Sunday, May 09, 2004

HE AND SHE, PART ONE: WONDER

He sat there wondering where she was, what she was doing. Was she eating dinner? Was she watching TV, flipping the channels as she had normally done because she claimed that there was nothing really on TV anymore? Was she wearing sweatpants and a vintage T-shirt? He loved it when she wore that outfit because in his head he secretly wished that everyone would dress like that wherever they went. To work. To a party. To the supermarket. This would have to be acceptable because she had found this outfit comfortable and he wished that she would be comfortable at all times even if it meant designating a new dress code for the world.

He turned the channel (because he too found that nothing was on) and saw that commercial that they had together found annoying. Oh God, she would say, this commercial is so annoying. And he would say, yeah, it is.

His chest hurt from smoking too much. Truthfully, he had nothing else to do and smoking made him feel less lonely. He wasn't sure why...it just did. She once said that he should probably stop smoking. She suggested that when he turned 30, he should finally give up the filthy habit. He laughed and agreed that 30 sounded like a good age. He liked the fact that someone cared about his well being. It gave him a slight case of the chills. Walking down the streets, he had always noticed the impersonal nature of this city. When someone changed that by showing concern, it was like a drug.

He shut the TV off and put on the stereo. The CD he decided to play reminded him of her. Truthfully, most of the music he played nowadays reminded him of her. Beforehand, the words had always seemed irrelevant but now he found himself combing them for personal allusions as if they had been written for him. About him. About him and her, actually. It was silly but he couldn't help but feel the songwriter has seen the two of them together and then, suddenly inspired, picked up his or her guitar and wrote a song.

He looked over at the clock and noticed how early it was and how desperately he wanted it to be later. Since he had not seen her, time had this tendency to move as if the clocks' arm were weighed down by concrete. The only thing he had planned for tonight was to go to bed. How odd, he thought. When she was around, I could stay up for hours. They only went to sleep when their eyes could no longer stay open. When he promised himself that he would meet her in his dreams.

He wondered what she was doing. Where she was. He was jealous of the people around her. He wanted to be a picture on her wall, a book in her bookshelf. It didn't seem fair--her being there and his being here.

Was she sitting on the couch? Was she thinking of him? Did she wonder where he was and what he had eaten for dinner? He wondered what she was wondering.

He turned the stereo louder and lit another cigarette.

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