"She's so cool," the girl sitting next to me in my drama class said. "She's not like the other teacher's at all." We were outside supposedly practicing our lines for an in-class performance. None of us were. It was just good to be outside in the sun, on grass, away from the classroom. This was unusual. I felt a sleepy dopiness coming over me as I listened to the voices without thinking, hearing their tones and notes and letting them wash over me, my body a floating mass, narcotized.
"Moon went over to her apartment," another voice put in. Moon was the hip new kid with the loose Afro. "He's gone over a coupe times. He says she's real cool."
How had he managed it, I wondered jealously? I didn't dislike him, really. He had never done anything to me. It was just that he seemed more mature, somehow. There was a loose happiness about him as if everything came easy. People were attracted to him, kids and teachers. "How cool would he be if he got stuck at the trailer park with Judson and those guys one Saturday night?" I thought to myself. "He would shit himself."
That's all I had. I could hang with murderous thugs without dying. I needed more.
Jill called us all back inside. The period was just about over. She was thin, almost too thin, really, with long dark hair that she pulled behind her ears. Her teeth were a little crooked, her eye teeth a bit in front of the others giving just the slightest hint of fangs.
"OK," she said, "as you know, I have chosen "The Fantastics" as the school play this year. It is my favorite play and I'm nervous and excited. We will be having tryouts next week, so if any of you are interested. . . ."
I knew I wasn't. I wondered if Moon would be trying out. He probably could do that well, too.
Mornin'.
ReplyDeleteYou know what I love about this observation? I mean sure there is the focus on Jill (as sort of a prize) but he real attention is being paid to Moon. And that is how it really is, isn't it?
The Object of our Affection is always there sort of wearing that halo-ish glow of perfection -- but what takes over, it seems, our earthly focus is the almost obsession of the One who seems to be in the way of Attainment of the Object of our Affections.
I remember (okay I still do) trying to figure out what about those Girls -- what they had that attracted my Objects to them -- and could I get it. Course I'm just repeating your story now. So I'll shut up.
xo
Iago:
ReplyDeleteO, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss,
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:
But O, what damnèd minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!
Othello:
O misery!
Moon? I'd like a nature name like that. I know someone who changed their name to Rain.
Writing in vignettes this way is so slow. It takes a while to get it all out. But I think I am wanting to show some of the hierarchies that will be destroyed at the end of the century, then reformed in the next. Yea, it is hard to do in vignettes. But Moon was from a more privileged family than I. My level of sophistication was in a different place from his. The strategies I had to work out were different from his. He smiled all the time. I had a solemn grin. I was an observer, though, and everyone and everything gave me something else to aspire to, something else to attain. I was an open consciousness at that point, learning from what I saw and seething desire.
ReplyDeleteHis name, too, is meant to signify a shift. It stands in stark contrast to all the other names I've mentioned.
And in stark contrast to the narrator who doesn't even have one.