The girl in red danced barefoot, but I was barely there

At 11:30 pm I got dressed and went for a walk
Up and down the empty streets
and to a park

A park full of kids during the day
but this night just one
As I found a spot on the swing set

Up and down and Up and down
I could not think of anything else
The black sky, the wood chips
I went and lost myself in the motion

Here at night, at no mans hour
I swung to my hearts content
Because during the day
It just wasn't right for a person my age
to do so

Higher and higher, but the eventual sad ending to every swing
is a final rest at the lowest point
Some take a leap for a moment of flight
I dug my heels and gave up

Back to earth, I continued on
Still not ready to come home
Further up into darkness and a quiet neighborhood
down a road with no streetlamps
(It's so much better without the orange glow)
I wished every night felt so natural

Then like a beacon on a hill
a house with life
With cars all around
and lights on inside
Now midnight, I studied a mite closer

I saw happy people gathered around a kitchen counter
drinking and talking and being humanity
and in the living room
they spun together, dancing
A lively waltz at 12:23

A beautiful spectacle if I ever saw one
Men and women twirled round each other
like tiny, two-horse carousels
And I peered in from the cool dark street
Gathered myself
and finally walked home
With a finger nail's worth of moonlight
to guide my way

Spring Days In Exile (Part 2) kinda long

The next day I met George in fast food Chinese restaurant, still a bit nauseous from the night before. I ordered first and was already digging into my greasy Kung Pao Chicken when he sat across from me.

"I think that girl at the register likes you Evan," he said while he grabbed a cup to get water.

"Oh, you mean the sweaty one with the noticeable mustache?" I joked.

George laughed the whole way to the soda machine.

The restaurant was mostly empty despite being so near lunchtime and the few people there looked so sad. Sometimes I wonder if we do anything without spite anymore.

"So what's up man, where were you last night? We were playing poker. I won thirty bucks, it paid for this delicious meal here."

Ah poker night. A tradition we started in High School where we could put our limited money on the table, poke fun at each other, and smoke cigars. We stopped smoking cigars years ago, but we still played poker.

"Oh yeah I forgot but you'll like this," I said. "I went out to a bar with Adele and her friends last night."

"Whoa, hold the press, Evan Jimenez went out with a girl, a cute one no less," he said rather loud. The miserable people around us looked for a second before burying their pathetic faces back into orange chicken.

“I didn’t say we went out, like it wasn’t a date or anything, but we were talking online and she invited me, it’s really no big deal.”

Already his face has twisted itself into an expression that told me what he was going to say long before it came out.

“What are you talking about. She likes you man, why can’t you see that. You should be thanking me that I ever introduced you.”

“I’ll make sure to mention that in the wedding toast.”

We both laughed and silently dug into the mound of food before us. A group of girl scouts walked in and I found it an odd place for them to be on a Saturday afternoon. They skipped back and forth in their adorable little outfits and shined toothless grins. I realized that I’d never seen a girl scout outside the context of selling cookies in front of grocery stores or door to door. I wonder what they use that money for? Do girl scouts camp? However, one look at the rather rotund den mother cleared up any questions about who decided to go out for Chinese food and possibly what the cookie funds were for.

“So how did your night out, for the sake of clarity we’ll call it a group date, go last night,” George finally blurted out. “I know something happened or you wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“It was a lot of fun actually, well, yeah it was fun overall.”

He noticed the hesitation.

“But? I know there is a but.”

“No there’s no but, It was a lot of fun. We went to this bar called The Crush in downtown. It’s a really cool place, a lot better than those old man buffalo wings places our friends usually go to.

I drove to her house, knock on the door and her brother opens it and gives me a look that said he knows what I’m all about and without saying a word to me calls for his sister. Which kind of got me thinking that she has probably had a more than a few guys come to her house before.”

“Well yeah, not everyone is a hermit like you Evan, especially pretty girls. They have guys picking them up so much it’s probably like another form of public transportation.” George interrupted.

There is nothing like a close friend to put you in your place. They know who you are and your tendencies so well they could pick you apart with surgeon-like precision, it was like always being roasted. George knew too much about me, so it was hard to talk to him sometimes.

“Anyways she comes to the door and I sort of didn’t know what to do, cause like I don’t know her well enough to hug her and shaking hands is kind of too formal. But I ended up awkwardly shaking her hand after all. She didn’t seem to notice how strange it was so I wasn’t about to push the issue.”

“You should have hugged her. Girls will hug any guy. In fact, at least it would have looked bold on your part which is, coincidentally, another thing girls like,” he said with a mouthful of chow mein.

“I guess I should have had you come with me then, ass. You know I don’t know what I’m doing and then you go and point out all the things I’m doing wrong. I know I did it wrong, why do you think I never want to try?”

Silence.

I continued.

“So we hang out at her house for a few minutes and then her friends arrive to pick us up. Two girls and a guy. The guy was dating one of them and the other was Adele’s sorority sister from college or something, Chelsea or something.

We get to the bar and this place is packed. But it’s not so bad, we buy drinks and find a spot to stand and talk a little bit.

I’m talking with Adele making a few jokes, shes laughing which always makes me feel good and out of nowhere this tall white guy walks up behind her and pokes her in the sides with his fingers.

It turns out it was an old friend of hers and no sooner had he appeared than they went outside to have a smoke. So the rest of us order new drinks and I start talking with Chelsea because the other two were doing the closed off lovey dovey thing. Chelsea and I got along pretty well and we had a pretty good conversation. Mostly about school, she was studying history and that’s always been one of my favorite subjects.

It was really easy to talk to her because, well, I wasn’t attracted to her. You know that about me. I can only speak to girls who are neutral. I guess I don’t really care what I say to them as much so I open up better.

However, in the course of conversation I start to realize that she is really interested in what I’m saying. I mean really interested.

She was leaning in and smiling and nodding and laughing at all the really corny stuff I was saying and it dawned on me that this girl might actually be liking me.”

“So long story short you ended up going home with her.” George butted in.

We both laughed.

“Yeah totally man, it was a wild night. But seriously, long story short, Adele comes back with that dude and we find a booth and I end up sitting next to Chelsea instead of Adele for the rest of the night. The two of them go to the bathroom together and at the table start whispering stuff at each other and I realize that this whole evening might not have been just an invitation to hang out with Adele, but they were actually trying to set me and Chelsea up.

After that I stayed pretty much quiet, but it was too late. Chelsea kept talking, Adele kept smiling at us and I could do nothing about it. So yeah, it was fun, but I really don’t think Adele likes me. It sort of sucks to think I was getting somewhere only to end up at square one.”

George was done with his food now and he gave me a rather obviously annoyed look. I knew what was coming again.

“Alright dude, it wasn’t a date. But don’t you sit here and tell me that no girl likes you or whatever downer interpretation of last night you concocted because girls don’t invite random guys to hang out with them on Friday nights. Believe me, I’ve done the hang out with friends thing before and you know where that leads? Hanging out alone. And I don’t know what you do with girls alone, probably cry about how nobody likes you, but I know what I do.”

I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t believe him, I was there, I knew what I saw. I shouldn’t have replied to her message that night because I liked Adele too much to be pawned off to someone else.

I went back home I feeling little more nauseous than before.


That night I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a person I did not like. It was 2:24AM, and I could not sleep again. My arms were positioned like the limbs of a compass, propping up my ever increasing frame. The mirror was a map of the present, plotting a course in current time, but indicating to me what was to be a grim future.

I stared into my own face, bloated and unrecognizable. My cheeks were smooth and plump, pushing together the sides of the mouth and framing my chin. The only thing I recognized was the portion above the equator of my ears despite the ever decreasing hairline. My head was in two uneven hemispheres, the the north with a melting ice cap and the south engorged with magma.

What was perhaps a vain novelty to most was a true struggle for me. I hated the way people saw me. I was either the "Big Guy" or "Extra Large Tshirt" or "5 spot on basketball." I was always the biggest of the small or smallest of the big, neither being an enviable position.

On the outside I might have looked large but I never perceived myself that way. It wasn't until I crossed my reflection that I would realize my girth. In that way, the mirror betrayed me.

So did my friends. Telling me that I looked fine, that I wasn't fat, that the right person would love me for who I was.

I really hated that. Or when my plump brethren would flaunt their appearance and say that the world needed to conform its image to them rather than the polar opposite. Big was the new beautiful.

It didn't feel that way to me. I knew how girls saw me. How Adele probably saw me. Funny maybe, friendly sure, but not ever a consideration beyond that. I was for some other "lucky" girl, but never them.

There were times when I looked at my misshapen form and wished I could cut out the fat with a knife and be done with it. There were other times when I wished I was invisible all together.

It didn't depress me to look in the mirror, it defined me.

"I can't fucking stand it!" I yelled at myself.

Taking a handful of skin and flesh in in my grip I shuttered and cried out.

"All my life this held me back. Every time a girl passed me over, or a shirt didn't fit, or a doctor told me to lose weight, it got worse."

I slammed my fist down on the fake marble counter. I slammed it again.

"I can take it sometimes, but it just builds up and it kills me, it honestly goddamned kills me."

My hand was red and shaking from the two full force impacts. In a short while it would hurt a lot more. A trickle of blood started down from my left nostril, flowing to the framing crease in my cheek like a flash flood through a desert riverbed.

"Ok Evan, calm down." I said while holding the bridge of my nose with my right hand and blindly searching for a tissue with the other.

I knew it wasn't my body that hurt me so much. It was my mind holding me hostage, forcing me to feel in exile on nurturing spring days.

In my heart I still wished the best for me though. My mind had no control over that.

Silence is always poison

The dogs are barking again
those mutts speaking their peace
waking up an otherwise quiet early evening

They are like the rest of the world to me
Loud and unashamed
but never misunderstood

Silence is the worst death possible
being mute, a slow poison
Especially when you finally decide to speak up a bit

Because you can't remember how it goes
how the lips are supposed to move
And the sounds are not like a song
but a warning siren
telling others to ignore or leave

So you shut up and hide away, quietly angry
at how easily voice comes to those who use it too much
And frustrated that you might have scared off
the only ones who ever gave an ear
in the first place

I hope I'm mistaken but something tells me I'm not

I'll spare the surprise and say I like her
because at this point
I'd rather someone knew it before they ran away
from the shrill screech of me
trying to express myself

Too many times I watched them walk up to me
and continue on their way
I'd sooner be so wrong
Than proven right out of stagnation

Oh regret, you dance around me now
mocking
and daring me to hide

Spring Days In Exile (Part 1)

It was one of those perfect weather days I immediately wished would just end. It was absolutely beautiful outside, like so many 75 degree spring afternoons in Southern California. But my spirits were not tied to the temperature or the clarity of the air.

Kids were coming home from school, walking through the streets outside my window, laughing, smiling cause an unusually cold winter had finally made it's way south.

I shut the shades a little tighter.

I didn't want to go anywhere, I didn't want to see anybody, I just wanted it to be some other day in the future. So I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling but in reality focusing on the thoughts playing back and forth in my mind. That cursed organ or concept or whatever it was, my mind was low on something at the moment. All I felt was isolation and stress and inability. What a crappy thing to do to me on a Friday afternoon.

Despite the airtight blinds my room was still lit by an artificial sun from an artificial world. The computer screen shone brightly like a full moon.

I turned away from it. Not because of the light but because of what was displayed on it. A web page with a simple photo in the corner. A girl posing, smiling, staring at me through the lens. She wore an earthy green summer dress with a small print and her hair poured down her forehead like a waterfall. So natural and serene like the day outside. So I fought the urge to look at either.

My dog barked at all the traffic outside our house despite my parents and brother yelling at him to stop. Two wrongs trying to make a right. I turned up my music to drown out the noise from all of them.

All this music and I don't even want to hear any of it, I thought to myself as I scanned my Ipod for any sort of relief from the circus going on around me. I settled on Death Cab cause even when I didn't want to listen to them I always could.

"...I need you so much closer, I need you so much closer..." And I fell asleep.


Hours later I awoke to darkness and silence and shot my digital clock a look.

8:42 PM it informed me.

Satisfied that I had defeated the terrible day, I sat up and cracked the excess of sleep out of my spine. Finally leaving my matress I transferred my body to the chair in front of the sleeping computer. It sighed to life with a whirr and a couple robotic tics. And all it once her image came to me like a Vietnam flashback in a bad eighties movie. I quickly refreshed the browser window and erased her for the time being.

Then I heard the familiar bloop of a new iChat window and stared at the electronic translation of a thought in type.

-Hey Therrrrre

It was her. Adele Lopez, the girl from my screen, the image from my flashback, the girl manifest as a Friday afternoon was suddenly posing a common colloquialism to me. I wanted to respond and at the same time not.

Over the past week I had finally been resolved to let her go and it seemed fate dealt me a cruel hand.

-Hi Adele, how have you been

Then nothing. For three minutes I watched the empty speech box and imagined my conversation buried somewhere in six or ten other ones she was having with people who deserved her attention. All the guys I'd seen compliment her on Myspace. All the boys who posed so close to her in party pictures. And me staring at an empty speech box.

My heart sunk a bit. I had no confidence in myself and I knew it. I resigned to walk away from the computer with a little dignity and fix myself something to eat.

As I reached the frame of my door a second bloop sounded and I paused in stride. Staring down at my feet and the carpet, I made a decision. I turned around and took a seat in front of the screen to read the response.

-Sorry, I had a phone call and I didn't want to be distracted

I wasn't sure what that meant. Well, I understood what it said, but what was she really telling me? Was the phone a distraction or me? Did she actually care enough about this conversation to give me the courtesy of undivided attention? As was sometimes the problem with instant messaging, words could never give the whole story and I had a bad habit of analyzing intent in the most innocent of statements. Especially when I was already looking for something.

-Oh that's fine, I didn't even notice, I said playing off the small panic attack I had at the sight of her name.

I was strangely good at speaking over instant message. I was able to think about what I said and maximized my personality by joking almost constantly. It must have been a bit like conversing with a Vaudevillian comic.

But the longer it went on, the brighter I became. Adele was seemingly happy to play back and forth with me. Suddenly my terrible Friday might be salvaged. Then she surprised me.

-Hey Evan, I gotta go now because I've got to get ready to hang out with some friends, but I wanted to say you are welcome to come along if you want

If I had a panic attack because of what she said before, this threw my heart into a full blown conniption of conflicting, overloaded thoughts. Of course I wanted to say yes. So I quickly got that out of the way.

- Sure that'd be fun. Where are you going?

She named off some bar I'd never heard of but it didn't matter. She could have named The Palms in Las Vegas and I would have been at the airport buying a ticket in the best D-Bag Diesel Jeans, striped button shirt and leather Florsheim shoes I could find on the way.

-Just come over to my house, my friends are driving

I couldn't believe it was this easy. My personality had never paid off before and I was on the cusp of strange territory. I still had no confidence but at least my mind was too distracted to realize that this fortunate turn of events was being wasted on me.

And I rushed out the door to take a shower, smiling that I wouldn't have to spend ALL my Spring days in self-imposed exile.

Better off

You know I never meant for it to end that way
but you see I'm not always myself these days
and you were someone
I just couldn't stand being two faced around

That doesn't mean everything that happened wasn't real
cause you don't miss apparitions
and I do
miss talking to you sometimes

But I let those other things in the way
those things that tighten the gap between man and ape
Those primordial inclinations
Which made me cut off my right hand
To preserve the left

It's no consolation but I was trying to protect you too
and it's hard to delicately shield another person
from yourself
I feel like the bridges I burned were in some part necessary
but still, I can't help wishing
there was a way to see across the divide

And so now months later I do feel the void
like a phantom limb
And I keep expecting it to be there
but when I look, its just free space

I don't know if you still come around here to see whats happening
in my screwed up head
but if there is any bitterness on your end
I want to say there is none on mine
You are better off now than then
So I guess in that way I achieved what I set out to do
a success despite myself

God, it's no wonder I'm not with someone
Why should anybody go through that
I'm sorry, really

The flirtations of a fool: Terminal B, Gate 56 nonstop service to Ontario

There is this girl in green
Looking right at me
Unabashed unwavering
seemingly infatuated with me
or something in my direction
And I'm facing her
trying not to get sucked into the blackhole
Of a possibly interested female gaze

It's not love at first sight for me
or even fleeting attraction
but I am still taken by her persistence
It's so rare I am flattered
in this way

I think our eyes met a few times
though I could hardly hold it
for longer than a few seconds
But now she is distracted by the phone
And I'm the one painting her with stares
like Van Gogh's Starry Night
Laying it on thick
With Denver International Airport as a canvas
While hundreds of people run and stress
over where they will end up in a few hours
I just did it again
Looked right at her while she looked at me

My guess is that by the time I warm up
To the idea of flirting a bit
She'll have gotten over whatever
Fascinated her about me
in the first place
And it wouldn't be the first time

Late budding confidence
Has never bloomed into anything
Save for esteem wilting disappointment
And neither will comparing myself to a flower

Ahhh! but the airport is a rotten place to waste a day

Garden of Gathsemane

There was a vessel so giving it took on
the weight of another's sorrow
As the water came seeping through the cracks
it poured into her basin

Filling up fast

But she received it nonetheless
Though I worry sometimes
that her capacity be reached too quickly
and without time to drain
she might become fractured as well

There was a tragedy so great
It seemed fictional
Surreal and unsettling as any
Shakespeare wrote

I felt numb for a day and a half
Despite how far removed I was
And yet you charged forward with purpose
like a battlefield medic
resigned to duty over self

These words are yet all I could muster
To unthinkable loss
I fear they border on ineffective
Or worse
A mockery of the beauty of life
And the delicacy of it's uncertainty

God seems so distant at these times
but I take solace
When I see selfless acts in times of crisis

He has placed angels on this earth
For those who must mourn
So they may find comfort
When their thread has been stretched apart

But I wonder about the angels
and who will lift them up
because God knows it hurts them too

My name on newsprint

A couple of dogs loose from their owner run free
for a few moments
Happy and slobbery like a dog should always be
Unaware of the potential harm
which might come to them
should they venture too far from the perfectly manicured front lawn

And I leaned on my truck and the night air was freezing
and clear
Clear straight through the thousands of miles to the surface of the moon
which was so immediate and full
out of place, but bold
A screaming white glow which all but the brightest light
from the closest stars
fell victim too

And I moved to stand on a very short brick wall
of the very small brick planter
with mostly dead shrubs
and weeds which even looked neglected

Teetering slightly, fighting to find perfect balance on my bare feet
while my friend spoke to me
and I listened
and spoke and questioned and participated
but at that moment my mind was divided

A young couple (well younger than I) strolled past
shoulder to shoulder, smiling
I think going nowhere in particular
Which I found endearing
because doing absolutely nothing
with somebody who might mean something
is never a waste of time

Whispering on my neck
the breeze picked up slightly and I zipped up my new blue coat
that I really liked
though nobody would compliment me on it
cause maybe only I thought it looked alright
And it still had the smell from the bar the night before

Not a lot happened that night in the bar,
(well not that would be any sort of interesting story)
but to me it was like this new blue jacket
I was proud of it
and maybe I didn't stand out
In a crowd full of people with flashier coats
better stories and witty banter
but it was a start

Of what I don't know
I don't know where I am going these days
At least I am trying

So I stepped down from the bricks and onto the icy concrete sidewalk
under the streetlamp outside my front yard
the same sidewalk I laid on alone 13 years earlier
and stared up at the overcast sky
Daydreaming about what life would be like when I became an adult

And on nights like this
I still do

Residue

Faucet water filled the basin
As I washed my face
And I thought about everything
Piling up on me
Faster than I could manage
Like the clogged drain
In the sink
that always left a residue

I thought about attraction
and the subjective nature of connection
About how depressing life seemed
And how I could no longer pinpoint a cause
or just one

I thought about the tapwater dripping down my cheeks
My bloodshot eyes
And the knot in my gut
From every time I am pressured to feel
something I cannot

I thought about how often
Tears follow a laugh
And disappointment a desire

Drying my face
I looked up from the towel
and into the mirror
And there was the reality of it all
Sucking the moisture
out of hope and expectation
Replacing it with arid facts

The gritty realization that my heart
was a son of a bitch
and I now hated him for it

I found myself saddest when I was feeling good
and that notion scares me the most

Staring into my own brown eyes
at all the frustration and despair
I could not stand
to be in the same room with me

So I shut off the bathroom light
And closed the door
Leaving only the gurgling sound
of a slowly draining pool of dirty water
and a bloody mess from the torture
I just put myself through

Notes from the Ipod touch

I started writing on my iPod Touch's notepad so i could get things out of my mind but not necessarily on the blog. Hopefully it improves my quality a bit. Here's two that I liked.


The sun in LA

I watched you collide with a mountain
Top and it was like
nothing
The earth is winning from
my perspective
But the sun in LA gets the best
Of us all in the end

Isn't it sad that the new tower of Babel
Lies at the heart of downtown
And all the little sweatshops are
boarding up their windows

The bad economy is a cliche'
Like a sunset on the 101 fwy

Somehow neither was a surprise to me


Beautiful beautiful

Gone, disappeared
Vanished
From memory
And the blue glow from
Halogen headlamps is a ghost
In the corner of my vision

While sweat dripping down the forehead
Could not evaporate
Like the holder of that jewel
of a thought
In subconscious windows
Taking my mind off the
Muffled clatter of slow jogging effort

There's no self-deception like the present
And I couldn't lie to myself as I rounded
the inclined sidewalk
In an attempt to run off my sins

I could visualize no one
No hope, no possibility
No discernible want

Thud, Thud
my legs burning
With a kind of passion my
Loveless heart could not match

Beat, beat
that marvelous muscle
Ticking like a department store
watch
Counting down the seconds
And I wonder what was missing

Beautiful, beautiful
the girl I could not conjure
Beautiful, beautiful
The poetic justice

I was stood up by an idle thought