inreaction

of coffee and condoms is 18 pages. i’m deciding whether or not to end it as it is or lengthen it, maybe to a novella of some sort. i’m trying to then decide what to actually do with it. looking at options for submission.

the story is all in posts before this, but it starts here.

any suggestions would be quite helpful. i’m currently editing it and, in some cases, making subtle plot changes. when it’s done, it might be reposted here in its, or it may be seen on the shelves of your local bookstore.

i’m starting to realize how difficult it is to write a story–it’s a slightly emotionally involved process that is filled with spurts of inactivity and mad blitzes. i wrote the entire second half in one sitting, taking more than a week between some of the other parts.

given a few days, more random in reactions will be posted and returned to.

thanks to those who accompanied me on this exhausting but amazing journey.

part vi:

by the time they realized where they were still on the ground they were only sure that they had little time to waste. he stood to his knees and then to his feet and offered his hand which soon held hers as he helped her up. she guided him to her door and he asked her when she was gonna ask him what took him so long.

she thought for a moment, and decided that she already knew. it was the same fear that had crept inside her mind time after time. she leveled her gaze with yet another perfect line of contact and told him that it was the fear that what they had might be something entirely unique and life-changing.

you see, she said, when we were younger, we all wanted to be in love. we wanted to hold hands, do the dance, see each other and be seen together. that was all fine until the person we wanted to do such things with seemed to be so much more than a fleeting glimpse than forced visions of romance. when i realized that i didn’t want to just hold hands with you in front of our high school and by our movie theater, i realized that i wanted to lay next to you–with you, not with the eyes of the bubble we lived in.

regardless, she reminded him, there was plenty of time for talking. it was time they made up the distance that had hid between them with some walking.

as they completed the climb up the stairs to her apartment, she asked him why he hid, why he was hiding for so long. he responded that he wasn’t sure what he meant–after all, he was just a 26 year old man completing his art-history, JD, and MBA degrees in what he pretended was just indecision, not the combination of a need to stay in college, in los angeles, and the upholding of a promise he had made to himself nine years ago.

by the time they had stepped into her kitchen, the taste lingering in his mouth was coaxing him to answer the question with more decency…more veritas. and by the time she handed him the cheap bottle of champagne while lamenting that she had taken her last bottle of real liquid to a fellow artist’s gallery opening, he was already opening his mouth and reaching for her left hand.

it was when he felt the hard object’s contrast against her soft skin that the words he was about to say were slapped out of him before they completed their sinking movement.

the ring was shiny and bright, full of light and looking oh so wrong.

she noticed his reflexive shock, grabbing the bottle of bubbly before it could hit the ground in what neither would have appreciated as the grandest manifestation of irony and anguish–toast to grief and a congratulating of everything he knew he couldn’t take.

not this time, he pleaded with all that was more powerful than his dastardly position.

she pulled him close against his resistance and found her lips inches from his ear. she began to speak, using the breathy, measured voice she didn’t know had both comforted and shaken him nearly a decade ago. he stopped his quivering–this was no time for pathetic involuntary actions. it was a time for deliberate intentions and as she told him a city wild with unger was a place where unclaimed meals would be fools not to hide.

even amidst the chaos, he reflected on how truly terrible her analogy was.

she told him it was just a trinket she had picked up downtown while stopping by the garmet district to purchase materials for a project she was working on. he began to connect the uncertainty he now felt with the same sensation that he felt every time she left him years ago.

regardless, he also remembered that he’d be a fool to pretend he could ignore the other, far more overwhelming feeling he had for her. he began to burn with embarrassment as his rashness, but she told him it was quite charming to see honest emotion in an age of avoidance.

they stepped towards her living room, the bottle forgotten on the counter and the ring being rolled between the fingers of her left hand. they sat on the microsuede chaise-lounge, wondering where to begin the process of playing catch up when the contestants seemed to have been worlds apart for so long. still reeling from his faux-discovery, he spoke in simple words, starting the conversation by asking where she had been all this time.

she began by describing her senior year in college–the year she decided that she was not satisfied by what she was being offered in her school in her city. she left–going abroad for what she thought would be a year in some western european nation on a sort of self-imposed sabbatical that would supposedly save her from certain insanity. she laughed, thinking of how she really knew what she wanted but was too afraid all the while.

part vii:

she drifted through tales of traveling towards italy and never leaving, recounting stories she thought no one would really be interested in, amused by his captive attention. he was trying to maintain eye contact but felt slightly uncomfortable–he wasn’t used to meeting those with gaze as steady as hers. it was a test for even his measured line of vision. she began to talk of how she lost contact with most except a “precious few,” namely, her family. she eventually settled in italy, in the closest way a foreigner can come to settling. she began renting a room in a house owned and inhabited by a slightly aged lady. as the years began to roll by, rent was out and a new sense of family was in.

the woman, whom she began referring to as mama, had a character of a sister who became sua zia. together with their newfound american friend, they discussed the state of affairs, shooting the breeze and living finely. wine tastings accompanied her studies–not the classroom fixations of those like the boy she was now talking to, but the practical experience that came with designing for the most fashionable of people.

then, fourteen months ago, she felt a craving to return to the place where she had left in spite. she was complete now–nearly. she was intelligent and had satisfied her need for education and worldly knowledge. she knew now that those who told her that she was not only beautiful but sharp were right. all she wanted now was a place and a person to share all she gained and continue to grow with.

she finished her tale by explaining why she came to los angeles–telling him that she finished a meeting with a client and was taking a few classes in ucla’s night course programs; philosophy of the mind, intro to ethical theory, and logic. she was catching a few pages before returning to her apartment for what she had thought would be the end to an uneventful day.

he was still in listening mode when she finished her story, unsure of what to say. a bit of silence ensued, the sort of velvety lack of sound that drapes the engaged parties with a certain veneer of comfort.

time ticked, hearts beat. manifestations of peaceful times and content minds.

eventually, he decided that he should offer the obligatory what-i-did-before-i-(re)-met-you deal. he told her how he graduated five years ago and didn’t know what to do. he didn’t want to go to work, he didn’t want to see anymore of the real world, that he was tired of all that he thought it had to offer him. he withdrew, took what would be called sabbatical if he was actually rightfully employed.

he too flew to europe, but it was not the same travel he once knew. the world is not kind to those who don’t live in it–he had no money for the quaint hotels he loved. he had college debt and little else to offer. he spent the last of his loaned money on a ticket to italy, cashing in the few extra dollars for pennies on the then-inflated euro, hoping it would enable him a bit of passage.

he wasn’t starving to death, but he was scourging for shelter and food. after about a month he realized that italy was not his to enjoy–he could find neither friend with space to lend nor a true escape from tourism and commercialism. he returned to paris’s enclaves, taking home on the seine, an apartment evacuated by the death of an elderly relative. it was a true artist’s story, finding a break in death, living without care or need.

he stuck to writing, filling moleskin after moleskin notebook with jumbled tales generally lacking literary merit. of them, came nothing. of him, came a realization.

he knew he had much to learn. what he did not know was that he would return to his old school, earning degree after degree only to find that satisfaction would evade even his most complicated coursework.

so he was back in the states, back in the state, back in the city, back in his old neighborhood. he was a relic of a his past–still striving for what he knew he was foolish to have wanted years ago. as he talked, his mind drifted to a dark self-reflection. for a few moments, she wasn’t there anymore.

part viii:

all that had really changed was the few hundred drafts of a love story–the notebooks they were in the new base of a crooked coffee table. he signed the lease for the apartment he would have considered a bit too shanty for his undergraduate self. no roomates, one window–in the bathroom. he bought tea light candles in mass quantities and used bare bulbs to illuminate the slightly discolored walls. their color was a bit ghastly, but they were mostly covered with post-its he used to remind himself of the story’s characters and facts.

he filled the pantry with box wine, french bread, feta cheese, dried apricots, and dark chocolate. he attended class. he was not depressed. he was not completely full of melancholy. he was just the type that was generally in the corner. he fancied corners, he could watch the general population and pick out characters from unsuspecting people, turning them into anecdotes for his stories.

the problem was the story. it was unbearably close to perfection–someday it might have been a great american classic, if only he could end it. it was not writer’s block, he had plenty of ideas. it was not fear, he wrote with reckless abandon.

it was a case of chronic perverted sentiments.

he didn’t want to end the story in a twisted tragedy, although he wrote them all–the girl who fell off the bridge, the boy who woke halfway through open heart surgery just as the doctor was announcing that the procedure was a failure, the couple that was one of the fifty percent of americans who did not know that they were living with hiv. he didn’t want to write a sugary powder puff lie, although he had mastered that art as well–the cliff above the beach wedding, the airport reunion that ended in romance, the white-rose petal trail to love.

what scared him was how they all seemed wrong–how this story riddled with avoidances and passionate coming-togethers shouldn’t end in fiction. he knew deep inside him that he couldn’t make this right unless if he made it happen.

his words trailed off, but it was a trail she could follow. she was lost, and at a loss but his story had brought them together as she was slowly beginning to feel a sordid affinity for his internal struggle. he was quiet, but she didn’t mind.

she went back to the kitchen. it was with accidental sensuality that she returned with the bottle of mark-down champagne and two glasses. as the liquid rose under the weight of its own carbonation and surface tension, he made the mistake-or-great-decision to open his mouth again.

“you’re her.”

the two words could have meant many things–she was the girl he remembered falling in love with, she was the girl in his story, she was all he needed or everything he hated about the world. somehow, she knew it was the second option.

she knew she was her. she didn’t know she was still her to him, and while it was slightly disorienting and quite a bit strange, she felt at peace with the perverseness and irony of the situation. rather, it wasn’t peace, but comfortable with the vivid sensations that were slowly entering her consciousness. she knew that the story would, in fact, end tonight.

to be continued…

part v:

silence returned. their coffee date turned life-changing occurrence was ended abruptly as she told him that she needed to get out of the seemingly stifling confines of the large corner cafe. they took refuge in the crowds of the city, beginning to shake shock and see similarities in the choices they had made up to the haphazard bout of fate that reconnected them.

she was particularly hungry. she had enjoyed her meal but desert’s talk had scared her into a deep burning for rash passion. she asked him if he had anywhere he needed to be. already having cleared out his week upon his realization, he was free and indeed told her so. she then asked him over, blatantly and without pause.

he hid behind his half smile and answered that he would love to, but that as it was getting late and…

she understood and felt a bit foolish for imagining that time would be forgotten–time spent apart, time spent hating each other, the time of night. she fumbled with the key she had coyly drawn out in the middle of her proposal, muttering agreement as she turned towards the door and wished him goodnight.

he waited to make sure she opened the door and turned to leave, walking down the flight of steps that led up to her los angeles apartment building. he was almost five steps down the block when he began to feel the familiar sensation of foolish indecision. it caused him to stop, but he chose to turn.

he sprinted, his pseudo-indie–dress-shoes tearing at the sidewalk. the sound startled her, it was, after all, the second largest city in america. she realized he was running back, but didn’t realize quick enough that he had tripped on the last step on the flight.

that is, until he tackled her into the door and onto the floor in what had to be an amazing coincidence–either he was generally clumsy or the author of their fates had a shoddy sense of humor. regardless, fall they did.

this time, he skipped the apology and skipped the caution and the fear and the unbearable tension they were both now subjected to as their eyes penetrated each others in attempts to seek out what the other was thinking. his eyes flickered only for an instant, glancing down at her lips and returning as soon as they realized what they were doing. she noticed the telltale sign of what was about to occur, bracing herself for the culmination of nearly a decade wrought with unfulfilled anticipation. their faces began the agonizingly slow crawl towards one another as they lay on the faux-marble linoleum tiles of her building’s lobby.

heart rates increased as their bodies worked faster than their minds could comprehend. by the time their lips had touched they felt like a seasoned couple, comfortable in each others arms and unafraid of the public nature of their affection. it was not the writhing, easy-to-be-mistaken-for-a-violent-struggle visions of b-movie lust, but the soft embrace of lovers who could only cool their passion for each other through acknowledging it with their actions. their lips danced with one another, seeking more yet utterly satisfied to be in each others presence.

part vi:

by the time they realized where they were still on the ground they were only sure that they had little time to waste. he stood to his knees and then to his feet and offered his hand which soon held hers as he helped her up. she guided him to her door and he asked her when she was gonna ask him what took him so long.

she thought for a moment, and decided that she already knew. it was the same fear that had crept inside her mind time after time. she leveled her gaze with yet another perfect line of contact and told him that it was the fear that what they had might be something entirely unique and life-changing.

you see, she said, when we were younger, we all wanted to be in love. we wanted to hold hands, do the dance, see each other and be seen together. that was all fine until the person we wanted to do such things with seemed to be so much more than a fleeting glimpse than forced visions of romance. when i realized that i didn’t want to just hold hands with you in front of our high school and by our movie theater, i realized that i wanted to lay next to you–with you, not with the eyes of the bubble we lived in.

regardless, she reminded him, there was plenty of time for talking. it was time they made up the distance that had hid between them with some walking.

to be continued…

part iv:

the time, place, and date had all been his choice. they met at the p.m. version of the time she had dropped her soup, at the same table, for dinner, two days later. they conversed freely over dinner, but it was the two-fold question she asked him at the conclusion of the tiramisu that he had neither planned on nor expected.

she was beginning to see that he knew things were going to slow. what scared her was that she knew it was true. he never thought he could tell a girl he loved her in such a way. what scared him was how much he needed her.

she gently placed the cloudy desert spoon on the rim of the white saucer and asked him why he came after her. he thought and found the easy answer he knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with–he told her it was because she took his phone. her scowl was momentary but the point was clear.

he cleared his throat and pulled at his collar and realized that there are certain time’s in a young mans life where his only choices are taking daring chances or welcoming regret into his life. he lived with regret, though he told all that he didn’t believe in it. what he needed now was a chance.

he told it as a story. “when i was younger, my parents and teachers grew frustrated with my test scores. you see, i felt that such measures were unnecessary. my response for wrong answers was that i meant to do it the correct way. my teachers told my parents that i made careless mistakes and didn’t understand the subject material. my parents knew i did and asked me why i couldn’t just pay attention.”

“eventually, they grew tired of my foolish apathy and told me that no one in this world would care what i meant to do–society is not a creature that cares for intent, it basks in the actualities we commit and create. the teachers would laugh if i had told them i meant to write the correct answer. my parents would only grow angrier and scold me if i continued in my same pattern.”

“some people might have changed, but i didn’t change the way i should have. instead of growing passionate about my accuracy, i grew apathetic to the answers, and eventually, to the questions. i told those i loved that love was just a word. i didn’t tell them i loved them.”

he paused dramatically, sipping as though he was not thirsty, but needed something to take the focus off of the uncertain way his lips were mouthing the words he was speaking. he wasn’t afraid, but he was completely frenzied with anticipation and adrenaline.

“it started as a distaste for what i imagined to be a product of us wanting to find meaning. i didn’t believe in meaning. i thought life was itself and meaning was what we felt we had to find–what we wrote about and analyzed in advanced placement classes as though other students were below it. i despised the system, all systems. i found hate in acts of kindness, looking into every aspect that could be negative. there was no meaning and there was little good. all that was good was bad that paled in comparison to worse.”

she stopped wondering where this was coming from and started hoping it would not stop. unfortunately for time, he had plenty more in him.

“i was not depressed. rather, i fancied my happiness far truer than those who spoke in flowery diction or love, honor, pride, and claimed to have found the meaning they were living for. but i wasn’t happy. i was distinctly in between. i was unfeeling–i was numb and it was painful. i heard stories that should have shook me but i shed not a tear–my parents, my sister, my friends began to be taken aback by the coldness with which i defined myself. my life was not empty, but it was waiting for nothing.”

“in short, this began to change when i met her. i didn’t see it coming but i was unsure of everything when it did. i began watching movies that seemed so drab–comedians posing as lovers turned into idols. i listened to songs and realized that meaning was to be found and i had found it. i was, in love. i hated it at first, rejected it. i was not the system, and love was a word i was not to be associated with.”

“but that changed nothing–i was in love, and i waited to make sure it was real. i waited to make sure the meaning i had found wasn’t a thicker version of all the steam i had seen in the eyes of my peers. i waited too long. it was over by the first few days but i knew i needed it and i clung to it, looking for it everywhere and seeing it far too easy. everywhere i turned i was reminded of her.”

“i’ve grown not to doubt that she felt the same. but with such awareness comes a deep, stinging, unlivable regret. what could have been is far than i could have imagined and have since found. i’m consistently distracted by that which i cannot see anymore–that which i cannot occupy my time with.”

he leveled his gaze–it was a habit he had picked up when glad-handing administrators and trying to start human connections with people in service positions. it was no unconscious, but he never failed to notice how the other person reacted. some immediately looked away, others forced themselves to stay glued to his pupils while becoming uncomfortable in a way only the practiced eye could notice.

she didn’t flinch. it reminded both of them of something they had only seen once.

“i lost her. from time to time we would return but eventually i had to come to terms with that which seemed so false–the quintessential form of regret. and yet, in some sort of crazed delusion, i wonder if i have founder her once again. from the moment you didn’t look away when we made contact here the first time, something made me wonder if you were her.”

her face, if a writer’s set, would have drawn a question mark. clearly, she had not met this man before–they were of two worlds. one, the fumbling american struggling to actualize his bi-cultural heritage into something tangible. the other, a confident, talented woman who seemed so european that she had eventually stopped trying to tell people she wasn’t really italian. there was only one boy that she could connect with such a story. as he began to speak her mind was already searching her past, looking for a way out from this confusion and into memories that could either warn her of this man’s intents or give her cause for celebration.

“i know this is mad and certainly unexpected. but there was a time when i think we were quite close. we went to different schools but we studied overseas and ran into each other in tuscany on holiday. we fell into what i have come to see as love, but again we feared that separation could tear us apart more than the happiness we had found could bring us together.”

she was caught in dizzying realizations. she had no inkling of any emotion–but she was not numb. she felt oddly alive, threatened by the increasing logic she found in the situation. she had no reason to believe it but she knew it to be true. she was not convinced by his facts and timelines but by the familiarity she now recognized. his now not-so-steady eyes, her tearing eyes, were bright and glued to each other in a fashion that threatened to challenge time in favor of eternity.

it was true–they were not nearly as strange as they thought they were–estranged lovers reconnected in the most unsuspecting of places.

part v:

silence returned. their coffee date turned life-changing occurrence was ended abruptly as she told him that she needed to get out of the seemingly stifling confines of the large corner cafe. they took refuge in the crowds of the city, beginning to shake shock and see similarities in the choices they had made up to the haphazard bout of fate that reconnected them.

she was particularly hungry. she had enjoyed her meal but desert’s talk had scared her into a deep burning for rash passion. she asked him if he had anywhere he needed to be. already having cleared out his week upon his realization, he was free and indeed told her so. she then asked him over, blatantly and without pause.

to be continued…

part iii:

he watched her leave, the spots of dark liquid already sparking new trends in the euro-fashion hungry girls she passed as she stepped out of the place where his life had changed and into the city that she seemed to wrap around her like a cashmere throw. he let out the air that had cemented itself in the walls of his lungs–and as the oxygen began to permeate his bloodstream, he remembered the odd note he left her. he was wondering what type of woman had her phone number waiting in her pocket when his eyes met the card and realized that it was no such scribble, but a masterpiece of exquisite craftsmanship, a sort of business card that read only a phone number.

he reached for his phone, placing his hand into the awkwardly placed pocket that the salesman had told him were all the rage, and regretted buying the pants because it was taking far too long. as the awe of her presence began to wear off, he started getting frustrated until he realized that his hand was already in the pocket, it just wasn’t making contact with his phone.

it was then that he remembered it was in his hands when he lunged at her–and it all came together. he had picked it up with the top part of the cup she broke, and handed them both to her.

she had given him a number, and taken his phone. he sensed that this was something he could not wait to fix.

his legs sprang again. this time, they were steady. he weaved his way through customers just beginning to resume their conversations. it’s what he was starving for, after all. his muscles twitched and his eyebrows winced as his mind told him that this was the chance he should have taken that last three times he had seen her. it wasn’t stalking, he just knew that she came to the cafe often and he told himself he liked the coffee there, even though it was a bit too strong for his taste. he knew she liked caramel macchiotos. he knew she asked for them extra hot.

she began walking slowly, shocked that he had not come running yet. she thought this boy was already in her soup-stained pocket. it wasn’t that she enjoyed playing games with folks like him, it was that they always found themselves getting ahead of themselves, with her deciding whether or not she wanted to match them or stay somewhere in between. she opened his phone, the college building background amused her–the boy was no city chap afterall. he was city in that he lived in one, the second largest in all of america, but he was as city as ugg boots and miniskirts.

he was picking up speed–sprinting through the garment district and hoping that she would be around every corner he reached. his eyes scanned the scene, and then he saw the white pants and the soft hand with the familiar phone. he looked down at the card now wrinkled in his fist and called out to her.

she heard it. she smiled, unsmiled, and turned. he was panting, exhaling words and stepping closer and closer to her.

you have my phone. the sentence was matter-of-fact at least and better characterized as exalted.

i do indeed. she was not panting, but her words were ice.

it was then that he cracked. she offered apologies and he asked all the wrong questions–why did she need it? did she need to make a call? why did she give him her card? who was she? she glanced away then challenged his eye contact and asked him what he was doing so far from his public college–what was he looking for in the hidden enclaves when so much of the city was readily accessible to even the least street-smart of tourists?

his eyes drifted to the right, and he paused. it was not his purpose that gave him pause–it was that he had been here so often–about to make a confession. it was not the confession that scared him–it was not the threat of negative response. it was that he had never wanted to put undue pressure or discomfort on the ones he cherished. thoughts coursed through his mind–he whirled in composed chaos. he took in a short, curt breath.

and his eyes found her and hers told him that he was tired of lost opportunity. he told her that he fancied her style, her smile, the way she ordered coffee daily but often paired it with a cup of tea and chamomile. his hands began to feel uneasy but they found comfort in each other. hands pushing each other at his chest, he continued–he was tired of everything that was mundane around him and he needed to tell someone something that was unfiltered and real before reality became so clouded that it became marginal and the important of its existence was negated by the fact that he could no longer see it.

he was rambling now, but he knew the damage had been done. each word, each accidental assonance flowed from his throat over his tongue and past his teeth and fast moving lips as he emptied what he didn’t know was meant for her ears.

but she was not listening. no, not with her ears, no in the metaphysical sense. sure, his voice was sending waves that hit her eardrum and the vibrations were then decoded–but she was feeling a different sort of wave. her mind did not respond to his words but to the disappearing nervousness in his hands and the fading uncertainty in his eyes. he was becoming confident in his vulnerability, and she was drawn into the shaky solidity of his world.

eventually his words trailed off. there was a silence, but it was not similar to that which occurred post belt-loop ripping. it was momentary–instantaneous. they spoke at the same time and stopped abruptly, rinsed, and repeated two more times. then he relented and waited with half-bated breath to see what it was that she was willing to try and say for a fourth time.

she slipped a half-smile unknowingly. the words were as simple as those she used before. use the number on that card sometime, and i’m sure we’ll be seeing each other soon.

part iv:

the time, place, and date had all been his choice. they met at the p.m. version of the time she had dropped her soup, at the same table, for dinner, two days later. they conversed freely over dinner, but it was the two-fold question she asked him at the conclusion of the tiramisu that he had neither planned on nor expected.

to be continued…