Action exercise for Forms of Fiction.
At the heart of any person’s problems lies a cause. What a cause is doing lying around in someone’s heart I’m really not sure. It doesn’t sound very healthy, like maybe it could block a ventricle or something and cause heart failure. I feel pretty healthy though, not at all like I’m about to die. Do most people feel like they’re going to die before they kick the bucket? Part of me thinks it’d be a nice warning for them if that were the case. The other part of me feels like it’s a sick joke. You know it’s about to happen; you can feel it down to your very core. It’s not a pain, there’s no suffering; it’s just a weight pressing down on you, slowly squashing you like a bug on the sidewalk. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It sounds like a joke I would like to play on someone. This is why I have a problem with a cause lounging around in my chest.
I’m not a very nice person; I’ve come to terms with it. I’m really quite happy being miserable. I push my friend’s (if you can really call them that) and family’s buttons and watch them turn red for fun. I’m difficult with people I’ve never met. I make a habit of trying to get an employee fired from Wal-mart every time I walk into one (which I’ve gotten surprisingly good at, only you can’t do it over and over again at the same store because the managers start to catch on). I don’t have any pets; I know from experience they don’t last long around me. Sometimes, when I’m really feeling my oats, I’ll spray birdseed with ‘Off deep woods mosquito repellent’ (it’s 30% deet). I can’t do that too much though because the neighbors start to ask questions about all the dead sparrows and squirrels.
However, there are two things I really do love. I’m staring at both of them right this moment. One is tiny, about the size of a pencil you can’t sharpen any more with out scraping the metal part of the eraser. It’s colorful and translucent and delicious. It’s also fun to destroy and easily replaced which fits my lifestyle quite nicely. The other wouldn’t be fun to destroy. In fact, destroying her would get me in a lot of trouble. Her name is Mary. Mary is perfect. She’s a cheerleader for the school.
She’s chewing gum right now. I love the way she chews gum: with her mouth just slightly open and every few minutes she stretches the gum across her tongue and blows a bubble. The bubble grows, pressing against her soft, pink lips until it reaches the size of a ping-pong ball, she sucks it back in and pops it between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. It’s so perfect. The teacher, Mr. Elliot, hates it when Mary chews gum. He has no appreciation for perfection.
I’ve struggled with how to confront Mary about my love for her. I want to tell her. She has to know. I can’t hold it inside anymore. I leave her a gummy bear on her desk everyday after lunch. I make sure I’m the last person to enter the classroom before Mr. Elliot begins to drone on again so no one ever thinks that I might have also been the first person to walk through the door. Seeing the two things I love together gives me no greater pleasure. Today I left Mary a red gummy bear. I try to leave her red ones or pink ones because those colors represent love and passion. Those are also my two favorite flavors. Mary never eats the gummy bear I leave her, though I wish she would. But if she did, she’d have to spit out her gum and I do love watching her chew gum. Sometimes Mary likes to tear the gummy bear into tiny gelatinous pieces; occasionally she’ll look at it on her desk, sigh and throw it away, but today she has decided to absent mindedly flick it off her desk.
I can’t just keep leaving gummy bears on her desk like this. I have to confront her. I must tell her. I can’t take my eyes off her. She looks exceptionally beautiful today, her blonde hair in a messy, carefree ponytail. She’s so perfect. She’s getting closer to me, but she’s still sitting. How is this happening? It’s like I’m zooming in a camera lens. Oh god. She’s looking at me. She’s so pretty. I don’t know if she’s ever looked at me before. I hear a muffled complaint from behind me. It sounds like Mr. Elliot. I can’t stop staring at her.
“Can I help you?” Oh my God! She’s talking to me! She’s looking right at me and her lips are moving and sound is coming out and everything! She’s actually talking to me. But why is she talking to me? Why is she so close to me? And why does Mr. Elliot sound far more excited than he normally does? I look down; I realize I’m standing. I’m standing in the middle of the classroom next to Mary’s desk. This is embarrassing. I can rescue this though! I can save myself still, it happens all the time in movies.
“Mary,” I can do this, now or never. I close my eyes. Deep breath, “I love you. Will you be my girlfriend?” The elephant standing on my chest goes to hide in a corner. I’ve done it. Just like the movies; she’ll remember this moment as long as she lives. I open my eyes. Her jaw has dropped; I can see the pink piece of gum she’s chewing. It’s sitting next to one of her tiny perfect white teeth. She looks me in the eye. This is it, the moment I’ve dreamed about. Her eyebrows raise, she closes her mouth.
“No.” She shakes her head. She looks around. I look up from her gummy bear green eyes. I hear laughter. It’s the class. They’re laughing at me. I turn around. Mr. Elliot is furious.
“Maybe you can come up with a better pick up line in detention, Alex.” He hands me a pink slip. The class laughs harder. I turn back to Mary too. She’s started laughing now. The elephant that went to hide in the corner is now standing right next to me with all of his elephant friends. I hate the zoo. I hate Mr. Elliot. I hate these people. I hate that Mary doesn’t understand, can’t understand that we are meant to be together. Why doesn’t she get that?! Can’t she see?! I walk back to my desk and bury my head in my arms. I hear Mr. Elliot fighting for the class’s attention.
After replaying the horrific incident over and over again in my head through the last two hours of the day, the hour of detention, and the twenty-minute walk home (not to mention the hell I caught from everyone and there brother for asking Mary, the most perfect creature ever made, to be my girlfriend) I had an epiphany. It took me long enough: three hours and some change. It pained me to acknowledge it. I fought it every step of the way. But there was no denying it. Mary had not only turned me down but she had laughed at me. She had laughed that perfect, songbird laugh at my expense. This was unacceptable. I hate to admit it, but Mary, despite how perfect she is, is just like everyone else I hate. They don’t understand me. They think I’m a freak. I thought Mary was different. She’s not.
At first I was overcome with misery. I cried. I hate crying. It makes me feel weak and pathetic. But I did. And I can admit that. I cried in detention when it first hit me. The jock ass hole next to me made fun of me for that too. He’ll never understand me though; he’s too shallow to ever feel the kind of intense, infuriating emotion I have for Mary. I couldn’t stop myself. As he sat there, berating me with taunts, sorrow evolved into hate, into anger. If Mary had just said yes it would be like the movies. Perfect. Everyone would be jealous of me. They’d envy me. But that’s not how it had gone. Mary has to know how deeply she has wounded me. She needs to understand the consequences to her actions.
One reason I love gummy bears is I can pretend they are people I don’t like and destroy them. I particularly like to melt them. Mary is the star in my gummy bear show this afternoon. It’s no use making a grand production though if she isn’t going to see it. I always was a problem solver. I found my old Polaroid camera, loaded the block of film, and began to document my masterpiece. I labeled each picture with the scene it represented. A scene from what could have been the perfect life with Mary. There was a picture of our first kiss staring two green gummy bears, two clear gummy bears under a wedding chapel match box I colored with white out, the first time we made love took place on a gummy bear rose petal, and our first child was represented between two red gummy bears and a pink gummy bear I creatively cut in half. It was beautiful. I had ten pictures total and then I ran out of film.
When I had finished the beginning to end of my life with Mary via a bag of gummy bears I was upset again. I started to cry. I couldn’t help but mourn the perfect life that could have been. Then the loathing returned. I wanted to destroy this. It would never exist. I moved the gummy bear characters, still in their respective scenes, over to the large picture window by the kitchen table. I took out my magnifying glass and waited. I made sure each one suffered slowly until it was a painful blob of colored gelatin. I couldn’t help but smile at it. After each one was a little pancake of color I peeled them off the table, stuck them in a gallon-sized plastic baggy along with the pictures and headed out the front door. It was a lovely night for a walk. The air was crisp and it smelled like rain. The sweet sickly smell got stronger the closer I got to Mary’s house.
No comments:
Post a Comment