the fireplace

when i arrived at the cafe immediatly i noticed the lighting. it was too dim and the people wernt saynig anything about it.they probably walked in and realized the same thing and thought " its a little too dark in here,but i guess its the cafe ambience.people will allow themselves to believe anything to feel cool. the very next thing i noticed were the people themselves,they seemed unreal to me. they were like characters from a play or novel.everything about them seemed a little to performance like,as if they practiced their cool poses infront of the mirror the previous night.it didnt feel like i walked into a place of business, it felt like i walked onto a movie set,and the people were extras,the furniture were props,and all the pretentious people had just left wardobe and make up.
that place was more than a cafe.it had a bar. i thought that was kind of odd given the whole bohemian vibe going the atmosphere. there was a rack to the left with t shirts . some had the logo of the establishment, others had witty saying and ironic declarations like " racism set me free" or the one that said "lies are the real things". there were two massage chairs infront , and you could see them from outside . the black guy with too much muscle for his stumpy body i assumed was the masseus. he was too eager to feel me up.he offered to give me a free massage .i detected some sexual innuendo so i declined. he was gay for sure,thats what his t shirt said- "here and queer and out in the open".why would you wear a t shirt like that if you wernt gay. thats just asking to beaten down by a gay gang. i hear they take steroids nowadays, and with them being gay ,they are probably overdoing it. i stood there looking around wondering what a gay ateempt to overthrow a government would be like ,ITS A REVOLUTION BITCHES!. anyway, the guy onstage playing his song about some girl who rrrealized too late how feminine he was and left him was absolutely terrible. i wish i had a cape and a phone booth, so i could rescue him from his own performance. the funny thing is, while he was up there a-bombing every song he flung out of himself,the fake extras didnt say anything ,again. i tell you ,that freaking cafe ambience will make you swallow down any kind of crap.in a way ,it was kind of evil of them not to say anything,and to let him die like a old seal on the beach.finally some guy in full black with tatooes of marilyn monroe on both his arms stood up and said " dude you fucking suck" and left the cafe . right then i whispered to myself " thank you obnoxious guy" the guy on stage quickly took the oppurtunity and fled the scene. nobody applauded except for me. i went and stood at the bar ,surveying the different drinks and their ridiculous prices,my eyes glimpsed the table at the front of the stage.sue had her back to me,with her red hair ponytailed.she was wearing a white dress that made her resemble a store front manequin loosely wrapped in in silk,placed in the sitting position.she was exquisite.i walked up and tapped her on her tricep. she looked over her left shoulder and placed her forefinger over her lips . shhh!, she said , then she smiled to let me know that she wasnt being rude.
the next act was ready to get his set going, i didnt care for him or his set list.sue was too distracting, too disarming, she was beautiful. i wanted to clear the fake folk out of the cafe so i could have her to myself. her red hair, her blue contacts, her egyptian princess white dress,how did she know that looking like that would make her irresistable to me.she was actually interested in what this guy was singing about,he called himself" zions train". i caught myself staring at her too long.if she had asked me why i was staring at her i had an ingenious comedic comback.my ability to use comedy as a side stepping tool had gotten to an advanced level.i swear to god, i could play off genocide with one of my funny quips.
she remained captivated by zions train, he was ok, but not captivate the prettiest girl in the room kinda ok. he was more like make you look up from your coffee and oatmeal raisin every now and then ok. i just couldnt get over the way she looked. she should have been behind glass protection,like an artifact of priceless value,or the pope,away from my filthy, horny little fingers.yeah she was something.
zion train performed three songs, and as he was leaving the stage he asked the crowned not to applaud him. one lady at the back of the audience dared to defy zions train.he turned around.
" who did that"
"which one of you tools did that"
"oh so now you dont want to talk"
" I SAID NO CLAPPING!"
" dont you get it morons,true art is to be observed and appreciated in solitude,not fucking clapped and whistled at"
zions train was higher than a satalite.
two security guards , who must have blended into the decor like big, buff chamellions came out of nowhere and grabbed zions train and escorted him out,knocking over drinks and empty chairs along the way. he tried to come back inside to get his guitar.the bigger guard picked up zions train and body slammed him to the pavement.the other went and got his guitar off stage ,then he threw it on top of zions train, injuring his testicles in the process. i was taken aback, noody else seemed even a little ruffled.it turns out that zions train had similar outbursts in the past,sue filled me in.suprisingly zions train was a great song writer, he was also a coke head,but they let him back to perform because everybody thought he was this crazy genius or something like that. but even then, a body slam, really? that seemed over the top.sue filled me in some more. the previous week zions train had broken a corona bottle bottle over the head of the guard that slammed him, the guards name was pretty mink, the body slam was a shmash over the head coming full circle.
when we met at the cafe that night we had been going out for three months already.she hadnt revealed too much about herself apart from the topical stuff,favorite food, favorite color, worst dates been on. i wasnt too keen on coersion or using chicanary to get her to unwrap herself for me.she was the most beatiful woman to agree to go out with me. no contest. i didnt want to say anything to damage the dynamic that was being created between us; i was going to be the talker she was going to be mysterious. but still, i wanted to know more.so about five weeks in i decided to observe her,not like a horny bastard,like i had a functioning brain.
i knew she hated tents. i asked her to go to the circus with me and she almost had an anxiety attack.a childhood camping accidents went nightmare,there were bears and food and owls and a whispering forest that sounded like ten thousand well behaved ghosts having tea at an afternoon get together.
she carried a 22mm pistol in her purse.some guy had rubbed her knee under the dinner table on the first date,and she want to be able to shoot me if i had turned out to be a perverted psycho.subsequent time spent together proved that i was niether perverted nor psycho,so to honor my good and gentleman like behavior she downgraded to a swiss army knife. i felt really proud of myself.
i started to watch how she did things, like how she ate,what she ordered ,how much of it she left on the plate.did she like meat more than she liked greens.her cloths. how long or how short her skirt was,her choices in movies,music,the stuff she laughed at , the humor she didnt get;the fact that after three months of nonstop dating we werent sleeping together yet.we didnt even talk about it much outside of double talk tinged with mild sexual innuendo.when i finally got to see the inside of her living space i just mentally recoreded everything,her furniture,what she hung on her walls ,were they art work or pictures,were they of her family or friend , or were they abstract ,random pictures of things and places she thought was cool at the time. i found it strange that she didnt have anything denoting her puerto rican heritage. i asked her about that. it felt like i was confronting her about an out of control drug depency.she got defensive and turned it aroundand asked me if i had any african artifacts in my apartment seeing that i was black. i didnt so dropped the issue.
after month three i was able to get a better picture of who she was, snd this is what i came up with: she grew up poor and had developed guilt about her financial gains;this i could tell from the fact that she owned a business that was making a lot of money,but she lived in an apartment that was well below her price range,she definately didnt want to be poor again.she was probably raised by a single parent,her mom,which accounted for her inabilty to connect with me, a man.her mom was a disciplinarian for sure, i could tell by her almost ritualistic table manner.she was very careful to be proper,precise with every cut of food,and that she chided me for eating fast once. she was an extremely intelligent woman,which would explain how she turned a delapidated buildings into one of the most successful cafes on that side of town where pawn shops and liquor stores are so many and tucked in so tightly like ten orphans on a half matress.she displayed at times the equanimity of an old person who knew death was close and had decided that a tug of war with the grim reaper was futile. i loved that. man i loved that.
over the next five months we worked each other out well enough to move in together. oddly, she was the one who wanted to take that step.for all my analysis of her and my conclusion that she was closed off emotionally, i was the reluctant one,i had all the excuses,
."but what if this ruins us sue"
"if you loved me like you keep saying you do you take that chance"
i know when women drop a sentence like that,its best to swallow all clever comebacks and capitulate as quickly as possible.
i was thinking of all the rearraging i would have to do to accomodate another human being eating, sleeping, bathing,just existing in such close proximity to me. im a slob. when ever she wanted to come over i had to have forwarning like people living in low lieing areas when the river is about to open up. the cleaning would go on for hours. and as soon as she was gone i was back to my old habits until the next flood siren.i couldnt imagine her being ok with my cloths all over the floor , mold growing from corners,my biannual laundry visits. i was going to have to-mature. not yet please, i said to myself ,
"what did you say"
"i love you so much?"
" i know".
we decided that we would find a brand new apartment, she was exstatic. i had never seen her so outwardly happy. i was just releaved that she would never have the chance to take a blue light to my old carpets or bed sheets.she had ideas about everything ,furniture, carpeting,kitchen design, bathroom fixtures. i was just her personal monkey who lifted and dragged the heavy things in and out. it took two and a half weeks but when it was done she was proud of what she had accomplished. i had bigger,soarer muscles.she did a great job. there was no way i could have created a look that .
that first night i had the best sleep i had in a very long time. i woke up befor she did and i lied there looking at what she had done with the bedroom. it looked amazing{ add detailed description here, get pictures and information. fabrics, textures, colors}
she woke up slowly as if she had managed to get to the ending of a good dream.
" so it true , you do wake up stunning"
"ha ha, very funny, jerk"
" no, baby im dead serious, you look amazing,your breathe on the other hand ,not so amazing"
she laughed and slapped me in the face with the softest pillow i had ever been playfully slapped with.
we lay quiet for while ,then she propped up onto my chest and said real calmly,
" i had the greatest dream i ever had"
"what was it about"
" me and brad pitt"
" really"
"no, of course not"
"ok, self esteem restored, go on"
" i dreamt that i was in this huge cardboard box"
"a cardboard box"
"yeah ,and i busted out at the end,and then i saw that i was in bigger box"
"whats so spectacular about that"
"dont you see tye ,that like the perfect metaphor"
"for what"
"any and everything"
"follow me"
she sat up and so did i.
" everybody has a network tye,everybody you know is in your network,and everybody they know.you got to see that that your network, my network,the guy who serves coffee at my cafe network acts as one unit of the larger world network.just like im the newest unit in your network.technically everybody has a link to everybody else in the world,regardless of how circuitous the route.that my handsome lover is society"
" so what your saying is....
"shut up im not done"
"ok, go on maam"
"alright have you ever heard some one say, oh ,i want to be outside of the box"
" sue ,im thirty of course i have"
" it was a rhetorical question"
she punched my shoulder. i let out an exaggerated , ow that hurt"
"good, now let me finish"
"everybody has a box,people create boxes for other people,mostly on a subconcious level though, based on the box that was created for them.culture is a huge box tye. every rule , every law, every belief, true or fictitous are fibres of your cardboard box"
" i follow"
"other people create the circumference of your box without even knowing it,like sleepwalking construction workers,but the funny thing is ,they can only build it ,your the only one who can padlock yourself in or bust yourself out.the culture box expands and retracts to suit the times but there are always paramiters.you know you have power when you take control of the size of your box tye"
" i get all that,but how can people put you in a box if you dont want to be inside"
"your fears and insecurities, they keep you stationary,knowlege and enlightenment gets you a bigger box to roam around in"
"makes sense"
thats all i had , one liners. whenever she started to figure things out aloud like that i had nothing to do but realize how ridiculously lucky i was to have somebody like her beside me in bed with the most comfortable linens imaginable.
"do you remember the things your feared or were insecure about on your first day of life"
"no"
"your first day of life is the closest you will ever come to having absolute freedom.
before you know it ,its day two and the construction of your box has started by the people in yoour first network, your mom ,your father, thedoctor who slapped your ass, the nurse by his side. you are made.from that day on the best you can hope for is a huge fucking box"
she slapped my stomach at the end of that sentence.
" ow, that hurt for real, you play too rough"
"oh shut up,you wimp and go make me pancakes like you said you would yesterday when you broke the lamp"
"I said that, i remember saying that i might"
"might, you mean like ,might never see my vagina again might"
" does blueberry sound good"
" yes , thank you".
"