A Flicker When It’s Time To Dream
By Bryan May
She
was sun-blossomed and lean, spent hours a day in the gym and
probably had an eating disorder. Her abdominals were formed
perfectly for a female, tight with just a tinge of muscular
definition. There was no fat present, and the line for a
two-pack could be perceived in only the best of positions.
Her artificial breasts were constantly inflated even further
by the presence of a tight halter-top. The class fell on
Thursday nights from seven to ten, and the pants that she
wore made it impossible to decipher whether she was going to
bed or to the bar. We were in a warm patch, not to say Los
Angeles is ever frigid, but it can certainly get cool.
Because it had been so pleasant, even at night, this made
her clothing all the more ambiguous in nature. It was that
the naughty nighty bottoms tried so hard to be pajamas they
made me think she left class and went home to chat for a few
and then off to bed. But no way, not this girl. I had
overheard the Mexico exploits from Spring Break, and she was
bad news. Somehow, Lisa had been in Cancun for a week and
returned looking in even better shape than when she left.
It was deceptive. It was the tan. The boys in class had
the impossible task of trying to be sly in watching her walk
either toward them or away from them. The fat cells in her
rear end seemed to have been packed so tight they were
suffocating. Maybe the rest of us have excess flab in that
region, but not her. Before and after class, the movie
geeks swarmed for her attention, but the attempts were not
overt. They existed in the form of tiny smiles, or the
holding of a door for Lisa and friend. I never saw any of
them speak to her, because they were movie geeks, and girls
like Lisa did not like movie geeks. She was stuck-up and
close-minded, and walked with an off-putting air of
self-absorbed negativity. Plastic surgery on her face some
years ago had attempted to improve the natural frailties,
but it did not help that much. Her look was the scowled,
cold variety, and her chin and nose jutted out like they had
been plucked from Stonehenge and arranged uncaringly on her
face along with her eyes and mouth. And now that I have
written all of this about a girl who I never did and never
could care about, I sit back down hours later, a single
man. I am absent of another, far more remarkable girl, who
I have loved for the previous ten months. And I am
struggling.
He
would cough and wheeze and hack with wretched
discomfort. It was a freaking movie class, and here we had
this kid who would roar with fits of cough throughout the
entire affair. He adored film, that much was evident, but
come on, have a little consideration. What the hell was his
problem? Some nights he would bless us with silence for
twenty or thirty minutes at a time before unleashing his
fanatical attacks of coughing horror. Maybe it was when the
temperature dropped, or maybe when he ran out of Sudafed, I
don’t know, but some nights it was near unbearable.
Occasionally, someone will issue a sound and you will kindly
utter, “bless you.” “Oh, thank you, but I didn’t sneeze.
That was just a cough,” they will retort. This doesn’t
happen all that much, but it does happen. Conversely, many
of Sam’s coughs sounded like sneezes. At times, they were
intrusive and throaty, and at others, squeaky and
sputtering. The sounds from him came in all forms, but they
were either occurring, or you were bracing yourself for
their occurrence. And this was a three-hour class! The two
saving factors were, first, that the course only met once
per week, and second, Sam was only there about half the
time. Having him present was an inconvenience, and an
annoyance, to be sure, but it was also an in with Lisa.
While he toiled for breath, the tears rolling down his face
and onto his scarf as he labored to take notes and cover his
mouth simultaneously, the rest of the males in the class
yearned for her attention and began the eyeball jitterbug.
Last week, during one of Sam’s fits, she was rolling her
eyes impatiently and caught me staring at her. I wasn’t
staring at her exactly, I had been searching the room
for validation that it was ok to be annoyed by this
obviously afflicted young man. As heinous as whooping cough
may be, at least it sounds natural. Disgusting, sure, but
from within and somewhat natural. This orchestra of horror
never seemed possible to be coming from the mouth of one
person. It was a constantly streaming symphony of
raunchiness. Even if his silence was only three minutes,
when the tirade started again, everyone was helpless and
became startled as if they had never heard it before. You
were simply always taken aback, and because of that,
it became sickly humorous. How could I be blamed? There
was nothing else to do but find it funny. It was too
abrupt to plan for it, yet too omnipresent to remain patient
through it. Sam despised being the nuisance, and struggled
horrendously, so you couldn’t be “mad” or “bitter,”
but you had to be something. My something was having Lisa
sit next to me the following Tuesday, because in that
previous week, while her head swiveled on her neck,
aggravated yet again by the coughing, she and I had shared a
smile. Then another. She had on her pajama jam/frat party
apparel; do you think I was paying mind to her far from
flawless face? Now this week, she had chosen the seat next
to me. I had charmed her with my looks and my willingness
to belittle my fellow man. Good for me. Sure, I was only
twenty, but I knew the poor guy had something going on. The
following week, Lisa and I got to class a few minutes early,
and were sitting together, but not saying very much. Sam
was not present, and we remarked what a pleasant
reprieve that would be. Our teacher walked down the aisle
and stood before us, his typically effervescent nature
ripped from him, creating a sullen, tortured figure that we
had not seen. He was sniffling and close to tears, but he
was not yet crying. “Class, I have some very sad news.”
The words were coming at us in pieces, breaking and cracking
as they came off his tongue, and barely audible. “Our
classmate, and friend, Sam, has passed away. He always felt
badly for the interruptions he caused, but he was a brave
and lovely person who did not want to be felt sorry for; he
insisted that I keep his illness private. I will miss him
very much.” My skin began to fall from my face, and as my
features drooped, my eyes began to glaze. Lisa was not a
pretty girl, not a friendly girl, and not a considerate
girl. I had my doubts that she had a good heart, or that
she was a good person. Yet her opinion mattered to me
enough to chuckle at the plight of a dying boy.
I
said goodbye to both of my grandfathers knowing that it
would most likely be the last time I saw them. I was hoping
to see them again, and I continue on with that hope, only
never again in my present state. We are sometimes afforded
the opportunity to say goodbye, and sometimes we are not.
Living like it’s your last is important, but treating others
like it’s theirs is perhaps even more necessary. It may be
their last, and they may even know it. The day of Sam’s
announcement, our teacher passed around a giant card for all
of us to sign, to give to his mother. What was I to write?
I became sick that night, and I am sick today as well. When
sadness morphs into illness and they unite as one, you are
in for a tough time. I was and remain sentimental about
both of my grandfathers, but they lived long, full lives,
and they both seemed ready to depart. It is when lives or
circumstances end abruptly, seemingly before their time,
that the nauseous sickness creeps in. Once it has consumed
you, it is difficult to escape. I had to say goodbye last
night, but hopefully it will not be the last. We have our
health, we have our families, and we have our love. Only I
do not have you, and today I am ill because of it. The
sadness has become shaking, it has become a lack of hunger,
it is becoming more unsettling, even as I take my deeper
breaths. I knew I was going there for us to say goodbye,
yet it did not alleviate any of the pain. “Last” is only
defined how you let it, and I will not let it define the way
I live. I began treating our encounters like goodbyes,
because I held them so dear, and I knew any one of them
could be our final. I love you, I miss you, and even now,
at the height of my sadness, I know that our time together
was wonderful, and I am thankful for all that we shared.
Goodbye?
You are still here with me, so that is a word
I am unable to use.
