Jack of Hearts
11-18-2010, 11:50 PM
NB: The author was seventeen when he encountered "The Sound and the Fury" and "Ulysses." Each of these works communicated more easily and with more honesty than the entire world around him and offered relief from alienation. It seemed only natural that the young man would attempt an imitation.
Untitled Composition 5
About painting. Climbing into a stained, ragged shirt with a tube of pthalo blue in my hand. Acrylics, specifically, because they make the most sense. Men like my father didn't paint. The thing about acrylics is that you've either got to plan masterfully or paint like hell. They're going to dry quickly, and once they're in place, that's the picture. I suppose a nightmare would be where I am made to paint quickly and achieve nothing of merit from an impromptu work, or conversely being stuck in limbo for fear of lack or ineffectiveness of planning.
I traced my fingers over her back and off of her form. Shifting myself, I leaned upright on the edge of the bed, squeezing the coarse fabric between the spaces in my fingers; slowly clenching and unclenching, pressing the nails into the roughness of the bedding.
The softness of the warm moon shone in tangent through the window and onto the back of my neck.
"...ehm?"
I extended my arm outward and retrieved the dark shapelessness that had become my collared shirt, and I lofted it to my shoulders. Carefully and with measure I phased the steely buttons through each thin slit, slightly intrigued with the nimbleness of my own hands and preoccupied with the idea that I had not before noticed their inherent virtuosity.
"-The **** are you doing?" she said to me, the lush smoothness of her exposed abdomen and chest copulating with the invasive moonlight. "-The ****s wrong with you?"
I stood up, my body quivering.
Are you ****in' leaving are you a fag or something?
I worked my fingers over the last few buttons but didn’t speak
Scared little boy she said you're a scared little boy are you a fag or something you afraid of me then little dick? can't get hard over a woman?
Challenge in the touch, she rounded her palm, a tinted whirl through the emptiness between us and struck my backside.
I can touch you I answered over the music playing softly through the walls moving the white and the stinging I can touch you any way I want but Rodin sculpted the hand as though he couldn't stand to touch her because she was burning his hand. I can touch you now.
I put my hand on her breast and she smiled
Quit talking like that and come **** me she said because I made her smile
I shook my head I shouldn't be able to touch Rodin
Who the **** is Rodin
"Nevermind," I softly flowed my hand down the tender, alluring skin on its return journey to resting freely at my side.
If you leave now you’ll be sorry. I ****ing mean it Raleigh
never again do you hear me never again
She started for my wrist, seizing it with surprising ferocity. Looking down at her I saw two dreary pools in horrified and dark eyes.
"Why don't you want me?"
I stroked my hand through the air, "Couldn't paint you."
"What?"
"I don't know why I said that. Don't know what that means."
"Is it my body? It can't be my body if you've got a-"
My eyes fell slightly and followed the darkly carpeted path to the door, "Body?”
"What? Raleigh! Raleigh wait, don't go out-"
Didn't answer.
"You're not wearing pants!"
When had I taken them off?
“And you’re pitching a tent.”
I turned around, stepped back to the bedside and leaned over to retrieve my clothing, discarded carelessly next to the mattress. A streak of brown tagged me in the cheek and I fell against the wall.
You don't ****in' tell me no the **** do you think you are
I held the side of my cheek grabbed my jeans and rolled away the blood throbbed and my forehead clenched like giant aching and I said I wish I were gay a man would have given me time to cover up
She started crying again why is it why is it I've never met anyone like you but I didn't answer I just sat there a minute in the quiet because I didn't feel ready to answer
As I pulled my pants around my waste and buttoned them, "I don't know. Circumstance or decisions. You're not in a room with me, and I have no sense of where you have brought me."
I stood up again.
The air weighted me down and my words fell like calculated tragedy, "It’s funny to think about whether or not its too late." Somewhere there was music playing loudly now- I realized that I had intended to ask a question, not to her, but to the reflective stillness of shadows.
“Is it too late?”
She had embraced her knees to her chest, a caste of elegant tan limbs with raven hair spilling of curls in front of sheltering arms, very much like the bitter tear drops falling behind. It was earnest, unmitigated weeping, the breed that comes after not-so-sudden revelation, but as my eyes ran over the sculpted outline of her almost naked body and my ears drank of the ethereal sadness haunting the every space around my shoulders I found myself moved to the point of paradoxical desire. Many things- pity, empathy, grief, wonder, melancholy- but all subjucated to a fleeting form of desire that exists not to be sated but for its own sake, as though I were falling in love with an entire evening if only for a sunset.
Profane, I knew premeditatedly, that I should desecrate the moment in a manner so visceral and coarse, but in the easy whisper of an early morning under-current, “I’m... sorry...”
She was graceful. Her sepia arm unwrapped slowly upwards, the faint suggestion of two brush strokes in the timid dark, but elegant fingers gently swayed without distress and I was an inoffensive leaf; the magnitude of my presence only by slight degrees permeated into her awakening mind.
Untitled Composition 5
About painting. Climbing into a stained, ragged shirt with a tube of pthalo blue in my hand. Acrylics, specifically, because they make the most sense. Men like my father didn't paint. The thing about acrylics is that you've either got to plan masterfully or paint like hell. They're going to dry quickly, and once they're in place, that's the picture. I suppose a nightmare would be where I am made to paint quickly and achieve nothing of merit from an impromptu work, or conversely being stuck in limbo for fear of lack or ineffectiveness of planning.
I traced my fingers over her back and off of her form. Shifting myself, I leaned upright on the edge of the bed, squeezing the coarse fabric between the spaces in my fingers; slowly clenching and unclenching, pressing the nails into the roughness of the bedding.
The softness of the warm moon shone in tangent through the window and onto the back of my neck.
"...ehm?"
I extended my arm outward and retrieved the dark shapelessness that had become my collared shirt, and I lofted it to my shoulders. Carefully and with measure I phased the steely buttons through each thin slit, slightly intrigued with the nimbleness of my own hands and preoccupied with the idea that I had not before noticed their inherent virtuosity.
"-The **** are you doing?" she said to me, the lush smoothness of her exposed abdomen and chest copulating with the invasive moonlight. "-The ****s wrong with you?"
I stood up, my body quivering.
Are you ****in' leaving are you a fag or something?
I worked my fingers over the last few buttons but didn’t speak
Scared little boy she said you're a scared little boy are you a fag or something you afraid of me then little dick? can't get hard over a woman?
Challenge in the touch, she rounded her palm, a tinted whirl through the emptiness between us and struck my backside.
I can touch you I answered over the music playing softly through the walls moving the white and the stinging I can touch you any way I want but Rodin sculpted the hand as though he couldn't stand to touch her because she was burning his hand. I can touch you now.
I put my hand on her breast and she smiled
Quit talking like that and come **** me she said because I made her smile
I shook my head I shouldn't be able to touch Rodin
Who the **** is Rodin
"Nevermind," I softly flowed my hand down the tender, alluring skin on its return journey to resting freely at my side.
If you leave now you’ll be sorry. I ****ing mean it Raleigh
never again do you hear me never again
She started for my wrist, seizing it with surprising ferocity. Looking down at her I saw two dreary pools in horrified and dark eyes.
"Why don't you want me?"
I stroked my hand through the air, "Couldn't paint you."
"What?"
"I don't know why I said that. Don't know what that means."
"Is it my body? It can't be my body if you've got a-"
My eyes fell slightly and followed the darkly carpeted path to the door, "Body?”
"What? Raleigh! Raleigh wait, don't go out-"
Didn't answer.
"You're not wearing pants!"
When had I taken them off?
“And you’re pitching a tent.”
I turned around, stepped back to the bedside and leaned over to retrieve my clothing, discarded carelessly next to the mattress. A streak of brown tagged me in the cheek and I fell against the wall.
You don't ****in' tell me no the **** do you think you are
I held the side of my cheek grabbed my jeans and rolled away the blood throbbed and my forehead clenched like giant aching and I said I wish I were gay a man would have given me time to cover up
She started crying again why is it why is it I've never met anyone like you but I didn't answer I just sat there a minute in the quiet because I didn't feel ready to answer
As I pulled my pants around my waste and buttoned them, "I don't know. Circumstance or decisions. You're not in a room with me, and I have no sense of where you have brought me."
I stood up again.
The air weighted me down and my words fell like calculated tragedy, "It’s funny to think about whether or not its too late." Somewhere there was music playing loudly now- I realized that I had intended to ask a question, not to her, but to the reflective stillness of shadows.
“Is it too late?”
She had embraced her knees to her chest, a caste of elegant tan limbs with raven hair spilling of curls in front of sheltering arms, very much like the bitter tear drops falling behind. It was earnest, unmitigated weeping, the breed that comes after not-so-sudden revelation, but as my eyes ran over the sculpted outline of her almost naked body and my ears drank of the ethereal sadness haunting the every space around my shoulders I found myself moved to the point of paradoxical desire. Many things- pity, empathy, grief, wonder, melancholy- but all subjucated to a fleeting form of desire that exists not to be sated but for its own sake, as though I were falling in love with an entire evening if only for a sunset.
Profane, I knew premeditatedly, that I should desecrate the moment in a manner so visceral and coarse, but in the easy whisper of an early morning under-current, “I’m... sorry...”
She was graceful. Her sepia arm unwrapped slowly upwards, the faint suggestion of two brush strokes in the timid dark, but elegant fingers gently swayed without distress and I was an inoffensive leaf; the magnitude of my presence only by slight degrees permeated into her awakening mind.