Dance for my amusement!
Feb. 21st, 2007 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xaaraSometimes I really want other people just to do things because they'd make me smile. Like the dude in front of me at Walgreens? I really wanted him to drop the packet of socks he had oh-so-casually draped over a box of condoms. He would have blushed bright red, because it's his first girlfriend in a while. He'd finally grown into those extra pounds he gained when he was fourteen and when she smiled at him in Physics class, his ears burned. He freaked and angsted over whether to ask her out for two weeks before finally muttering, Hey you know if you wanted to like grab a coffee or something sometime or not because you know whatever but I'd be cool with it either way. Feeling like a total idiot until she said, Sure, whatever, and smiled in the warm way girls do when they want to be wanted.
They talked about themselves because they thought they had nothing in common. He didn't know how to have a conversation, kept threading his fingers through the handle of his mug. His coffee was cold, but he was afraid to put it down, afraid of not having anything to do with his hands. She excused herself for a minute to use the bathroom and he breathed out, first time in a long time, while a girl curled in the corner seat near the back nodded at him, tapped her fingers to the beat of the music through her headphones.
What bands do you like? he asked her when she came back, and she told him that she liked Interpol and Frou Frou and this hip-hop group from Minneapolis, Atmosphere, you heard of them?
Dude, he said, because Atmosphere, he fucking loved Atmosphere. You know that one, Tears for the Sheep, he said, and she grinned at him.
It's all about Say Shhh, she said, love song to the Midwest. No one sings love songs to the Midwest.
He set his mug on the table between them, leaned forward. I do, he said. I do.
Yeah, well, she said, her voice soft.
He wanted her, wanted to wrap his fingers through her hair and pull her towards him, kiss her until the older couple at the window clucked at them. He wanted to feel her legs spread wide over his, feel the tension thrumming the muscles of her lower back. You wanna get out of here? he asked.
He walked her home, and she smiled at him before she went inside. When he shoved his hands in his pockets, the scrape of denim against his knuckles made him shiver.
On the walk home, he felt the twist of his sock around his left foot, the whisper of cold air, and remembered the hole in the toe. Walgreens, then, six-pack of white crew for five bucks. Ten feet away, an aisle of Lifestyles and Trojans and Beyond Sevens, and he unhooked one of the boxes, fighting the tightness of embarrassment just below his adam's apple. Stood in line, saw a girl standing behind him, hair down, left thumb hooked in a belt loop, right arm cradling a ream of printer paper, and thought, There are people here. He nestled the packet of socks over the condoms, twitching a smile at the linoleum.
Fifteen sixty-two, said the clerk, snapping her gum. The blue of her vest brought out the green of her skin. She looked twice her age. He blushed and fumbled a twenty from his wallet. Shook off the offer of a bag, shoved his purchases into his backpack, let the night cool the rush of blood beneath his skin. Thought, maybe. Yeah.
(Um. When did this become a story? *facepalm*)
They talked about themselves because they thought they had nothing in common. He didn't know how to have a conversation, kept threading his fingers through the handle of his mug. His coffee was cold, but he was afraid to put it down, afraid of not having anything to do with his hands. She excused herself for a minute to use the bathroom and he breathed out, first time in a long time, while a girl curled in the corner seat near the back nodded at him, tapped her fingers to the beat of the music through her headphones.
What bands do you like? he asked her when she came back, and she told him that she liked Interpol and Frou Frou and this hip-hop group from Minneapolis, Atmosphere, you heard of them?
Dude, he said, because Atmosphere, he fucking loved Atmosphere. You know that one, Tears for the Sheep, he said, and she grinned at him.
It's all about Say Shhh, she said, love song to the Midwest. No one sings love songs to the Midwest.
He set his mug on the table between them, leaned forward. I do, he said. I do.
Yeah, well, she said, her voice soft.
He wanted her, wanted to wrap his fingers through her hair and pull her towards him, kiss her until the older couple at the window clucked at them. He wanted to feel her legs spread wide over his, feel the tension thrumming the muscles of her lower back. You wanna get out of here? he asked.
He walked her home, and she smiled at him before she went inside. When he shoved his hands in his pockets, the scrape of denim against his knuckles made him shiver.
On the walk home, he felt the twist of his sock around his left foot, the whisper of cold air, and remembered the hole in the toe. Walgreens, then, six-pack of white crew for five bucks. Ten feet away, an aisle of Lifestyles and Trojans and Beyond Sevens, and he unhooked one of the boxes, fighting the tightness of embarrassment just below his adam's apple. Stood in line, saw a girl standing behind him, hair down, left thumb hooked in a belt loop, right arm cradling a ream of printer paper, and thought, There are people here. He nestled the packet of socks over the condoms, twitching a smile at the linoleum.
Fifteen sixty-two, said the clerk, snapping her gum. The blue of her vest brought out the green of her skin. She looked twice her age. He blushed and fumbled a twenty from his wallet. Shook off the offer of a bag, shoved his purchases into his backpack, let the night cool the rush of blood beneath his skin. Thought, maybe. Yeah.
(Um. When did this become a story? *facepalm*)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-22 10:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-22 01:13 pm (UTC)I love creating strangers' stories based on what they're carrying, what they're wearing, how they stand. It's a fun exercise in imagination.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-22 02:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-22 11:14 pm (UTC)I will autograph a special book with a typo in it just for your great-grandchildren to present to Antiques Roadshow years and years from now so some appraiser can make exclamations and they can relate vague stories about how their great-grandmother was once on this site called Living Journal or something like that. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-22 05:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-22 11:14 pm (UTC)