This is a rewrite of my previous short story, My Hollywood Dream
When I come to LA, it will be summer.
It’s sticky and wet here in Bangkok.
It will be late morning and the sun will be shining. My hair will be long and my smile bright. From the moment I land, my stomach will begin to churn with an elated nervousness. In the immigration queue, I will preen my hair and bite my lips, anxiously waiting. At the luggage carousel, I will worry for a moment that my bag will be too heavy for me to lift, but then I will spot it and grab it, and it will be lighter than I will expect.
6pm. The sun has just set on another unsatisfying and miserable day. My limbs ache in odd places from being cramped into a sitting position all day, from sitting on a hobbit-sized bus to school in the morning, sitting in hobbit-sized chairs at hobbit sized desks, and returning home in another hobbit-sized bus. My hair does battle with the bun I squeezed it into in the morning, declaring its separatist intentions and giving my bun the appearance of a floppy sea urchin.
As I pass through customs, I will be close to exploding with excitement. I will emerge from the exit; sweep the crowd with a cursory glance, looking for you. I will not see you at first, and I will glance down at my phone to call you. I will clutch my phone to my ear and bite my lip as I wait for you to answer. Then, I will hear my name and turn to find you loping towards me with all the grace of a tiger. You will most probably be wearing a blue t-shirt, dark skinny jeans and your black Ray-ban wafers. I will be wearing white cotton shorts with a blue tank top and a cardigan. Or maybe that long blue summer dress I wore at our last goodbye.
I am drunk with exhaustion and intoxicated with misery. Every scratch of my pen clashes terribly with the memory of your wild laughter. You mock me, smirking at the melancholic machine I have become, progressing through my mundane routine as if on a never ending, nihilistic assembly line. The blues fade to grey. I lean back from the desk. I stretch my arms above my head, and then bring them down onto my laptop keyboard. I sneak a look at the last message I received from you. ‘of course, loverrr ;)’. ‘ANGST!’ you scream inside my head. My soul screams with you.
We will rush towards each other, my desire to run and fling myself at you, bound only by the weight of my suitcase. So I will walk faster, and faster, until my suitcase gets caught on something and flips. You will rush over to help me right it, although I don’t need your help. Our hands will touch, and instinctively we will interlace our fingers. I will smile up at you, my hurricane heartbeat quietened as I stand next to you, the eye of my internal storm. You will softly greet me and I will respond in kind. You will take my bag and sling your arm around my waist, and I will keep grinning, drinking in the nectar of your presence as we walk off into the sunlight.
My stomach churns in the vacuum created by your absence. I press my fingers against my brow, rubbing them back and forth as I struggle to organize my thoughts. I hang my head and peruse my ankle, tracing my green veins with a long, knobbly finger. Two months ago, they were your fingers stroking my ankle. My eyes slip out of focus as I retreat from the present into the past. There is a dull ache right below my rib cage. I blink. I am in my miserable, you-less present. No sunlight can penetrate here.
You will lead me to your car, which I imagine will be a convertible. The roof will be lowered and the wind will caress my hair, but her gentle touch will never compare to yours. Your expression will be one of pure joy, your laugh wild and free. You will reach out and sweep my hair back behind my ear, your fingers lingering for a moment on my cheek, and then sliding down to stroke my bottom lip, cherry-red from all the biting. Swiftly, with one hand on the steering wheel, you will lean over to kiss me once: tenderly, but decisively. I will melt where I sit, as you know I will, and smiling your self-satisfied smirk, you will start the car. The silence will not last long, though, as we will both rush to fill it, so eager to speak. LCD screens can never be a substitute for our conversations. We will talk of nothing and everything, for once each having found a voice more pleasant to our ears than our own.
I twirl my pen, as I habitually do out of frustration. I imagine you are off having some wonderful adventure in LA, as you do, surrounded by beautiful women all competing for the alpha male. After all, you said that 70% of all women are interested in you. And God knows I am one of the 70%. Thirteen hours. Thirteen hours of togetherness, and I am squeezing the memory dry, forcing myself to remember your quick goodbye kiss. You blazed into my life. A hurricane lover. Everything I thought, everything I felt, everything I was did not escape your intrusion. For thirteen hours you pulled me into the eye of your storm, and then you were gone. You picked me up, spun me around, and set me down again, dizzy, unable to find the ground. Shreds of who I was before you are scattered all over and replaced with fragments of a new identity. Am I better off now? Whatever it is, I am different. My soul is cold. It needs human contact, not a blinking cursor and occasional pixels bearing lexical sustenance from you.
I will then no longer need the sun, because you will shine just like sunlight.
Everything is silent. Everything is dark. My sun has set.
(Source: thiswaymadnesslies)
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This is a rewrite of my previous short story, My Hollywood Dream
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