“And then, he just disappears.”
I sat in the booth telling Kirsten the story. I thought about what I had just said. It sounded like I was telling a ghost story, a myth, something unreal, but this was very real. I think. Maybe I’m just going crazy from the loneliness, and I’m hallucinating. But could I really dream up someone like this? Someone so beautiful? Someone like…him? Him. I don’t even know his name, which is what then leads me back to my insanity theory. “He just disappears.”
Kirsten looks at me as if I have some tiny play happening on my nose, squinting to see the drama unfolding on my face. I knew that she was (almost) as confused as I am, but she nodded as if she understood me completely. Well, it was a slow, judgmental nod, but we won’t read into it too much.
I must say, I have been quite the organized girl since I started seeing him. After mentally noting the first few sightings, I went and bought a date book to keep track in. I guess that was the writer in me, always wanting to make sure that I had all of the details just right. I’m sure I looked like a madwoman with this rather large (I didn’t really think about function too well), bright red book, jotting furiously in the middle of the grocery store or ruining my eyes in a movie theater. Those pages are pretty much useless to me since the lines all just jumbled and spilling into each other. In a way, I kind of felt like a stalker, but how can you stalk someone you don’t know?
Kirsten is still staring at me. The ten-minute silence that we are now pulling into the home stretch of is a dead give away that I’ve lost her. Is it possible to kill someone’s brain cells by ridiculous storytelling?
“Well…is he hot?” She snaps back to resume normal function and shoves a forkful of cake into her mouth. Bits crumble and she pushes her hand in front of her face to poorly hide the mess. “I mean…you know what I mean.”
Of course I know what she means. It has only been on rare occasion that we have disagreed about the physical appearance of the male sex. We know what we like to look at. But for some reason, the words to describe him just wouldn’t come to me. My brain was like a hat filled with ripped up, scribbled on pieces of paper and I kept pulling out the same word. Ethereal.
I am not a very religious person at all, but this whole experience has me believing in angels. Really tall, handsome, tattooed angels. With scruffy beards and untamed hair. He looked like he had just walked off of a tour bus that had an enormous set of fluffy, white wings emerging from the top of it as if it were sailing down from heaven. Even the light around him seemed to reflect from the ink in his skin; swirls of color radiating from him as I watched.
© 2005
