Influences: Jeffrey Eugenides

Back in the earlier junior year days, I began research on the study of intersexualism for a research paper assigned in my Advance Placement English class. What drove me to the topic of intersexualism? Television programming: The Oprah Winfrey Show. It was an interesting topic; I knew these people are out there, but I never realized how people view them as: objects, misfits of nature, etc. Then, right as I wielded my remote control to switch to something else, a man walks on stage–to plug his book into the show, standard effective propaganda. Jeffrey Eugenides wrote the biography on my most influential first-person narrator ever, who just happens to be a fictional hermaphrodite.

I picked up Middlesex, and was introduced to Calliope Stephanides. I was acquainted to her family: Milton (the father), Desdemona (grandmother), Lefty (grandfather), Tessie (mother), Aunt Zoe, Uncle Zizmo. I was evoked into the Stephanides family, and filled into their genetic secret.

As an amateur writer, I use to detest first-person narrative. My permeating ignorance disallowed me to think of first-person narrative as a piece of art as oppose to what I use to think of it: whining. Jeffrey Eugenides taught me, through Middlesex, that the first-person voice can be even more poetic, inspirational, insightful, and impactful than the average third.

It was through the reading of this book that I realized–like the epiphany in “Orange County–that I want to be a writer; I want to create worlds; I want to show grace in diction; I want to tell the truth; I want to tell lies. The technique Eugenides uses to build emotion, paint images, and possesses sympathy and empathy. Middlesex has inspired me to write; I grow jealous every time I read a quote from the contemporary novel, jealous that I could only wish to claim to have the talent this man has. I met an interesting friend via Eugenides words, and Calliope/Cal isn’t even real.

So then there was a lull in reading. I had things to do, people to fret about, actions to regret–I’m a teen, whatever. Then one night, during a ritualistic reminiscing-in-bed session, I recalled the admiration I had for Jeffrey’s writing. I ChaCha’d a question: What other pieces of writing does Jeffrey Eugenides have?” The answer: “Jeffrey Eugenides currently has two books published: Pulizter-winning ‘Middlesex’ and ‘The Virgin Sucides.’ Thank you for using ChaCha!”

It was months later, after a high school calamity and drug influenced depression, that I would pick up The Virgin Suicides, and read through the text.

At the beginning, I compared it to Middlesex (it’s human nature), and, of course, I held my biases in favor of Middlesex. Still though, it held my interest. It continued to capture and pervade interest into my imagination, but I kept wanting to find Calliope show up in the suburban neighborhood (there have been a few cameos of “greek” accent. Including, the breif cameo of the phrase “yia yia”).

Anyways, I find myself basing a lot of my writing off Jeffrey Eugenides: a true master of poetic writing. His work has taught me that even the most mundane of stories (suburb can be told with the greatest passion.

Crazy On You by Heart – From the Virgin Sucides Soundtrack

Grab Bag

“The only pressure I’m under is the pressure I put on myself” – Mark Messier

Leap

Permeated through and through:

Foggy days, no received calls, and melted birthday cakes;

Staple the writing on the steel bricks unto my chest,

let the blood seep and the humilation pour,

Cardboard boxes pinned in rain, meaning less

Let the sequenced revolution break

And the night die young

Raise the bulb from ceiling to cloudy nights

Unobtainable–watch me fall

Unpredictable–watch me fall

Unreachable–watch me fall

And take the bed I rest, forgranted.

“By “guts” I mean, grace under pressure” – Ernest Hemmingway

Concussion

A weight of lead

Imprisoning limbs to the floor

Corrupting the white noise

Make pure of the fall–

Demonstrate the mathematics of us all to all

A mouse: trapped.

Withering from us all.

Victor Vacinni

No one ever grew fond of Victor Vacinni. Amid our preadolescent years and elementary era, middle school society conformed to the norm of growing use to someone; Victor Vacinni was an exception. In classes, we usually found him–glassy eyed and nosed stuffed–staring straight at someone: no blinking, no nonchalant glances at the ceilings. At lunch, his isolation often disturbed our ability to eat with tranquility. He sat there, in his own empty table, staring straight at one of us: no blinking.
We all had our reasons to feel uncomfortable near him. Daniel Clemens once told us that they both attended the same private preschool and he would perform acts of passive-aggressive sexual exploitation. “He would take off all the clothes of the girl’s Barbies and draw all the privates where they should be,” he reported to us, during one of our many lunch-table gatherings, “When our teacher caught him Sharpie-ing a penis onto a Ken, he told her that he liked things to be realistic.” Sunny Days Preschool admits students from age four to six; Victor was five in Daniel’s testimony. Jared Stewart cited another example of Victor’s odd behavior at a viewing of The Godfather. “We went to the same church when I was eight,” he said, taking a swig of his soda, “every time the pastor would want us to repeat a passage, he would always talk in tongues. To this day, I don’t know if he was faking it or if he was actually possessed by something.”
Chris Peters once recalled an event where he was rehearsing through another laborious period of biology–which he and Victor both attended–and, unfortunately, had the pleasure of sitting by him. Here, Chris, the opportunist that he was, paid careful attention to the physical aspects of Victor. “He looks even crazier up close, man,” he said, lighting a cigarette as we all huddled behind our high school bleachers one Sunday afternoon, “that crazy bastard had two lazy bright brown eyes. I remember Mrs. Smith, dumb braud, told the whole class to ‘converse’ with each other about decomposition or something. Hell, I needed to pass, so I talked to him, but as soon as I uttered a word he got really close, like this,” he got as close as he could to Johnny Carlson’s face; the tip of his cigarette brightened as it inched closer and closer to Johnny’s nose, “About this fucking close that creep-o got. Tell you all, I never seen so much disgusting hygiene on a kid before. Fuck, I’ve seen roadkill cleaner than that boy.” We all urged him to go on. “His snot: wet and dry. You could notice the dried up layer because it was magnified, like a jello, by the running wet snot falling and gathering up on his upper lip. His skin was greasy and reminded me of an old leather wallet. God damn it, man, I’ve never been so disgusted by a person in my life.”
We all formed separate opinions on one or two differing physical traits he held. Jared Stewart recognizes Victor the most for his sporadic hair lining, “It’s the type of hair lining where your only hope to pull it off is to completely shave it.” Daniel Clemens remembers him for the huge bug eyes he had, “They always look as though they capture the light in the room. It has a strange gloss to it.” Robert Miller recalls his mangy posture and the way he raised his wrist to chest level. Rudy Romeo juxtaposes Victor’s unspeakably high voice and his greasy curly hair. Kevin McDonald, his scrawny legs. Tyler Beard, his skinniness. Taylor Jackson: big cheeks. Johnny Carlson: mongoloid teeth. Chris Peters: snot.
Every lunch, we all sat parallel to his empty kingdom. Victor never ate; he stared. It was a silent mutual rule that none of us ever bring up his prolonged gaze towards us at the table. We would either burst out into false laughter from Chris’s naughty joke or made fun of eachother; We all looked for ways to conceal the discomfort of his stare.
Once, during an after school detention, Chris Peters and Taylor Jackson decided to amuse the two-hours of confinement away by passing notes. It started with a game of hangman inscribed into the college-ruled by granite pencils. The frustration of guessing, the silent laughter with the eyes, and the lingering hint of boredom at the innocent entertainment evolved the topic, evoked into the wadded up paper ball, to the taboo that was Victor Vacinni. First, a drawing of Victor with the more cartoonist angle. Chris exaggerated his odd shaped head, his bug eyes, and payed the most attention to the running snot. Taylor added labels and arrows such as: tiny dick, shit-stained pants, unzipped zipper–each arrow pointed to the appropriate anatomy location. The mocking within the note escalated with such a speed that the velocity sped up the detention time itself, but before the last two minutes of their sentence Taylor wrote one last thing into the flagrant note: Victor Vacinni is gay.
“I threw it out,” said Taylor, when we all asked while walking at a mall one evening, “someone might have picked it up.” Whatever the cause, the rumor permeated through every hall of middle school. The topic penetrated every gossip requiem the day prior. ‘Victor Vacinni is gay’ invaded the notes passed, in secret, throughout classes. The questioning of Victor’s sexuality spread faster than the medieval Black Plague, carried out by rats and maggots, infecting virgins to the news. It was a God damn epidemic.
Maybe it was bias on knowing that we spread the rumor, but Victor’s gaze at the cafeteria seemed more concentrated since. We all knew laughing loudly or telling an irrelevant story wouldn’t cover up the tension amid our sandwich eating and the glare, so we feasted in silence those days–the days the news was still saran wrapped. “You remember that one day, when everyone, like, made fun of him during fifth period and all he did during lunch was stare at us and write in some weird notebook?” said Tyler Beard, in a reminiscing moment we all shared during a lull in a road trip.
All of us produced theories of what he might have written in the notebook. Daniel thought he was compiling a hit list. “Come on, guys, he had all the motives to want to kill us. He was a major creep and he probably knew about the note that started it all,” said Daniel once, ill in bed. Kevin McDonald speculated that perhaps Victor was an artistic individual, and was simply jotting down his emotions. “Nothing great, in art, is ever produced through happiness,” Kevin stated, as we all drank coffee at a Starbucks, “the haunting experience may have been perfect inspiration for a piece.”
Over time, we all abandoned justifying the mysterious writing. Over time, we resumed our obnoxious laughter and mechanisms to refute the discomfort. We all continued digging into our lunches, our Pringles, Cheetos, carrot sticks. None of us could resist the thought that we were silently mocking the kid as we ate. Here we were: eating. There he was: alone.
However, our middle-school mystery of Victor Vacinni was answered by Mrs. Devila–our study period advisor. We all notice that he was gone that day at school. “I knew that day was gonna be really fucking weird. He was never absent at school, never,” Chris stated to us, beneath the bleachers, dropping the cigarette stub and extinguishing it with his foot, “it was ironic ya know. The thing more creepier than him being at school was him being absent from it.” The classroom air had a mundane chill the day we all received the news about Victor Vacinni. “You know ever since preschool, that kid always sent an eery warmth into the atmosphere. Like a dying animal breathing his last warm breath,” said Daniel Clemens as we all packed our left-overs of lunch and placed a tip for the waitress. The distinct facial expression Mrs. Devila wore, as she stepped up from her desk onto the center of the room–we all remembered that look, the look of sympathy and mourn. “Tell you one thing, our middle-school teacher was a heartless bitch, the way she gave us the news felt so forced. It’s a shame. No one ever liked that kid. The teachers had to act,” said Jared Stewart, as the movie credits fell and we begun to exit the theatre. We all remembered how we simultaneously stopped talking and turned in our chairs to face her. “She always use to complain about how we never stopped talking. I wonder why that day we all did,” yawned Tyler Beard, as he approached sleepiness and began to rest in the backseat of our car.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs. Devila, “I am sorry to inform you that Victor Vacinni will not be joining us any further,” that long pause, “Due to some graphic news that was sent out into the school today, it was brought to our attention that Victor is no longer with us. He died. I have been taken aback by the news that his life was taken,” another lull, “by his father.”
“His father apparently was some psycho murderer.”
“Fucking tells you a lot about why Victor was the way he was, huh?”
“The father,” Mrs. Devila now crossed her arms: body language for sincerity, “was arrested this morning, and, rest assured, he has been imprisoned and will not harm anyone ever again. A notice to each of your parents has been sent out to bring this to there attention.”
“Makes you think.”
“Why do you think we never stopped messing with him? Wasn’t it obvious this kid had problems?”
“We were kids, man, we were kids.”
We all waited through Mrs. Devila’s longer pause, and then she stated, “Let’s all take a minute in silence, to mourn Victor Vacinni.”

Imitation of Walt Whitman Poem

They cry and cry; telling I, the bum to find work and leave the corner
They cry; for truth and omnipotent power, yet destroyed my world
They cry – all of them; and I gauge my anger for them
I lie to them and say the sun will rise tomorrow
I hold off the storm for a day, and the flood for an hour
And they cease their tears
And they thank me
And routine sets back; telling I, the jury to have mercy and allow the witness to speak
And routines set back;  yet they hesitate to grab their clubs.
Routines set back; and a hindsight shines through the dark clouds.
I have sat back into the constant gaze from the angle of my corner
I have held my rusted offering mug to my waist as I lay in the rain
I have yelled for everyone to stop their ways
And they cease the yelling and arguing
And they learned from fear and prosperity

It should be LAWL not Lull.

Ah, I have not been updating as much as I want to. I feel I’m lacking, but I’m busy! Writing isn’t easy and I can’t update this everyday with an interesting story and I don’t feel this should just be space where I can put anything.

Reasons I haven’t updated:

• “Snapshot”: a piece I put so much work into, causing most of the lull lately.
• School: apparently I’ve taken interest in the grades I get.
• After school rehearsals: I play Meredith Paxton in Final Vinyl: A Rock Musical (expect a blog on this shortly)
• After school detentions: Hamilton administration finally found all the ditched ASD’s.
• Reading: Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. A very interesting story.
• Reading: On Writing by Stephen King. Very insightful.
• Reading: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I like the spirituality, but the British is meh.

Currently, I’ve been thinking about updating this more and more with video other than articles and pieces. More to come!

Snapshot

taken by ni dieu ni maître! on Flickr

Twelve years old and the picture is as perfect as the day it was taken; despite the conspicuous coffee stains, smudgy ink, and the deteriorating corners, the Polaroid print inhabiting my side table drawer waited for twelve years. As the digital alarm clock, playing centerpiece to my wooden side table, counted the hours, as the moon and sun continuously fluxed roles, as I learned math, writing, and how to read, the photograph lay waiting until this very day. I grasp the brass drawer handle amid my fingers; the mahogany drawer creaks as it struggles through the rusting under track and–as though opening a window to show a forgotten autumn view–I see my young self: embraced by a tiny young girl.
* * *
It awed me to watch the green chlorophyll-pigment escape a divine leaf; It awed me more to witness the yellowish-red autumn take over. My mother’s freshly manicured nails gently nicked me as she held my five-year-old fingers. We walked on the familiar suburban road on our way to my old day care where, the day previous, I had misbehaved. In my left hand, I held an autumn leaf–examining the changes that had been taking place. To my right,  a slight timbre in my mother’s walk instructed me to stay silent–to not rattle a cage. People back then had the unanimous description of me as:
“Wild and uncontrollable!” shouted my pre-school teacher: a women, I no longer know the name of. My mother and I took a seat, resting upon the surface of the plastic glossy-red chairs: uncomfortable and–to a child–indestructible.
“We try controlling him,” my mother defended, with her infamous passive-aggressive tone, “but he’s just so… so…”
“Attention deficient?” she stated with a proclivity for suggestion.
“No. My boy doesn’t have a disorder. He’s just–.”
“Mildly energetic? Hyperactive? Prone to tantrums?” my teacher’s inclinations were nothing short of subtle, of course.
“His father likes to call it creativity,” my mother begun to rise from the seat, heading towards the door; she takes me by the hand again, “Why isn’t he off the walls now, huh?”
“He’s obviously scared he’s in trouble, right little Matty?” she shifted her tone at the end, attempting to appeal to my childish behavior–I knew better; I remained mute, “your boy hasn’t done a single cooperative or productive thing all year. He constantly picks on his classmates and throws toys around for fun. He never sleeps during nap time, he never stops talking, he never tries to stay on task! Tell me, do you see him show any signs of attention or focus at home?”
My mother hesitates, scavenging for a previous demonstration of academic trait, “Yes.”
“When?” my teacher retorted, snootily.
“When he’s with our next door neighbor’s daughter, that’s when,” she succumbed to the excitement of discovering my niche, “he tells her stories about adventures and shows all the time. They make up games together and they’re just the two most creative kids I’ve ever met!”
* * *
Nostalgia evokes my mind as I stare into Natalie’s young brown eyes in the photo. I remember–as I see–the prepossessing curly brown hair of my first little audience member. Her widely eclectic lips would smile; they would depress the dimples that symmetrically sunk beneath her tiny tannish cheeks as she applauded for me–all captured in frozen image.
I abort my evocative stream of conscious memories–focusing now on the task at hand. Around my neck, a Polaroid–I own in antiquity–hangs by a black strap, laying gently on my chest as I sit on my bed. Reaching into my jean pocket, I unfold a flier. It informs about a photography contest being held; winners earn a free vacation anywhere in the United States. Theme: innocence.
The photograph I hold is gorgeous. Lighting: spot on–the color of the autumn trees in the background compliment our eyes. Her arms bide me from behind. A perfect snapshot–yet unqualified; the contest is strict. No coffee stains allowed.
* * *
“What did she say?” Natalie asked, referring to my teacher.
We were both located in her backyard: plastic balls, hula-hoops,UPS packaging boxes, and technicolor chalk–scattered through the 20-acre wonderland. Goldenrod rays flooded the land–along with my yard, right next door–and everything glowed mystically. The sun, right above, sent the illusion of golden highlights falling, spiraling, as she moved, through her beautiful curly hair.
“Well…” I stretched the “L” sound; like lightning, I started zipping through my young thoughts, scavenging for something to amuse her, “she said I was a genius, and should move to genius school!”
“No way!” her eyes beamed with the goldenrod light that shined down on her; she didn’t want to believe it, but in earlier minds our imaginations manifest reality.
“Yeah way!” I looked straight into her eyes–to ignite belief, “and I can prove it, too!”
Her smile divulged her dimples; she clenched her teeth as she giggled, “Nuh uh.”
“Ya huh, ask me a question!”
“What kinda question?”
“Umm,” I think like a genius, “ a’ ar’thimetic one! Math!”
“Hmm, okay,” she pondered for a moment and her eyes gleamed again, “what’s a bajillion times five-million bajillion?”
“Easy,” with narcissistic lingo, to trick her, “two-million quadrillion,” I pause for dramatic effect, to prolong applause, to accumulate anticipation, “and one.”
She giggles hysterically at the punch line; I looked into her eyes and her face scrunched up as she smiled–for odd reasons, I smiled back.
“My teacher also said something else,” although two young to acknowledge–my cardio-vascular system began racing, multiplying two-million quadrillion and one times faster.
“Oh yeah?” she smiled again, prepared for another set-up; the gold glares in her hair undulated like a contained jello, “What else?”
“She said I’m quite the smoocher,” I tried to keep an earnest face, any sign of a humorous emotion–God forbid a blush–could jeopardize my entire devious ruse.
“What?!” she was in sheer shock and her jaw dropped like a cartoon, “how would she know?!”
Improvising again, “We were doing a kissing project,” a trait I still carry to this day: compulsive lying, “we had to kiss apples and pears and I did the best.”
“Oh my gosh,” she giggled again, hysterically, “that’s unbelievable.”
“Believe it,” I said, solemnly.
A lull–then, “I never kissed anyone before.”
“Me neither,” I stated.
At five years, a child can’t decipher an intimate moment from anything else in the world, but the biology usually stays the same. My veins constricted, blood rushed faster. I scanned for any parental unit within view. I take a step closer to her; my foot barely missing a mature dandelion grown atop the green grass. Beneath our slowly attracting feet, another action occured; a tiny yellow bee–leftover from the summer–began to nestle onto the delicate weed. The insect hovered, dropping altitude, closer and closer to the dandelion; I remember her dimpled cheeks getting closer and closer to mine.
* * *
Who cares–I think to myself–what do five-year olds know about that stuff anyway? The sole of my shoes slide as I walk on freshly dewed grass. It smells of natural oak and wood, a wet freshness and a cool chill, stimulating my nostrils, fashioning appreciation for the tranquility of far-western suburbia. I crouch lowly; Polaroid pointing to a dandelion diverging a trail of black ants into two paths, amongst the green.
The camera begins humming, configuring, manufacturing the snapshot. Through the Polaroid outlet slot, an image ejects–printed upon a gloss coated sheet. I redeem the photograph from my hanging camera; the image taken is horrendous: too saturated, stray winds catching blades of grass producing negative and unbalanced effects.
It was cold. My fingers ached. It became hard to simply take a picture. The damp grass sloshes as I travel across the green-belt. All my life I’ve traveled across suburbs; These miniscule societies built on bricks of prosperity, progression, and the perfect industrial family–yet why couldn’t I capture innocence?
Rusted chain creaks accompany the sound of an accelerating wind, as a swing set imitates a descending pendulum. Beneath my chilled toes, the sound of moist grass resides for the audibility of crunching wood chips. Through the lens, I see a lonely park; Gray clouds begin to accumulate in the sky and a bead of fallen rain hits the camera. I drop the Polaroid–allowing the neck strap to catch it.
* * *
We were transfixed on a Pavlovian response, averted to the trill of a wasp’s flight; Immediately, Natalie and I relinquished our two plastic swings, fleeing from the winged insect. Refuge was made at her house. We sat on a leather couch, in her basement, we drank the traditional elementary fruit punch, and we viewed sitcoms from the biggest television I had ever seen (back then, of course).
As the dim fluorescent television glow brightened her face, she told me about her worries. She feared starting elementary school, not making any friends, or getting bullied; Our personalities were complete opposites. I laughed at her phobias and assured her they were nothing. She believe me and we watched a cartoon–filling the commercials with our own laughter.
* * *
The swift rudiments the rain played grew harsher as I ventured my neighborhood–now aimlessly taking pictures of anything. Lightning discharging, rumbling skies, and rain only buried my determination to find innocence in this scenery; I press “click” and the Polaroid ejects a decaying cactus and to my surprise, I manage to capture lightning. I laugh at my displaced luck.
* * *
An violent orange warmth illumined our neighborhood, the mild brightness decorated even the darkest of places, giving my formal pre-school a soothing autumn glow, giving our houses a scenic spotlight. The orange-red could be found anywhere: bouncing off the sidewalk asphalt, disjoining at a tree, spiraling down her curls.
As a decade old male, lifting cardboard boxes filled with household utilities came easy; the same could not be said for Natalie: a nine year old female. I loaded, going back and forth between front porch, sidewalk, then U-Haul, Natalie helped me. In frustration she said, “Matty, you dork, help me with this box!”
Annoyed, I laid my box down on the concrete sidewalk. Catching a glimpse of the label on her box, I grew irritated. “Tupperware…” I paused for dramatic effect, “You need help carrying tupperware, really?”
“Oh, don’t talk high and mighty with me, mister I-can-never-play-cause-I’m-exhausted!” she retorted.
I couldn’t wait until every material possession I owned was in that U-Haul. My family and I were leaving this small suburban home for a bigger one, closer to the city, with more room. I didn’t want to leave Natalie forever–just a break. It was agreed that monthly visits would be made.
The afternoon continued similar to this: She whined; I whined. Gradually, the boxes stacked atop each other within the storage, building piles, and as the orange sunset descended beneath the horizon, my father closed the U-Haul, ready to leave, but not completely. My mother and father already gave their goodbyes to Natalie’s parents; they were in the van. I approached the family automobile and got in.
“Hey Matt,” my father said from the driver seat, “I’d say bye to Natalie if I were you.”
Deciding to obey, I exited the car, and climbed up her front porch steps to press the doorbell. Seconds after the gentle tune filled her house, the door opened and the dim glow of the autumn sunset was enough to see her face; It looked as though she was crying.
“Bye,” I said, generically.
“Bye,” her voice cracked slightly.
I was speechless; I wanted to leave, so I began to turn, but her hand clenched my shoulder. She turned me around and embraced me. The sunset finally gave way to moonlight–and it was silent.
“I’ll visit you every month,” she promised.
* * *
I got home. I’m sitting at my desk; I’m holding Polaroids in my hands by the hundreds. I stare into the highly saturated, horribly lit, and unimpressive photograph cocktail. They all suck. Submitting the picture of the thunder by the cactus crosses my mind. Could be good, in an abstract contemporary way.
* * *
The whistling had to stop. It had been a good year since I’ve moved farther from Natalie, she was still visiting me, barely. I stared at my homework assignment–that God forsaken teapot blower wouldn’t shut up; the numbers in my math problems begun to mix into each other, and anxiety irked my mind until I finally snapped my number two pencil and exited my room.
She was playing with my little sister in the room next to mine; Our new house was a lot more spacious, but sound seemed to reach me faster. I opened the white dry-wall door, two girls were dancing and whistling to the tune of a song I don’t remember.
“Natalie!” I half-shouted.
She stopped the noise and dance, my sister followed. Turning, she looked at me and half-shot me a smile, “What’s wrong?”
“Uh…” I attempted to sound nicer, “I have to do homework. Can you guys be quiet,” a hesitation, “please?”

taken by John Groseclose on Flickr

“Oh,” she sounded taken aback, “alright.”
The next two hours I did my work in silence, the occasional laughter here and there; I tolerated. After work was finished, my phone rings: a girl from my middle school. At age 11, you’re all too aware of an intimate opportunity.
I could still hear the other two in my sisters room at nighttime. It was cold. My fingers felt numb as I held the phone: talking to a girl I don’t remember, wishing it was still daytime. Fourteen minutes invested into the phone, I heard a gentle thud on my door. Suspicion alerted me, Natalie is up to something.
With the simple, “Hey can I call you back?” I paused the conversation. Suddenly, the door flung open before I got to the handle, hitting me on the forehead. Natalie entered my room laughing, oblivious to my injury.
“Hey Matty!” she yelled obnoxiously; I grew frustrated. How dare she made me hold a call, “Who was the girl you were talking to? Your new lover?”
It was a mixture of pain, intolerance, and catalytic brewing of the hormones.
“Your voice rattles when you talk to her!” she laughed.
It was a mixture of accumulating annoyance, anger, pain.
“You even try to make little cutesy phrases,” she went nuts.
It was a highly saturated, horribly lit, and unimpressive cocktail.
“Shut up!” I broke, “Shut the hell up, okay?”
She’s silent.
“You annoy me! You’ve gotten on my nerves since the day I met you! You dumb little cooz!” the biology stays the same for teenagers too: adrenaline.
She’s silent.
“You’ve gotten on my nerves since grade school when we walked home… and it just keeps getting worst!”
She cried.
“I hate you! Get out of my life! I want nothing to do with you!”
* * *
That was the last time I saw Natalie, running out of my room in tears.
All these photos suck.
* * *
I laid down in my bed, staring out of my window, gazing at the cobweb of stars weaved into a midnight sky. Stillness filled the air. Unexpectedly, my cell phone began to ring and I scurry out of bed to search; The ringing was faint, barely audible. It was probably under the covers or one of my other pillows, perhaps the closet.
The ring ceased and silence returned to my room. There I stood, aimlessly scanning for the handheld. Suddenly, another ring intruded: quieter, quicker.
Voicemail received.
Minutes later I found it beneath the mattress, and I played the message: Hi Matty, this is Natalie. Uh… I just called to say happy birthday. I didn’t forget it was today… twelve years old. Congratulations buddy… I really miss you. A lot. And I miss being around you. And I want to hear from you. And… and… I love you and just wanted to say ‘hi.’ Bye Matty… call me back as soon as you can.
* * *
I’m sixteen now. There was no call-back. No reply–just silence. I live farther now, too.
Currently I hold a manilla folder from Flickr Inc.; I tear it apart. I unfold the letter. I read: “We regret to inform you that your photograph is unqualified for judging due to coffee stains.”
* * *
“Alright Matty and Natalie, ready?” her mother said.
The goldenrod, filtered by the autumn leaves branching from the oaks, grazed our heads as Natalie and I adjusted ourselves in front of the Polaroid.
“This is the coolest gift ever!” I stated, referring to the camera.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Now stay still so I can get you two in this picture correctly.” We waited for another minute; Natalie’s mother struggled to turn off the flash.
Behind us, our suburbia was enriched by autumn leaves drizzling with the light wind. The golden grasses of our front lawns complimented the autumn-leaf showers. A cricket nearby played a tune–a tune I no longer remember, only that it was joyous. The smiles we formed just laughing about stupid 5-year-old stuff.
“Okay ready?”
We prepared our pose: magazine smiles and silly eyes.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Say cheese… and…”
I felt Natalie’s arms suddenly flung onto my biceps, embracing me from behind and to a complete shock my magazine smiles turned genuine.
We heard clicks; We heard noise.
And a picture perfect photograph was ejected.