why she rejuvenates me so, it feels right to have her kisses to kiss her soft hair and embrace her thinner form, displayed as I have not seen before. Maybe she was always so slight, but I think that she is just wearing tighter clothes maybe she feels more comfortable maybe that is how she approaches being single maybe that’s why she never is for long, because she is really lovely.

But to the present, as we try to get drinks. Cue the bartender, to K: “He was yelling at me, he had banged his head against the wall, he was bleeding, and he would only yell, ‘CALL K! CALL K! CALL K!’ I did, you’re here, what happened?”

The bartender is why K’s here. She is marked by metal, black tattoos and dyed black hair and crooked teeth (perhaps a stray bottle did it). There are lowbrow drink specials, cheap beer dumped in strong drinks, but pristine bathrooms. There is metal music, but sometimes The Smiths play. “New management,” K says.

The “he” above, he with the bleeding face, appears. She doesn’t tell me, but I guess it’s him. Shoulder-length blonde hair, cutoff shorts, large t-shirt for his small frame. “His father was a heroin addict; his mother left.” He just moved to New York City, and he found drugs quickly. I would have guessed heroin, cocaine maybe, but K says acid.

There is an off-center tattoo, a spider web topped with text, “Knight Terrors,” on his elbow.  “Because I know them better than any,” he tells us. I’m rapt as he tells us about the wraith that haunts him. Its speech moves from shadow to threat. “Ayeye ohfh eewe, eatw rrmmm infneee” it says at first, then “Aye oh u, u aaa miii,” at last, “I OWN YOU, YOU ARE MINE,” it shouts at him from above the ceiling, positioned upon its own plane. He cannot move away from this attack. Powerless and paranoid, bolted to one’s seat, paralyzed by vivid sleep.