What should have been on my card.

www.sarahalisonstargirlphotography.blogspot.com

Mr. Brightside (beginning)

1. Empty Mr. Brightside

John Smith hates his name.

He hates the way the “Smith” tastes in his mouth, and how the “John” fails to roll eloquently from his tongue. He hates that every person who hears his name expects him to be an average male in his mid-forties with a bald spot on the topmost point of his head that is ever-so-slowly but consistently increasing in size.

John wipes the steamy mirror with his average-sized hand and carefully inspects his scalp for any thinning areas. Safe. No balding. Yet.

He stares at his face, searching for a single physical attribute that will rescue him, redeem him from his over-all averageness.

Nothing.

He turns to the side, carefully watching his profile.

Nothing.

He leans close into the mirror.

No freckles.

No birth-marks.

No uni-brow, obtrusive nose-hairs, warts or acne. Still leaning into the mirror he flattens his lips against his teeth and turns his head from side to side. Good teeth, no overbite, underbite, vampire fangs or cavities.

He steps away from the mirror and casually wonders to himself if he is smiling or grimacing.

He lowers his eyebrows to a menacing position and stares at his reflection. He clenches his fists and holds them in a loose fighting stance by his face.

“Adriane,” he says, increasing his bottom lip until it doubles its natural size.

“Adriane.” He yells a little louder, throwing his head back and straining his neck muscles. He bounces lightly on his feet, back and forth, and feigns a punch at his mirrored reflection. The white towel around his waist begins to slip. He throws one more punch and grabs the towel before it hits the floor.

The mirror watches him uncertainly as he turns off the light, his body becoming a shadowy silhouette against the backlight of his bedroom. He steps to one side of the doorway, fading into the darkness.

The white rectangle of light beckons him cheerily, as if he could be one with it, one with the light, and the world, and the noisy city seventy-two stories below the pent-house in which he resides. But the darkness is his home.

The shadows.

The alarm clock by his bed begins to ring.

It’s an old-fashioned alarm clock, two metal clappers and a constant ringing sound.

The clock seems to walk forward on miniature legs, moved by vibrations across the stark white of his bedside stand. John thinks about all of the white things in his bedroom.

Walls.

Ceiling.

Carpet.
Bed sheets.

John likes white. It reminds him of blank paper, waiting to be written on. Once John had slept beneath a white comforter, but had recently discarded it, preferring instead a grey comforter. He had found it difficult to sleep beneath the stark white comforter because it had reminded him of the empty pages of his life.

The white void.

His personal emptiness.

John hates white.

The alarm clock falls from the bed-stand and clatters on the floor, muffled slightly by the carpet.

John steps into his bedroom and pads slowly across the floor with his average-sized feet. He walks past the floundering clock, ignoring it as it drowns, face-first in it’s soft white ocean of doom. He walks to one of the large sheets of plated glass that serves as his windows as well as his bedroom walls.

John doesn’t mind having walls of glass.

He has nothing to hide from anyone, and the world obviously has no interest in him.

He presses his face up to the glass and breathes slowly, his exhale leaving a small foggy patch. His breath appears and disappears on the window.

Breath.

The very point upon which his existence depends.

He watches as it becomes invisible.

His breath is as his existence is and will probably forever be.

Invisible.

John Smith.

The invisible man.

A chill runs through his body and he rests his hand on the glass to support himself.

He watches the heat from his fingers seep onto the glass, leaving imprints of his fingerprints which he knows will disappear as soon as he removes his hand.

And John Smith is afraid.

Suddenly and inexplicably, in the core of his being, afraid. He fears that if the man who stands seventy-two stories above the city that is completely oblivious of his existence, removes his hand from the window at which he stands desperate and invisible, he will suddenly cease to exist.

Perhaps he will spontaneously combust.

Or maybe it will be as though he has never been, John smith will cease to exist and instead another man will stand in his place, in his towel, in his room, and it will be the man who actually belongs there. A man who is not invisible. John wonders where this man is and in whose place he currently stands, because he knows it is not his place. He feels angry that this other man has allowed him to remain in a position where he knows John Smith does not belong. The alarm clock is still rings, choking on the floor.

John wishes his telephone would ring so that the man who belongs would step out from wherever he is hiding, because, of course, he must be hiding somewhere close by. Without removing his hand from the glass, John turns and looks around the room, at his unmade bed, at the closet which he had absent-mindedly left open the previous night. John hears a noise and turns to the black sky. He had known the storm front was coming because he had overheard two women discussing the weather and their travel plans while he had stood invisible at the bus depot. The clouds seem to be moving quickly. He hears thunder in the distance.

The glass feels cold beneath his fingertips.

John continues to stare deep into the thundering horizon, the images he sees somehow mirroring the chaos he feels within him.

He didn’t want this.

He didn’t choose this life, where he had been given the single name that destins one invisible man to represent millions of faceless, average, invisible men.

John Smith. He hates his name. So much.

“John Smith.” He says it out loud, slowly.

It grates on his ears in a similar way to when his mother used to tell him that he was special. John Smith knew he wasn’t special. So did his teachers and peers. Even his father knew. Johns body tightens. He doesn’t like to think about his father, also an individual fated to carry the name John Smith. His father was a faceless, invisible man. Just like himself.

Like father, like son, he realizes and spits out a bitter laugh.

John recognizes that it is unlike him to display strong emotion and shifts uncomfortably, still afraid to remove his hand from the window.

The alarm clock is beginning to wear on his nerves, its desperate, continuous ringing screams in his head, clashing with his own screaming mind as it screams to be turned off.

He refuses.

Let go, he tells himself.

No.

Do it. Let go. Let it go, John.

No. I won’t.

Let go John, he hears his mothers voice in his head. He watches as she drives away. Dust from the air fills his dry mouth and coats his skin. John Smith is not special. He knows he isn’t special because she didn’t stay. His father knows it too. His father opens his beer and walks into the house. The door slams.

John jumps.

Startled.

Scared.

Shaking.

He imagines that the glass is burning his fingers.

He wants to let go.

The sky begins to cry.

Tears hitting the window, falling on the reflection of his face. He watches his reflection cry, raindrops on a pale face devoid of emotion.

It doesn’t make sense.

He removes his hand from the glass.

His fingerprints vanish.

His heart begins to beat again.

John Smith watches the sky fall on the city. Grey on grey. He realizes that he’s still clutching the towel tightly around his waist. He looks down, shifting his feet, watching the impressions slowly rise up causing the carpet to appear untouched.

As if he hadn’t just been standing there.

He cracks his neck sharply and shakes it out, then walks over to his closet, dropping the towel on the alarm clock.

The room is silent again.

White briefs. Grey slacks. Grey shoes. As he pulls the slacks on he notices that they’re more loose than he remembers. He wonders if he’s lost weight. He runs his fingers down his pleated pant legs and remembers hearing somewhere that pleats are no longer in style. He wonders if John Smith cares about fashion. He pulls a starched white shirt over his average shoulders and begins to button it down the front.

John Smith decides that he doesn’t like the pleats on his slacks and will have to go shopping soon. He pulls on his blazer and runs his hands through the thick, average brown hair with which he is gratefully endowed.

He runs his hand across his chin, wondering if he should shave the invisible stubble of which only he is aware.

His blue eyes flash in the mirror as he shuts the closet door.

2.

Grey buildings rise up from the side of the street down which John Smith walks. He doesn’t have to look up to feel them towering above him, monstrous and obstructive, increasing his feelings of smallness and insignificance to the world in general. The buildings are irrelevant to John’s task at hand, he knows this and futily attempts to remove them from his mind. He has better things to think about. There must be something. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk, a stone in the swiftly moving stream of people.

Purpose.

Purpose.

John smith must have a purpose.

“Five thousand, Bill, I said FIVE THOUSAND-“A loud businessman roughly brushes past, jostling John who turns slightly in order to regain his footing. And then he sees him. Just a glimpse, but enough to make his blood run cold. John turns fully towards the large display window and wonders why the man is following him, the man in the window with the grey suit and the blue eyes. John wonders if his reflection has a purpose or whether he too is uncertain, just an image of light on glass refractions. John is confused. He watches the man on the glass, his strong determined face, and wonders why he is reflecting someone else. Because of course the man in the window isn’t him. It can’t be. The sea of people continues to flow around him. He takes a step forward. John doesn’t like the suit the man is wearing. The grey suit. John looks down at the sleeve of his blazer and hates it.

It is the same color as the buildings that surround him. The dingy, uncertain color of campfire smoke and stone partitions. He hates it.

He reads the sign above the window and wonders if he should go in.

An old woman wearing a crocheted beret pushes a shopping cart full of old bags. John steps aside, out of her way, and then enters the store.

3.

“Hello,” she says simply. He looks around the store, eyes falling on the girl at the counter. She is blonde. He wonders if John Smith likes blond girls and wonders if he thinks she’s pretty. He walks over to the counter running his hand over the dark oiled wood.

“Nice,” he says softly, enjoying the smooth, dustless surface beneath his fingers and the musty smell of the girls perfume.

“Excuse me?”

“Nice place,” he says looking up at her. Her eyes are grey. John hates grey.

“Thank you,” she says politely, “can I help you find something?” And John Smith makes a joke.

“Myself?” John Smith wonders if he has a good sense of humor. He wonders if his joke was misplaced, or if now this girl would think he is an idiot.

She leans forward, placing both elbows on the counter.

“What are your symptoms?” She asks. He wonders if she is serious and decides to test the water.
“I hate grey. I think my life might be meaningless.” He sounds like a fool and decides to stop.

“I was watching you from the window just now,” she says softly, “you looked upset.” Surprise flooded his brain. She had seen him?

“You looked like a man who wanted something,” she continues, “but as though you were unable to attain your desires—or at least considered yourself so inept—“

“I’m sorry,” he says, indicating for her to stop. His comfort levels drop with every second that she draws nearer to the truth.

She straightens up.

Her eyes have changed, but he’s not sure how. Or what. He sees his reflection in the mirror behind the counter. The reflection in the grey suit.

“I need a new suit,” he says.

She nods and leads him towards the back of the store. He reaches out and fingers the material of a grey suit.

“You hate grey,” she says flatly. He feels angry and turns to her.

“If you’re just going to buy another grey suit then why not keep the one you’re wearing and leave.” Her tone antagonizes him. John Smith is angry. He is angry because she knows.

She knows everything.

John Smith leaves the store.

Outside people swarm their directions. Direction. He looks down at his fists, clenched, and realizes that he is shaking.

He is scared.

He closes his eyes.

And suddenly she is there.

Beside him.

In front of him. He wonders if he is imagining her, the girl with the grey sky eyes.

She is crying. She wraps her small hands around his fists.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, “it’s okay. I’m sorry. It’s okay.” He feels something breaking inside of him. Like a glacier.

He holds her.

He wonders who she is and why she cares about him.

John Smith is a stranger. She has no idea who he is and neither does he. He hurts.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, and kisses him gently. Everything is silent.

John Smith loses his breath. She leans back.

“You have blue eyes,” she smiles.

He looks around the room. His room. He sees his bed, still unmade. He feels confused and wonders what happened, feeling as though the director has just skipped a scene and as if he has lost something important.

He looks down. His fist is clenched tightly around the white towel at his waist. He walks over to the bed, listening. Everything is still. He picks up the alarm clock from where it has drowned in the soft white carpet and sets it on the empty bedstand.

John Smith is confused. He looks around his room, at the closet he had absently left open the previous night. John walks to the closet. His grey suit hangs, untouched.

He hurriedly pulls it on and checks to see if his apartment is empty.

On the seventy-second floor of the fourth tallest building in the city, one invisible man runs about like a madman, seeking for that which is not.

Empty.

He is alone.

John Smith hates being alone.

He grabs his keys and runs into the hallway, nearly overhauling a maid. She says something in Russian. He finds it curious that she is Russian. Nervous fingers press the button for the elevator. Six times. He fidgets with his watch. The down arrow lights up. He moves his feet impatiently.

It never takes this long.

You were dreaming, John.

I have to know.

It was a dream.

“I have to know,” he yells, slamming his hand against the wall. The maid looks at him. The elevator doors open. He steps inside. The doors slide shut. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe. His stomach is sick. Above him the mirror reflects his face, and John Smith looks down at himself from above. Oh the irony.

The doors open.

He runs outside.

The sidewalk is crowded with people. The grey sky looms above him as he runs towards the shop. Thunder rolls above him. He reads the sign above the large, dark display window, feels the cold handle beneath his trembling fingers and steps inside.

“Hello,” she says. The girl at the counter is dark. Her black eyes flicker.

“Can I help you?” John looks around.

“I...uh...” He walks in a slow circle. “Is there uh, a blonde? Here?” The dark girl watches him, unmoving.

“No.”

“No,” he repeats to himself.

“No.”

“Thank you.” He walks towards the back of the store. He sees a grey suit.

John Smith hates grey. He keeps walking.

He sees a black leather jacket. He touches the sleeve. Soft leather, the silent kind.

He turns to call the girl, startled to find her beside him.

She silently removes it from the hanger, holding it up for him to try. He watches her black eyes and wonders where the blonde went. He drops his grey blazer on the floor beside him. It looks like a puddle on the dark wooden slats. The girl presses gently on his shoulder, turning him toward the mirror. She does not remove her hand. He looks at her. Her eyes flicker.

“I’ll take it.” He wonders what she will do. He tenses his shoulders, preparing himself. She walks to the counter. He hands her his credit card.

John Smith always had taken some strange sort of pleasure in the words “John Smith” printed in raised plastic letters. Her fingers closed delicately over the plastic and she ran it through the machine. Her nails had recently been manicured, he noticed, each nail painted black with a small golden sun near its tip.

“I like your nails,” he says. She looks at him. He feels very strange.

“I had a weird dream last night,” he says flatly.

Her eyes are black.

He leaves.

He walks down the grey streets.

4.

It begins to rain.

He shoves his hands deep into his pockets and walks slowly. The streets are emptier now. People don’t like rain.

John Smith likes the rain.

He likes the way it hits his face, each drop slamming into something, the walls, the streets, his skin. He pulls his hands out of his pocket and holds it out, catching the rain in the palm of his hand. He wonders if he is being cliché. He wonders which part of his imagination the grey-eyed girl must have sprung from. He wipes his hands on his slacks.

Grey slacks. With pleats.

He doesn’t like pleats.

John Smith considers taking off his pants and discarding them right then and there, in the middle of the street, but remembers that he is wearing white briefs and decides against it.

He climbs into a taxi.

As the rain pounds the windshield John watches the drivers tired eyes. The lock eyes for a moment, then the driver turns away. John looks out the window, disappointed.

“Where to,” the driver asks. John realizes that the car is not moving. He names a street without thinking about it.
“Emerald street, huh?” The driver repeats. John nods and continues to look out the window.

magic

I didn't visit Madame Z---- because I thought she could foretell my future. It wasn't because I had felt it necessary to make a follow-up call with the spirit of a patient who had passed before myself, nor had I the slightest inclining to beg her to determine the name of my next lover, lottery numbers, or the day and time of my own certain death. No, as I stepped through the passage of heavy curtains towards the center of the domain of Madame Z---- I found myself questioning my intentions with every footfall. Step. What are you doing. Step. Do you really think this will calm you down.

Funny, my mental voice always stated questions, ending them with a period rather than a question-mark, as if I already knew the answer that impending hung above my head.

“Piss off,” I muttered under my breath, and there she was. Younger than I'd imagined she'd be. I was surprised.

She sat nestled in a pile of deeply colored cushions, with her billowing skirt tucked in around her legs, one hand resting gracefully atop the other. I stood above her, looking down and taking deep, slow lungfuls of the spice-laden air.

“You're blonde,” I stated obviously, instantly regretting opening my mouth as my throat was instantly coated with incense particles.

“So are you,” she replied, staring up at me with those big green eyes.

“Yeah, but I'm not the one pretending to be Romanian.” Maybe if I called her bluff she'd give it up. I didn't know what I was doing or why I was doing it.

“Nobody pretends anything here,” she said, “have a seat.” Bad call on her part. Maybe if she'd continued pretending I wouldn't have instantly jumped into my stubborn mode. Maybe if her voice hadn't been so calm and unaffected. Hell, she was like some sort of GPS system, so monotone, only gentler.

“I'd rather stand, thanks,” I snapped, crossing my arms like an affected child. She laughed. I bristled. She stood. I snarled.

“Why are you here,” she asked, pressing her hands into her too-small waist.

“I'm here so you can tell me my future,” I wove my words feciously, “so go ahead.”

“I won't,” she said.

“I paid.”

“I don't do futures.”

“You're not much of a fortune teller.”

“You didn't want a fortune.”

Thud. The words hit home. My spirit wavered, but my voice remained neutral, “well then, what did I want, Madame Z----?” She smiled. I waited. She reached out and placed her tiny hand on my arm, pressing,

“you want someone to recognize you,” she said gently. My heart sank into my stomach, into my knees, and she took me down, leading me like a sinner to my knees. I couldn't look at her so I looked above her at the tapestry hanging on the wall behind her. A tree.

“A tree?”

“Knowledge of good and evil,”

“You have that?”

“Doesn't everybody?” I laughed,

“Sometimes I wonder.”   

Unicorn.

He grabbed me by the shoulders,

                "Oh sweetheart," he said, "god bless you.  From this point on, we are just friends."  He kissed me on the forehead and held me at the safe distance of an arms-length away.  He was surprised, he said, because somehow I had ended up being the exact opposite of what he expected me to be, not that it was a bad thing, but, a virgin, really? 

I guess I'm a little surprised by the conduct of individuals in regards to sex and virginity.   I mean, I can feel as comfortable as I want talking about sex with whoever I choose because sex is so prevalent in society: it is socially acceptable--and not only that, it is expected.   Jokes about sex are thrown callously around.  Details of peoples lives and things I don't really find it necessary to know seem to spill from the lips of everybody, even myself.   Sex is no longer limited to being a fact of life, it has become a way of life.

And here I am, a virgin by choice, head-butting the status quo.

It is my decision and it goes beyond religion and into a realm of trust that it seems is very hard to find these days.  I mean, I could go have sex if I wanted to.  I could have last night.  I could tomorrow.   But my goals in life are bigger than pleasure and sexual fulfillment, and quite frankly, I don't trust anybody.  For me, sex will be  an emotional bond; here I am, twenty-two years young and already have had my fill of broken promises. I'm not willing to take a chance on something that I consider to be valuable.

This is weird, right? Talking about virginity on the internet, where anybody can see it?  But why should I care?

I mean, if I can hear all about the list that Joe Schmo has compiled of all the girls he's had, and if people can brag about their encounters, should I confine myself to silence because of the nature of my sexual status?

Nothing is sacred anymore, but to me, sex is. And quite frankly, I am proud of my virginity.

My shocked friend and I had a good laugh together, and obviously he had to know why I chose to be the way I am.  We talked about it.  He told me he was impressed, said if I had any trouble with anybody to come to him and he'd help me.   It was interesting because it seemed as though when he realized that I valued what I had, he also valued what I had.  His demeanor instantly became protective in a similar way to many of my friends.   So I followed him to the kitchen to wash dishes when he suddenly turned around and said, "you're like a unicorn."  

And he's right.

Rare.
Magical.
Impossible to find.

My name is Sarah, and I am a unicorn.

Tonight I ran away from home 

covered my bleeding ears

put on my walking shoes

and closed the door behind me.

I just far enough to see what tomorrow will look like

from the top of the next hill

and then I turn around and go home.

It's confusing.

And it makes me feel like an epic fail, 

when I find out that I hurt people
and break car windows

despite the fact that I try very hard to be good.

I'm always trying to be good.

Soon you'll have your significant relationship,

your future wife,

and since I am not your other best friend, a boy
our relationship will change.

how close should I be? 

I love you, don't question me

because you know it's true

sometimes I need to be alone

and sometimes I try to be strong.

Now I'm doing everything to act my age,

but I'm starting to think that age has nothing to do with it

because so many people surpass those boundaries.

I need to go somewhere.

I felt so young, sitting beside them on the couch.  They told me they'd been married for seventy years if they calculated their time together in dog years, but their ten years together would have already felt like a long time to me.  
It was a party and a history lesson in the same instant, taking place in the glorious basement of a house twice my age, with a group of people more than three times my seniors, and a livelier crowd there never was.  The walls were lined with relics, vinyl records, and a collection of 8-track tapes.  They held plastic cups in weathered hands as we celebrated 2012, the end of the previous year and the "end of the world" with apocolyptic movies like the original Godzilla.  The antique graphics held my attention and caused me to wonder what it would say about a reptilian monster if it's exterior failed to conduct electricity.  I wondered what the internal organs of electric eels consisted of, in order to generate high voltage, and I contemplated what would happen to an iguana if it were to be electrocuted.  

Animal cruelty or science? I wasn't sure, and I was too tired to follow through so I let the thoughts fly away.  Now I'm home, and thinking.  My older friends and aquaintences speak so candidly about death, and I am uncertain how far some of them are from it.
I need to practice accepting some things for what they are, rather than unnecessarily disecting them.
I'm no scientist, and I'm not particularly fond of guts, however I think attention to detail does not always equate dissection, and I should probably sleep more in order to keep from running off on epic soliloquies.

Colorful Cooking