A Flicker When It’s Time To Dream
She was sun-blossomed and lean, spent hours a day in the gym and probably had an eating disorder. Her abdominals were formed perfectly for a female, tight with just a tinge of muscular definition. There was no fat present, and the line for a two-pack could be perceived in only the best of positions. Her artificial breasts were constantly inflated even further by the presence of a tight halter-top. The class fell on Thursday nights from seven to ten, and the pants that she wore made it impossible to decipher whether she was going to bed or to the bar. We were in a warm patch, not to say Los Angeles is ever frigid, but it can certainly get cool. Because it had been so pleasant, even at night, this made her clothing all the more ambiguous in nature. It was that the naughty nighty bottoms tried so hard to be pajamas they made me think she left class and went home to chat for a few and then off to bed. But no way, not this girl. I had overheard the Mexico exploits from Spring Break, and she was bad news. Somehow, Lisa had been in Cancun for a week and returned looking in even better shape than when she left. It was deceptive. It was the tan. The boys in class had the impossible task of trying to be sly in watching her walk either toward them or away from them. The fat cells in her rear end seemed to have been packed so tight they were suffocating. Maybe the rest of us have excess flab in that region, but not her. Before and after class, the movie geeks swarmed for her attention, but the attempts were not overt. They existed in the form of tiny smiles, or the holding of a door for Lisa and friend. I never saw any of them speak to her, because they were movie geeks, and girls like Lisa did not like movie geeks. She was stuck-up and close-minded, and walked with an off-putting air of self-absorbed negativity. Plastic surgery on her face some years ago had attempted to improve the natural frailties, but it did not help that much. Her look was the scowled, cold variety, and her chin and nose jutted out like they had been plucked from Stonehenge and arranged uncaringly on her face along with her eyes and mouth. And now that I have written all of this about a girl who I never did and never could care about, I sit back down hours later, a single man. I am absent of another, far more remarkable girl, who I have loved for the previous ten months. And I am struggling.
He would cough and wheeze and hack with wretched discomfort. It was a freaking movie class, and here we had this kid who would roar with fits of cough throughout the entire affair. He adored film, that much was evident, but come on, have a little consideration. What the hell was his problem? Some nights he would bless us with silence for twenty or thirty minutes at a time before unleashing his fanatical attacks of coughing horror. Maybe it was when the temperature dropped, or maybe when he ran out of Sudafed, I don’t know, but some nights it was near unbearable. Occasionally, someone will issue a sound and you will kindly utter, “bless you.” “Oh, thank you, but I didn’t sneeze. That was just a cough,” they will retort. This doesn’t happen all that much, but it does happen. Conversely, many of Sam’s coughs sounded like sneezes. At times, they were intrusive and throaty, and at others, squeaky and sputtering. The sounds from him came in all forms, but they were either occurring, or you were bracing yourself for their occurrence. And this was a three-hour class! The two saving factors were, first, that the course only met once per week, and second, Sam was only there about half the time. Having him present was an inconvenience, and an annoyance, to be sure, but it was also an in with Lisa. While he toiled for breath, the tears rolling down his face and onto his scarf as he labored to take notes and cover his mouth simultaneously, the rest of the males in the class yearned for her attention and began the eyeball jitterbug. Last week, during one of Sam’s fits, she was rolling her eyes impatiently and caught me staring at her. I wasn’t staring at herexactly, I had been searching the room for validation that it was ok to be annoyed by this obviously afflicted young man. As heinous as whooping cough may be, at least it sounds natural. Disgusting, sure, but from within and somewhat natural. This orchestra of horror never seemed possible to be coming from the mouth of one person. It was a constantly streaming symphony of raunchiness. Even if his silence was only three minutes, when the tirade started again, everyone was helpless and became startled as if they had never heard it before. You were simply alwaystaken aback, and because of that, it became sickly humorous. How could I be blamed? There was nothingelse to do but find it funny. It was too abrupt to plan for it, yet too omnipresent to remain patient through it. Sam despised being the nuisance, and struggled horrendously, so you couldn’tbe “mad” or “bitter,” but you had to be something. My something was having Lisa sit next to me the following Tuesday, because in that previous week, while her head swiveled on her neck, aggravated yet again by the coughing, she and I had shared a smile. Then another. She had on her pajama jam/frat party apparel; do you think I was paying mind to her far from flawless face? Now this week, she had chosen the seat next to me. I had charmed her with my looks and my willingness to belittle my fellow man. Good for me. Sure, I was only twenty, but I knew the poor guy had something going on. The following week, Lisa and I got to class a few minutes early, and were sitting together, but not saying very much. Sam was not present, and we remarked what a pleasant reprieve that would be. Our teacher walked down the aisle and stood before us, his typically effervescent nature ripped from him, creating a sullen, tortured figure that we had not seen. He was sniffling and close to tears, but he was not yet crying. “Class, I have some very sad news.” The words were coming at us in pieces, breaking and cracking as they came off his tongue, and barely audible. “Our classmate, and friend, Sam, has passed away. He always felt badly for the interruptions he caused, but he was a brave and lovely person who did not want to be felt sorry for; he insisted that I keep his illness private. I will miss him very much.” My skin began to fall from my face, and as my features drooped, my eyes began to glaze. Lisa was not a pretty girl, not a friendly girl, and not a considerate girl. I had my doubts that she had a good heart, or that she was a good person. Yet her opinion mattered to me enough to chuckle at the plight of a dying boy.
I said goodbye to both of my grandfathers knowing that it would most likely be the last time I saw them. I was hoping to see them again, and I continue on with that hope, only never again in my present state. We are sometimes afforded the opportunity to say goodbye, and sometimes we are not. Living like it’s your last is important, but treating others like it’s theirs is perhaps even more necessary. It may be their last, and they may even know it. The day of Sam’s announcement, our teacher passed around a giant card for all of us to sign, to give to his mother. What was I to write? I became sick that night, and I am sick today as well. When sadness morphs into illness and they unite as one, you are in for a tough time. I was and remain sentimental about both of my grandfathers, but they lived long, full lives, and they both seemed ready to depart. It is when lives or circumstances end abruptly, seemingly before their time, that the nauseous sickness creeps in. Once it has consumed you, it is difficult to escape. I had to say goodbye last night, but hopefully it will not be the last. We have our health, we have our families, and we have our love. Only I do not have you, and today I am ill because of it. The sadness has become shaking, it has become a lack of hunger, it is becoming more unsettling, even as I take my deeper breaths. I knew I was going there for us to say goodbye, yet it did not alleviate any of the pain. “Last” is only defined how you let it, and I will not let it define the way I live. I began treating our encounters like goodbyes, because I held them so dear, and I knew any one of them could be our final. I love you, I miss you, and even now, at the height of my sadness, I know that our time together was wonderful, and I am thankful for all that we shared.
Goodbye?
You are still here with me, so that is a word I am unable to use.
