luck, pluck, lack

i'm a boxer drifting, swaying. suspect of the winds in his life. the bullying breezes, twitching this way and that. i fall harder and jump higher than any bigger man i've known. just tonight... as, well, every night... i was walking along the island highway through the boonies thinking of katie. i knew she was working at the grounds tonight and wanted to... well, essentially, to be there at the same time. i wanted to say hello to katie, to wish her well, to make her laugh and smile. i was wearing the clothes that i chose for some unknown reason. the red laceless chucks, the black levis, the lone white tshirt. the black rubber bracelet. i got light right before i stepped in. she was sitting at the employee table with kyle and some other girl who were taking over her shift. i walked past but she didn't see. there weren't any good places to sit in the front room so i turned and walked past again. stole a glance right and almost waved. she didn't see and i used my awkward hand to scratch my chin.

why don't they let us fall in love?

i should repeat. i've been doing work back here for a long while now. no, i lied. not really working (only a little) but listening to a lot of good music (which lifts me) and thinking of how this place is so bittersweet. i remember laying on this couch, albeit on the other corner, talking to dubs nearly three years ago. how she was sitting at one of the tables across the room, pretending she didn't know i was there. pretending i didn't know she was there. I was listening to belle & sebastian's newest album that night. it was the first time. she leaned over and kissed me before she left.

what i'm saying is that i can't imagine how many hours i've spent here. it was in the corner chair in the front room (there's a stage there now) that i blogged once documenting my entire relationship with jessica. there's a reason i'm loyal to this place. sometimes i forget what it is.

maybe math kids are negatives. cool kids are positives. and when you combine them, it's negative. but if you multiply two math kids, it's positive. maybe it's magic. but i don't really know for sure. (i'm not a math kid, i mean)

if i unfocus my eyes, the old books on the shelf across the room shift and sway and become the endless waves on the tide of music that is the second half of Of Montreal's "nonpareil of favor". it's true. i believe that music is just the physical manifestation of magic. i don't really think there's any other explanation.

a few minutes ago, paris came in with another guy and sat down on the same couch as me. i've been focusing very hard on looking interesting and like someone she should want to know. which is to say, my laptop is on my lap and i'm trying not to look dumb in the face. let the chucks, levis, and tshirt take over. maybe it looks like i'm doing work. maybe it's obvious by the pattern of keystrokes that i'm writing. maybe writing is something amazing to her... but i doubt it. we've never met. i know about her because one of my roommates once skydived with her. he told me she's brilliant. she's from france. she knows many languages and is well traveled. i know she's got pretty hair (it's short) and is wearing tights that have a big hole in the thigh. it's cute. i'm almost disappointed that she's using a macbook because it's so cliche for her, to me. and that her face seems greasy in it's light. i hate to say that in words. i hate that it's probably the same for me. but i'll never know, right? katie didn't notice me and paris won't and i will never have anything to worry about because i'll never get close enough to anyone again. never close enough to get hurt. never again.

i had this daydream walking over here. in it, katie forthrightly asked me if i had a girlfriend. i told her no and she asked why not? i told her i could give her the truth or the lie. she wanted the truth. i said it was because i was scared.

i didn't even know where to go from there and i thought of something else.

...

and somewhere, katie is or isn't dating anyone and does or doesn't remember that we met last thursday. somewhere (on the couch a few feet away), paris is worrying about being in north america. she wishes she was hiking in the amazon or painting in the city of her name. she'd rather not be in such a mundane locale as a student-run campus coffee shop in one of two hyphenated cities in north carolina. where the kids speak english and act elitist. where the only kid in the room she doesn't know personally occasionally coughs and steals glances in her direction. he types but not too loudly and writes something she can't imagine is terribly worth the effort.