Affectation

Lunch was over, decimated and left in ruins as we exited Jason’s Deli into the crisp midday air, a slight bite to every inhalation like menthol cigarettes or breathing really deep with several peppermints in your mouth. She clutches at my arm for stability and alleviation from the cold as we head to my car. My heart still races at her touch and fills my weak mind with too many memories. I never know how to handle myself around her and as a result I feel like I’m just bumbling constantly through my interactions and most certainly making an utter ass out of myself. I brush those thoughts off when she lets go of me to enter my golden chariot and escape the slight tendrils of wind chilling her small and lovely bones. Before I start the car, I look up through the trees lining Camp Bowie Boulevard and see the sun peeking through the orange leaves and I am transported to a similar time, almost like deja vu, and I am transfixed, forced to relive it in it’s entirety.

My hair is ruffled with the continuous blasts of air coming in through my driver’s side window. Eventually, the dusty Texas breezes will contaminate my typically clean and silky smooth mane, making it greasy and homeless looking. It bothers me, so much so that I am constantly looking at it in my rear-view mirror, occasionally straightening and preening my plumage while she sits in my passenger seat, powdering her face up and looking into her own perfect blue eyes in the cheap, warped contours of the vanity mirror. A sunshade feebly attempts to shield my eyes from the harsh rays of the orange afternoon sun peeking through the magnanimous oak trees lining the street on either side of the child’s soccer field, providing a leafy canopy above the car.

Every so often, I’m distracted from my primary duties of driving my 1995 golden Saturn, Daedalus, instead directing my attention to the blue Baylor Ambulance Squad Annual Family Picnic frisbee sitting on her black and red plaid skirt that was flipped upside-down and coated with various drugs ranging from marijuana to promethazine to cocaine to a small vial of codeine cough syrup. A few drops of the orange syrup had fallen onto her white blouse, which was, in a sense, good because it drew away from the unfortunate and obvious detail that she was wearing a black bra underneath. She claimed her house was dark and she was in a hurry and forced to grab the first two things she saw but, even colorblind and in the dark I can tell the difference between black and white. I suspect foul woman trickery is afoot, mostly because before, sans suspected shenanigans, I didn’t constantly gaze wholeheartedly into her cleavage, whereas now, the situation being as it is with her breasts being highlighted as they are, I was very much inclined to gaze wholeheartedly into her cleavage. Thank god she took out the drugs and gave my feeble male mind something else to focus on.

Out on the soccer field, the adolescents ran about, pushing and kicking each other almost wholly ignorant of the ball save for one black child who decided to just embarrass the shit out of the bulbous(fat) white goalie, repeatedly kicking the ball into the pale chubby youth’s generous intestinal girth. Seems funny now, but more and more kids nowadays are just committing suicide because of bullying. That didn’t happen so much when I was a kid; back then you either complained, got bigger or cooler friends, or just snapped one day and beat the living piss out of the fuck. I never thought about suicide as a young child; I can’t imagine feeling that way as a child even though I guess it’s normal as a teenager. Beside me, she continues to sort the drugs into various piles, all very uniform, frowning when I hit the slightest bum on the old, craggy roads in Ridglea and the mounds jostle modestly, granules shifting minutely. She pinches me when I space out and neglect to slow the vehicle for speed bumps.

A steady stream of conscious rap pollutes the soundscape with the very best of Common, Blu, Mos Def, The Roots, and Atmosphere; the rap music of the concerned white intellectual trying to empathize with the urban lifestyle, or the soundtrack I use to sound edgy and smooth while I do drugs with the fairer sex. She responds positively, nodding her head to some of the songs while she rolls everything up into an empty peach bluntskin. Green, white and orange are swallowed up by brown and tightly constricted into a thick, tubular felony. It’s intimidating, to be sure. A final layer of cough syrup is drizzled on her thumb and forefinger to lather up the blunt with before drying it in front of the air conditioner. She hums the tune of “Dancing in the Rain” by Blu & Exile as she slowly twists the blunt around, like a pig on a luau spit, and I navigate our way towards Ridgmar Mall.

Before we cross I-30, the smell of burnt marshmallows fills the car and gives off a kind of heady sensation when I inhale, making it so that all I can taste burning pills and cocaine. My thoughts become more languid before I even take my first hit and everything gets a nice shiny glean to it, my murderous intent slipping behind me replaced instead by an uneasy calm that’s far more preferable to hate or depression. We pass it back and forth several times, thick white smoke filling the car. My shoulders and eyelids droop slightly while my heart races and I feel a buzzing at the summit of my spine. I smile a lot, too, but I don’t use any teeth so I must look like a psychotic to the casual passerby. But I became aware of an imminent disaster in my body. I felt like my consciousness was being crushed and she was beginning to slump over in her seat. I pulled over the bridge onto Ridglea Avenue and into the Ridgmar Square apartment complex, constantly experiencing the sensation of my face being pulled far too tight across my face; like my essence was stretched too thin. My vision began to gently vibrate and every five feet I thought my forehead was going to crash into the steering wheel. I couldn’t even feel my hands directing the car, I just had to trust that my body was still functioning. Once I pulled into the first semblance of a parking spot, I gave up trying to maintain myself; the darkness closed in and everything ended, but only for a little while.

That was the very first time I blacked out.

I returned to the present, shivering because I had left my door open and my left leg outside of the car. I hadn’t even finished getting in before the memory took me. It only took a few seconds, like always; and just like always it only happened around her. She made me a wreck. Or I made me a wreck. Not knowing who to blame is sickening. It just makes you constantly review the past, searching for a critical juncture where it all went wrong.

She notices. Just like she used to, she reaches over and preens my hair gently with her fingers and waits for me to start the car. It still comforts me and I feel a little more centered. After a few minutes, Daedalus sputters and coughs and groans to life. The drive passes in relative silence, the only noise being A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement playing quietly through the speakers. The silence extends to the moment when we’re sitting in the car outside her house. I can feel my heart beat in my ears and my face gets hotter as she turns and, with her perfect lips, says, “I wish we could start over.”

“We can’t. Not as long as we’re here. Maybe another time, in another city. But we both know that won’t happen. We can’t be around each other and function.”

She nods slowly, absorbing the words, her flawless porcelain face struggling to comprehend her new reality. A few scattered tears trickle forth from her clear blue eyes and smoke up her mascara. I close my eyes really tight, hoping desperately for her to simply not be there when they open again. She grabs my right hand and presses something forcefully into my palm while she planted the most fragile of kiss on my cheek.

Seconds later she was walking down the crooked cement paved path, overgrown with grass and weeds poking through numerous cracks slithering about the entire walkway. Briskly moving through the frigid space between my car and her front door, arms wrapped securely about her torso, endeavoring to keep the body shaking sobs at bay, is the last image I have of her in my mind. Because I never saw her again.