| This didn't actually happen. |
[24 Jul 2007|11:59pm] |
I was looking over her shoulder at the statue on the window-sill of this Thai restaurant with the full page of vegetarian options on the menu. I wondered aloud, "what the fuck kind of animal is that supposed to be?" Though I'm not sure I would have used the word 'fuck' at that moment. "I wonder what kind of animal that is?" Seems more appropriate to the tone of the memory. I speculated for at least thirty seconds before she suggested, "maybe it's a horse," with a smart-assed smile.
This was the second time she'd handed my horse (which had almost run its course) humor back to me that day. The first after I'd remarked on my favor of carrots, when she asked rhetorically, "Do you know who else likes carrots?"
I think I actually asked, "who?"
"Horses," she answered. I was amused and pleased, to say the least. Her double reminder was making it hard for the horse-joke to die and be properly beaten by me.
"That's a terror of a horse," my retort. The animal's body seemed equally canine and equine, but held atop it's neck a furry dragon's head agast with gaping jaw and jagged teeth, a skull that was nearly as large as its ribcage (please excuse me for mentiong 'ribs'). A recognizeable image, but now considered by eyes whose membrane had been peeled back to see old things as new by the image that approached my car at the start of the evening. That floated to me like the sweet scent of smoke from a vanilla candle, evoking pleasant olfactory recollections. "Tell you what," I said, twisting my head around to see a framed photo on the wall to the right of our table, "We should ask our waitress. If you ask what the old woman in the photo is doing, I'll ask her what the hell that is," looking back to the statue. And then back to her. Though she'd wondered about the woman for like, five solid minutes, she dissented with a playful tone.
This dame caught my eye with hers and I stopped on a mental sigh, then looked at her hazel hair falling on beige and orange dress on freckled shoulders of subtley sun-browned skin. She poked at me with her look, like an insistent but affectionate finger-press at the base of my neck. Pressure properly applied to be pleasing, not painful. This one had always looked good to me, but she was significantly striking tonight (to utilize a cliche in an effort to prevent giving too much away). At this point, I lost track of what was being said.
I will take the time in which my past version spaces away to remark: Some women are as beautiful when you meet them as they ever will be for the remainder of your interaction. Rarely, at least for me, will a woman's physically appealing features increase exponentially in relation to the amount you learn about them. This is a special thing, I must believe, for a person's inner adoreable attributes to enhance your positive perception of their visage (and most certainly in this case, their physique). Somewhere back and to the left of my mind there was an imperceptible wondering about how good she could look before my ribcage would explode. My left arm was numb and tingling tonight, already. My lungs were feeling crowded and I had to hang my head and claw for breath when she looked away. Of course, I mean this in a very good way.
Though many other things must have been discussed between then and this point, I cannot accurately recall. She asked about the last time I'd visited her town, "Were you really sick the last time you were there?"
"Yes."
"Because you didn't seem like it." She remarked.
"I was. That's why I didn't go see that movie with those guys." Though I think I intentionally avoided mentioning it to her when I saw her that night. I moved quickly away from the subject of that weekend. I can't be sure, but. The fact that I made my travel-mates ill with the same disease was revealed and even more important was the detail that they got over said illness in a mere two days while I heaved mucus and hoisted misery upon my proverbial shoulders for a full two weeks. "I'm immunosuppressed, because of the no-spleen thing."
"You don't have a spleen?" She seemed surprised.
I'd told her before, I was sure. "We've been over this. No, I ruptured it in a car-wreck. They cut it out of me."
"Is that why you have the scar?" The scar, which she'd insisted on seeing about a month and a half before. Which, to my chagrin she peered at after lifting my shirt. I had assented, allowing her in spite of my general discomfort with the topic. She was exactly the sort of person who could get away with things like that in the presence of me.
"Yes."
"What happened?" She asked.
"Haven't I told you this?" I must have grimaced. I feel like I must have, though that may just be my reaction from recalling this right now. I was probably more polite about it, not expecting the impending emotional response to reimagining the event. "I was on a road-trip with a then friend, and I'd pulled his Jeep Cherokee up to a perpindicular country road in Palestine, TX. Stopped. And took a left, right into the path of a Nissan...Pathfinder. And, it was my fault, I just didn't see it. All I have is a blurred snapshot image of it, forest green, about to hit me (green like the trees, maybe why I didn't see it)." At this point, I'm not sure if she was vocally noting her receipt of the information between things; I was deep in the memory. "I, uh...came to. I came to. The car had smashed my head (I was driving) against my friend's head (it was his car). I don't remember anything else until they woke me up in the back of the ambulance; they were asking me what my name was and where I was going." I could feel my chest tighten around this time. "They took me to the hospital and then they released me. His parents came to get us." She interrupted about something here, but I can't recall at all. "I was hit by a car going 60 mph and they released me from the fucking hospital." Again, I'm unsure about the actual use of the word 'fuck'. "So, we went to the impound lot to get our stuff, and I was out of my head and barely conscious, but I could feel this godawful pain in my belly, so I climbed out of the back of their car, collapsed on the ground and said, 'I think I need to go back to the hospital.'" There were tears in my eyes by this time, I imagine. My voice was strained by the compression in my chest. "Yeah, so they gave me an x-ray. And. The doctor couldn't find my spleen in the image. I'm not sure how long it took him to realize that it was blocked by a cloud of blood."
"You should've died!" She insisted.
"Yeah, probably." My knuckles were white from holding my composure as much as I had managed to. One more step in the story and I would have lost it. "And that's all I'm going to say about that," I said. There were still more good parts, but I'd already puked the most acrid allotments of the anecdote. I wanted to say 'I'll finish that story another time,' but the source of the tears had choked the potential for a playful tone. A writer once wrote (don't ask me which one) that it takes an average of five years before one is able to write about tra(uma)gedies in the past. How long, then, before one can talk about it? "I'm sorry, I thought I could talk about this. It's been so long."
I turned my head away, so she couldn't see my shiny, red eyes. Looked at the old woman in the photo doing god knows what. We never did ask our waitress.
She asked, "When did this happen?"
"September, 1999. When I was...your age. I don't know. You'd think-" And I stopped. I had to bring my speaking to a halt to avoid cracking my voice. "I'm sorry." I turned away again. "It's always this personal shit that comes up with you. I'm sorry."
And it was actually only the one other thing. She suggested, in the form of a question, "That's okay. Is there anything but personal shit?"
"It's so embarrassing." As I tried to casually wipe away some tears and return to normal.
"There's no reason to be embarrassed." She reassured.
And it's true. You would be, too. Though I said so at the time, I feel no remorse for allowing her to see my scars, physical or otherwise. She was exactly the sort of person who could get away with things like that in the presence of me. No embarrassment in retrospect, except for, maybe, the macho demands of society about men and tears and men and fear.
I held my guts in with my right hand and looked her in the eye. We must have moved on to something pleasant pretty quickly, because I remember the rest of the evening being a devylish delight. A sweet dream.
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