Alas (The Turk)

A fictionalized encounter with a character that had an emotional impact on me.

This post was legitimately supposed to be about the two out-of-school friends exchanging substances outside of St. Stephen's Church, who might or might not have looked like a closeted gay couple because I was reading El beso de la mujer araña then. The benches outside the church are arranged in an arc, which makes all random bystanders dependent on each other's gaze. ("Hello, my name is () and I am here for (). I regret it very much. I like knitting and dogs. That's all about me I guess.") Truly an ironic arrangement for a country that produces the most Peeping Toms and nosy neighbors per capita. Bathing in the late-May heat, a blurred, barely recognizable image of the two comrades is floating on the port side, with quick and inconspicuous glances helping me identify the bald one as kneeling in the dirt and wrestling with what seems to be a paper packet, and his long-haired friend looking on and chattering in a low voice. (My current state of mind makes me think of a slightly less decent analogy.) Whatever the content of the packet (crack, holographic coins, screws, or even worse, poetry), it makes no sound to give me a clue about their decision to spend forty minutes whispering on a bench in the shade cast by a rotting ghost of the church's heyday, all in the middle of the Cobblestone Capital. So much for my first catch for the "Humans of X" category.

My second catch gave title to this post and happened to be a bit more memorable.

       I happened to be falling asleep last night thinking of the frozen expression of a man stuck forever in the two-dimensional box of my computer screen. A handsome Turk (“Look at him. Definitely a Turk.”), someone’s gardener or barman, if I should say for myself, with a remarkable intuition for neat-looking facial hair and privy to the secret appeal of intentional ugliness. Of the latter I am certain at the very least. His third encounter with the girl with blinking lights in her hair was devastating. What was it? She enters the room to face off�"stop. His body still rippling with the beat�"stop.  Eyes light up with expectation�"stop. The realization springs up from his right eyebrow, rising slightly�"stop. The blink announces a new low�"stop. The wrinkling of the brows�"stop. Oh�"almost got it�"stop�"what a dummy I am�"stop. Finishes off with a displeased and questioning twitch of the same right brow�"stop. The precious two seconds before I bring the moment to a standstill in fascination.

Quite a Laurie’s Australian soap opera hero in a cloak of francophone music. Feeling guilty of imprisoning him forever in the dreadful moment, I invite him to step outside the screen. What has been bothering him lately?

"Mhm," he says, "Nothing to chitty-chat about, fam.”

Tell me, and I'll refill your cup, okay?

"The purest friend of them all.”

With pleasure.

“Add a bit of rum. OK, don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t stingy with you last weekend, was I. Do you want to hear the story or not?”

Only if it puts me to sleep at least twice as fast as the one last weekend.

“F**k off, for real.”

My my, I’ll give you the rum.

“Thank you. Today stinks, I stink. This house party I did catering for, the place was nice, that for sure, and the money wasn’t bad, except for the claptrap and the hokum they asked me to do to lift their spirits, the host was lousy I heard, but the free booze was good, so I came back again last week, boy, what can I say, Saturday nights got me broke, and I didn’t notice the niece at first…”

Author's Note

I very much hope someone can provide their opinion on the more experimental components of the ministory.