There is a coffee shop on the junction of the streets where we stay on meet. It plays old school rock and roll, Motown and occasionally the traffic news. The wooden tables and wooden chairs are reminiscent of a sturdy, solid fixture, always dependable.
We first meet there, a couple of strangers thrown together by lonely rainy afternoons caught too far from home to dash through the rain, too near to go anywhere else. Passing smiles and eyes that never really meet as we converse about rain and family, laugh about clouds in my coffee (laughter that only seems appropriate because both of us are laughing). But those are rare instances.
Each time we meet something is different about him, very small changes that I almost miss. His hair colour is a shade different, a new ear piercing. Wistfulness in his voice one day, then barely concealed hostility the next. Once, a glimpse of a tattoo on his back as he bends over to retrieve a spoon from the floor.
Another time, he brings a guitar. Running from the bus stop into the shelter of the coffee shop, muttering oaths beneath his breath and trying to dry the leather case with paper towels. I watch him silently; ask him if he plays the guitar well. He takes it out and begins playing a song, one that I always thought no one else listened to but me. A song by some non-descript band with unheard of names and hollow eyes, voices like raspy choirboys- painfully beautiful.
I sing along softly, he plays for me.
Our eyes meet for the first time when it is all over, and I realize how shy he must be, hiding in those hollows that make him seem almost uneasy, questioning, high cheekbones and straight lips. A face you'd never really believe was really until you saw it for yourself.
Now his songs are played everywhere, in electric appliance shops and Salvation Army stores, radical boutiques and Marks and Spencer's. Critiques call his songs angry but wistful, a skillful new twist on teenage angst, but not overly bitter and self-pitying, gushing about his lyrics that do not verge on whining "unlike all those teenagers nowadays", and wipe away tears as they listen to his voice break towards the end of the song. Most wonder who he writes his songs for, wondering why so many of them are written for the same unnamed girl and lost love, remarking how beautiful she seems, how cruel she must be.
A beautiful girl for a beautiful boy, and he loves me like I love him but we are ex-lovers lost in forever and flash photography, what happened to remember me, special dreams?
I wonder sometimes if the songs he writes are meant for me, though, then I'll hear a line from one of our conversations interjected in his song, out of place but so fitting that I know it's me, it could have only been me.
Posters of him are plastered on store windows and newspapers try to interview him, quiz him about the mystery woman behind his lyrics. But all they obtain are aloof, hesitant smiles and one or two photographs, none with him smiling too widely. Gradually they get tired of repetitive answers that get them no juicy gossip, and they dismiss him as shy and not to be disturbed. His songs still play on the radio.
He moves out from his apartment, and I change my phone number, but we both know how unnecessary these actions are because we are ghosts in each other's past who will never haunt each other again. We are too proud.
"
the exlover of a rockstar by really
No comments:
Post a Comment