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| Elevens |
A scarcely-known acquaintance approaches you in a casual environment. They are perhaps wearing a polo shirt with bright orange Oakley sunglasses resting atop their hair. You don't remember their name with any certainy - but you do know that you are supposed to - because their posture suggests that they must know yours. As they close in, their manipulative appendage lifts in an arc, as if to salute or to shake, but it is suddenly direct, and their thumb points upward, fingers slightly cupped. Panic trickles down your spine, you quiver in expectation because they are either preparing to deliver the dreaded Dim Mak straight to your solar plexus, or perhaps more terrifyingly so, are wishing to consummate their familiarity with a complex series of improvisational gestures involving the touching of hands and the bending of elbows. Perhaps a feigned hug in there, depending on whether they were breast-fed or not. You are not prepared. Someone may lose an eye. It may be you.
Quid pro quo. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
I place my weight firmly upon my left hip, neck arched, chin at a 105-degree angle as I take heavy drags from my cigarillo while glaring listlessly into the imagined ceiling. When the pedestrian enters my vicinity, I purposefully swish the stout glass in my hand to exact a dull tumbling noise as the ice in my whiskey sour swirls to life. I only notice this vacuous action several seconds after the fact, as though I reacted with such a nervous passé in order to perpetrate a passive unease to only the most keen of intruders. He dons cargo shorts and a Bud Light, despite the trim haircut and lack of wrinkles in his undoubtedly Kohl's print shirt that reads something about getting "Lucky". Why words might escape his lean jowls is quite beyond me, and suddenly I panic at the thought of them being directed toward myself, a consecutive conflict at the disillusioning that I am the only one perched upon this patio I had mistaken for a veranda. Yes, it is nice outside - I must agree; Yes, it is warm out - I must agree; Yes, yes, sure, sure, if I might elaborate on the slightest contriteness, I will find my new-found fact-man in questionable odds with myself as a smoker. So I play along by leaning back against the meager railing, a nonchalant disposition takes hold of my hips as my back straightens and shoulders slander the parallelisms of our shared slab of concrete. I hesitate to say that I have no thoughts on "the game", nor do I follow any "games", save for the ones that have afflicted our collective psyche since the brink of time immemorial. But I wouldn't dare mention this, either. The disjointed exchange culminates at his cordial departure, a feigned gratitude barely permissible by his inebriated demeanor wrought with the simultaneous motions of escape; myself, a simulacrum Cheshire, with all the bearings of relief as the final, wispy smoldering of my tobacco emanates from betwixt my forefingers.
Perhaps I should start smoking a lower millimeter. |
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