apocalypsis I

In response to end of days.

It was a Saturday.

And like most Saturdays, I found my weary feet dragging my tired soul into that respite of intellect and entertainment that affords me to suspend my cumbersome realities, the bookstore. In its hallowed halls and scarred stacks I seek the sanctum sanctorum of my imagination. In the tomes of geniuses past and present I achieve the impossible. The unbelievable. The unfathomable. There, where the world ceases its hurried revolutions, and time is but a memory of little efficacy, I bury my thoughts, purge my emotions, and divulge my mind.

Once again, the fiction section found me lost in volumes of worlds achievable, and dreams plausible. Unlike most Saturdays though, I found myself in the company of another whose preoccupation with the absurd and fantastic threatens to rival my own. The memory of that afternoon eludes me now, shifty and effervescent in the annals of my narrative. All I could muster to reclaim are the innocuous details that swayed my attention. His brisk confident walk, the gait that betrays his stature, and the precarious method he held his cigarette.

If it were any other venue, I would’ve easily overlooked his presence. In any case, he would not have fit any of my preferences to illicit any perceptible interest. His stature less than what I would’ve liked. Like a child, he stood on tiptoes to reach the upper shelves. His skin, a dull shade of brown like old parchment of illuminated manuscripts. Frivolous and arcane. His build, a boastful robustness, stout like encyclopedic volumes bursting at its seams. His eyes, almond droplets as full as the moon, shaded by thick-rimmed glasses I’ve always found to be too precocious and obstructive. His clothes, casual as a lazy weekend, as if he just went out to buy milk across the local deli, crumpled and loose beneath his low-slung bag. Details devoid of any of my definitions of attractive.

Yet despite the apparent lack of appeal, and in spite of his myriad eccentricities, there I was mesmerized and endeared to a vision of a man, who seemed to be oblivious to the superficiality of this urban abattoir. Who’s eyes glinted with the awe of youth, who spoke with the intensity of an old soul, whose very presence I gravitated towards. Without reason, and with much anxiety.

It must’ve been his eyes, deep and searching. That chestnut gaze that delves into my very spirit. A sincerity sad yet unjaded, and affixed across a face beaming with the enthusiasm of a child seeing the world for the first time. His were sullen and misty, pleading and embracing. It must’ve been his smile, Cheshire and compound, defeating the despair of his misty corneas. It must’ve been his scent. An earthy musk that reminds me of newly pressed linen, masked by the tartness of his recidivist smoking.

It must’ve been any of these. And none of these.

For it was him. His totality. A subtle honesty disarming and welcoming. In his actions and his assertions, is a heart broken but undefeated, wounded but resilient.

It was in the fiction section that I saw him. He was browsing the new illustrated edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, while I was engrossed in the new annonated release of Peter Pan and Wendy. He kept his eyes on the pages, ever so often repositioning his glasses whenever they would slide down his stumpy nose. I kept glancing at him, wondering why he has been reading the same page for a few minutes now, not realizing I too have been unable to progress in my own reading with this curious distraction. Sometimes he would catch me glancing across the ottomans were we sat. He would smile, I would reply with a mediocre half-smile. Trying to hide my piqued interest. He seemed to be oblivious, so I relaxed. It never occurred to me the possibility that he too was observing me, without looking, and that the books we held were opportune tools to conceal our voyeurism.

Suddenly he stood up, left the stacks and walked towards that sliver of a balcony across the bookstore where a few thatch sofas held an informal smoking area of sorts. He took his mug of lukewarm caffeine, and glided across the platform to the pair of massive double glass doors.

I followed.

Its been a cold morning, I could use the smoke too. He sat down on the farthest two-seater, where the solitary coffeetable was snuggled between the seats and balustrades like awkward bedfellows in an outdoor ménage à trois. Mustering a courage I would easily possess nonchalantly on the dancefloor, or up on a stage, my anxiety was brewing incessantly. I could feel my chest bursting in arrhythmic anticipation.

Would sitting beside him be too brash, too proud, or too rude? This initial contact could spell a possible connection or an outright rejection, the likes of which would be haunting me for weeks on end.

This is atypical. I was never the sort to be bothered whether one found my actions offensive or not. I’ve always lived a life devoid of the need for approval. My inability to be affected by societal delineations is the very tool I juice to expel discordant thoughts. It is not indifference, for my opinionated demeanor would be a testament to a passionate leaning, but rather a refusal to be defined by another’s perception and conception of me.

Yet, here I am, giddy like a statutory girl barely out of tweens, doing emotional calisthenics at supersonic speed across a space no bigger than my own room. Why should I be worried if he found my actions too forward or disrespectful? Or that sitting beside him at a practically deserted balcony be curious? Or that my arm would brush his every time a page was turned, or a cigarette flicked? I could’ve gone through copious arguments to rationalize and still my anxiety, but the fact remains. I was bothered. And him being bothered as well was one possibility I seemed to be incapable of affording.

His musk still lingering despite the freshly puffed out cigarette that smoldered his stubby fingers in its sinewy wake. It was intoxicating. My usual retortive self was suddenly silent, at a lost for lines. Breaking an ice as massive as the Titanic’s downfall, he was engaging without trying. I wonder if he was aware of this enchanting spell he had cast upon my usually boisterous self, deflating my hyperverbia into the dyslexic stuttering of a child. Fearing anything that might leave my mouth would only be fed to it moments after, I kept my ground. I won’t make the first move, I never do.

But I am impulsive. I’ve always been. To hell with anxiety.

I sat beside him.



Image from here.