I just happened into the Common Grounds coffee shop right off campus and, oh my God, the most beautiful girl works here, and I don't know if I'll ever leave.
She has slender arms and neck and a jarring kind of collarbone under a blouse flowery in both its pattern and fit. Her legs are slim, too—but she still has an ass, and breasts are apparent despite the loose hanging flowers, despite the otherwise perfectly lithe figure. There's no wasted flesh on this one.
Her face is bright and striking and speaks kind words and whispers truths like the-secret-of-life-is-love—and who could deny that to stare in those eyes for eternity would be the best possible fate, and to have sex with that body while doing so would be even better.
She walks around the corner to rub-down a table with a wet rag, and I look up from my coffee to stare, to study, and to wonder. I watch as her kinky brown ponytail bobs a bit from the back of a baseball cap—an understated adornment, a public cover of her soul's complexities, no doubt—or perhaps a perfunctory feature of her professional ensemble. I look downward, linger, look down her contoured calves and ankles to her feet where she dons what look like Converse All-Stars, but they're not Converse All-Stars, but something much better; something so subtly high-fashion—subtly expensive, I'm sure—they can only be found in certain big cities at certain chic stores and, even still, only if you know who to ask about the back room.
Her face, sure, is reminiscent here-and-there of so-and-so, such-and-such a beautiful girl, but to simplify a face—a face so stunning, so invigorating to the soul as to implicate the existence of a soul—to a mere compromise of "X" and "Y" would be to commit such a devastatingly crude and immoral crime as to render me unfit to glance at the eyes. This girl was certainly conceived someplace beyond parents.
She is probably twenty-two years old, though; she probably has a car and a nice apartment here in town—maybe a boyfriend, too. She probably has a twenty-two year old grad-school boyfriend who wears tight fitting plaid flannels year-round and has gauged ears, and is the foremost authority on obscurity—it’ll be his thesis, in fact. Or, Heaven forbid, I hope to Hell no, he's some douchebag with shorts below his knees.
How could I stand a chance in the face of all that—against the likes of those two? I eye myself up and down and see I'm in a two-day-old outfit; I see my reflection in my laptop and the black crescent moons, the short haircut my mom clipped for me, and the pervading look about my brow and eyes and lower lip: like an uncertain freshman, which is what I am.
Unwilling to give up, I scowl a bit more and look disinterested in my surroundings. I turn a page of the hard-bound book I'm reading, which appears rigidly and horrifically academic—perfect for this persona—and I solemnly sip my black coffee. Its surface reflects no light.
Well, after that initial trip to Common Grounds I made myself a fixture, all the time cultivating this terribly intriguing image of Intellectual, Disinterested, Coffee-Drinker. My hair grew longer and my clothes became more stylish, more flannel—at the heighth of fashion, you might say—as I devoured books and scribbled furiously week after week in small hardbound notebooks or, when I wanted to make a real statement, on loose-leaf, scraps, or the cardboard sheaths from steaming black coffees.
More and more this angelic little devil began to notice me; as I sighed, frustrated, rubbing my hand through my hair and glancing around the room with all the boredom I could muster, I saw her more than once staring at me abstractedly with her lips just slightly parted.
Eventually the fall got on and the campus turned autumnal; I trekked the daylight through Thompson Woods with shoulders hitched toward my ears and my teeth clenched in audible it’s-brisk inhalation. My once stylized academic, coffee-drinking persona had become very much who I was; having arrived at Southern Illinois with no identity, all it took was a divine face and figure to provoke an obsession and steer me toward erudition. I was outspoken and pretentious in my classes but, I’d like to think, I backed up my talk with impressive performance: I was batting four-point-oh and had heralded the recognition of my peers—as the pompous ass you love to hate, like a literary sports team that always wins.
After Anthropology 104 let out with a big breath of excitement I’d rush over to Common Grounds, for two or more hours of exalted absorption of Melville, Hawthorne and Beecher Stowe. By late October I’d torn through the entire “Major American Writers” curriculum and been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. Having completed all my immediate class assignments, I was busily writing an essay entitled “Life Doesn’t Imitate Art, It Imitates Bad Television” comparing conflicts in the movie Husbands and Wives to what personal turmoil Woody would soon endure, for my own reasons, when she, the most attractive girl alive, nervously asked me out for a date. That is to say she asked me on a date.
Not knowing what to do, I scoffed. “Yes, I’d love to,” I recovered, still sneering. Twenty minutes later we were walking toward her apartment which she shared with her ex-boyfriend Cal, who, she made clear, was nothing more than a friend if even that.
I talked in big language and drew myself up to my almost six-three, and when she eyed me there was a sparkle there. Her nose and cheeks were chilled rosy red and I thought for an instant I might collapse beneath her beauty as we strode the short distance to her red-brick apartment.
Her name changed twice during that walk. By the time we arrived at her door I called her Olive—maybe the best name I could think of.
It was then she put on Blonde On Blonde, and we smoked a joint in the sparsely furnished living room. We talked, talked, passed, and as quickly as I got stoned my pretentions unraveled into rambling neurotic monologues. She was very quiet sitting with a pleasant smile and low, glazed eyes that bore no ill-effect on her attractiveness but—was it possible?—made her even more endearing. Then there was a key at the door and in came Cal—Cal, who upon conceiving I knew I’d ultimately hate—Cal, who was slight of build, with a light brown beard and just too charming a smile.
“What’s up, man?” he said so casually, before disappearing down the hall.
“That’s Cal,” Olive said.
“Yeah.”
He returned with his own pot and paraphernalia saying “Hey man, do you smoke?”
“Yeah—I mean, I’m already pretty high”—dipping my head toward Olive as if to indicate where and when this came about. “But if you’re offering…”
The three of us sat passing a pipe. “Do you smoke a lot?” Cal asked. “No, not really—mostly I drink.”
“Why, man? Drinking’s so much worse for you.”
“Yeah…yeah, I drink to forget.”
He scoffed. “Forget what?”
“It’s funny,” I said, completing the classic bit, “I can’t remember, so I guess it must be working.”
Olive coughed loudly and covered her mouth with her one free hand, blushing, laughing, coughing—beaming at me. Cal sat with annoyance sketched across his face.
If love dissipates the second you begin to analyze it, then, accordingly, Olive and I were careful not to appraise our lust. It was perhaps the strangest relationship I have ever been in in that we avoided all the basic framework of close interpersonal relationships. She didn't know, for instance, my parents' names, my friends from home, my biggest aspirations, or, unbelievably, how old I was. She never asked. I liked to think that some arbitrary number of planetary cycles was trivial in our more mature relationship, but this was probably an unreal rationalization. More likely, I think, I avoided these basic points because I knew I could never really be with this beautiful coffee clerk.
The basis of our relationship instead was a simple give and take: she invited me to parties; I brought hard liquor and a sardonic wit.
“Mother,” I’d say, spontaneously, drunkenly launching into a character, “The black kids here smoke marijuana. Just watching them mill about in their oversized—bloomers—makes me feel disreputable and unclean. What a shame how they sacrifice identity to, to—basketball hoops, and cancerous vegetation. For God’s sake, Mother, I couldn’t tell my very roommate from any other member of the, uh, black persuasion if he robbed me at gunpoint!” Then I’d recede sheepishly into some quiet corner of the room, to nothing more than chuckles, or annoyance, mostly—but always a look of adoration from Olive, for my improvisational prose talents.
“Most wine connoisseurs agree that 2009 was the best year since, well—’32, of course” I’d begin. “Wait, really?” “No” I’d continue, removing the twist-off metal cap, “You’ll notice a subtle corky flavor—don’t be alarmed by that. Made from only the finest grapes plucked from the verdant hills of Winesburg, Ohio, Purple Cow is a bold, lusty wine sure to make you dance and sing!”
And this was my way at these parties until, invariably, Olive got me alone and we together enacted my daydreams.
When it came to the-two-of-us she was overtly coy, I could say; she would grow quiet and detached from everyone at a party, myself included, before quickly exiting alone—to where one could only imagine. A few minutes later she would walk wordlessly back and gesture for me to join her, or simply take my hand and lead me away, as if the brief disappearance had voided her from the heads of the other houseguests—as if she’d become invisible. Before long I learned to follow her on cue, and we’d retreat to someplace, anyplace, anyplace we could think of to make love.
She was a seemingly telepathic lover: depending on my moment’s particular want she played either meek and defenseless or aggressive and domineering. We would have sex for hours in endlessly imaginative positions as my hands and mouth made the impossible effort to keep pace with desire and impulse. One second I was glancing over her back to where her hair hung down, hands on her ass, and yes, the very next I was thrusting passionately across her chest, occasionally kissing her left breast. Immediately she was on top.
And sometimes there were threesomes with girls I knew from home.
But our relationship was damned by structural instability and as surprisingly as it had started it was bound to stop. It all fell apart at an anachronous Halloween party—it had grown cold so long ago, so far south, and we’d been fucking so regularly for so long it could never have been Halloween. But I wanted then to dress her in costumes, so it was.
I dressed her as a sexy cat. I dressed myself as a football star. I threw the party at Cal’s close friend’s house whose name, for whatever reason, was K-E-L-L-Y-N—“Kellyn.”
But upon arriving at Kellyn’s house I saw Olive and Cal sitting secluded on a couch chatting abstractedly; I had a sinking feeling of disappointment and I knew instantly what was happening, what had to happen, the only thing I knew to happen: I was being forgotten in favor of another boy. I looked at them and then pivoted, suddenly self-conscious of standing strangely in the center of the room. Kellyn was standing right before me, four feet tall, dressed as a giant pumpkin.
“Hey man, I’m Kellyn” he said extending a palm.
“Yeah, I know” I said bitterly, begrudgingly shaking his little hand.
“Who invited you?” he asked, grinning insanely, masturbating furiously.
“Olive and Cal.”
“Ah, my main man, Cal! He’s getting it in tonight, don’t you think?” Kellyn tossed a thumb toward the couch, where Olive and Cal were having violent sex.
“Yes, I guess he is.” I was tired. I was tired of the way the year had turned. So instead of staying there I made love to Olive, one last time, with her still in cat costume.
The stereo in my head began blaring as her whiskers quivered in ecstasy: “Beat the pussy up—beat the pussy up.”
I start laughing. I shake my face off the brim of the cup and finish my cold coffee. I gather my things together and take one more look at the nameless coffee clerk. “Jesus Christ, that girl’s hot” I think. I get up and walk out into the oppressive August heat, singing to myself, “I really did try to get close to you…”
