Once on the West, Once on the East

These things are in my mind at the moment.

            I am on the outskirts of Los Angeles sitting in a round booth and I am closest to Al Pacino’s sister and even the cloth of the seats are a velvet red however because of the darkness and the black of the stage floor and the mirrors on all the walls and something else reflected, a light or a lamp or the glasses on the tables, everything is a liquid blue and the performers are all playing very mellow jazz and mellow blues and the man on the stage now is covered in shine of jewels and diamond rings and a flashy jacket and it is dark but he wears shades and has crowns on his teeth and he cuts his guitar to pieces with a small pick squeezed between his fingers.

            That was music to my ears.

            Another thing in my mind; I met the golden elevator in the hot red lobby of a tall hotel. I was not nervous, as I remember, to see you, like I have been with most women since. I was excited. I was ready. You were all I wanted to see. So I pressed the button that lifted me to some tall floor, if not the highest floor of the hotel and out of the golden sliding doors I stepped and upon your room door I knocked and there you met me. It didn’t matter when it was, if moments or minutes or hours had been spent without you to see, there was something empty about them but then you’d appear; you’d sweep by me on the street, you’d enter my sight from someplace, or you’d step slowly down from a stairwell and by then I had known you by the rhythm of your walk, and I’d know you by your feet or the footwear covering them and then the shape of your fine legs and the modest swing of your hips and then I’d know you by the waist and the stomach and whatever top or coat (because I’d seen all of your clothes) and even before all of that I would have known it was you. And there you were then, appearing again, opening the door and presenting yourself to me. This time in your sweatpants and a thin tank top you’d normally worn underneath a blouse or t-shirt. The door swung open and it was you and that is all I wanted and you invited me in with a smile.

            Then it was a song you played. Then it was some music. Then it was a soft conversation. Then it was a your skin against my skin and our eyes somehow lost to each others and then it was a kiss. My hands, they have searched for better stories to tell only to find that these moments with you have remained the best and most true. They have felt many bodies searching for the feeling they’d had with you. They are not unlike my heart in this respect. They have searched together for alternatives, believing that perhaps there is another, there must be, there has to be; for my mind tells me as true as this may be, she will not love you the way you love her, you will not be hers the way she will forever be yours to you. It is an impossible thing, this love that is so true for you. Please, the mind had said, please live in each moment of this, for it shall be gone and it shall not return.

            There were other things in my mind but they have all vanished now, as they always do after I have day dreamed of you. So as The Gene Harris Quartet plays in the background and I guzzle a few more beers and listen to that piano and the soft whisper of the tides from hit-hats and symbols and the bass, shaking it’s head to the groove and the blind eyes of the guitarist nodding in response; this is as most everything else has been, unseen and unheard; To You.

            It has all been music.

Reviews

[Stars and Whales]

Nice! Very beautiful story. You use great imagery and I can feel your setting; in fact, I am in your setting, one hundred percent! Excellent job, you are great at describing things. Brilliant work!

[roarke]

This piece smacks of Felini meets Chandler noir. Part of creativity is running with your mind, kinda like running with the moon, but to make it work, you gotta hang. This hangs. Nice writing.