I have hidden myself away, in an abandoned corner of a crowded location. I have nothing but my calculating eyes and delicately flavored iced tea. My new secret place is hidden by shadows, and the foliage of an imitation tree to keep me concealed from the apparent glances out of the corners of curious eyes.
Every face I examine carefully. I see fake smiles for awkward conversations and frustrated eyes at wayward children. I hear too-high laughter from large gaping mouths and caffeine induced chatter that bounces off the walls and then comes back to slap me in the face. I smell in the air through the rustling of newly purchased attire the stench of pheromones, fake flowers, and nervous sweat.
I feel such a weight on me.
After some time I have begun to see what I hadn’t before.
Their behavior is not random. They are not flitting about aimlessly, but they each dance, with a precise action individualized for everything.
It is hauntingly mechanical. I watch the people as a whole, rather than individualizing, and I find that I am able to recognize the delicate balance, and almost graceful shifting of the waltz of human kind. Every person – according to their self-made identity status – holds and carries themselves the same way as everyone else in their same specified category. Every flirting woman goes through the same motions in the way she tilts her head, tosses her mane of hair, and stands with the same effort at nonchalance. Each conceited boy kicks his head back to scoff, walks with the same arrogant saunter, and sneers with the same better-than-thou attitude.
Where did they learn the steps to this infinite dance?
I am beginning to think that there must have been classes taught that I missed, or a brochure handed out that I accidentally threw away without reading, or perhaps I was just forgotten altogether.
There is a man that catches my eyes. At first I thought that I knew him; there was something about him that radiated familiarity, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. He stood with his chin tilted up, the corner of his mouth curled as he looked across his kingdom and subjects; his friends look to him for consent to induce their every action as they seek for his approval. To them, he is God.
He frightens me.
I know now what I recognize in him. A glimpse into my dark past, that only prayer and time will erase from my mind.
I sink back as far as I can into the corner, my back pressed hard against the cold brick.
Someone has caught his eye. He nods his head at an awkward looking teenager sitting alone at a table and says something to his friends who all turn to laugh raucously. They must have recognized the young man from somewhere, because no stranger could be a victim to such mocking behavior.
I turned to better pay attention to the prey. He was hunched as low to the floor as you are physically capable to in a chair, with a plate full of sandwiches in front of him, and one that was held in both hands, half inhaled, pushed close to his face. He pretended not to see them, but I knew he was faking. There was something so well-known to me about him. I watched him push his hair into his eyes and tilt his head almost imperceptibly to watch them. He sunk even lower; his long legs and boney knees hitting the underside of the table.
I knew how it felt to be in his shoes.
The jeering crowd – not obtaining the expected response – soon after left the vicinity; and once out of sight the boy shot out of the room as fast as his lanky body could carry him.
I know that feeling all too well.
I have begun to see that the world is filled with people like the one from my past, which seek out those who, for whatever reason, are profoundly cut off from the human race. These are people, like me, that are unable to form or maintain any kind of relationship. However they crave social contact nonetheless; they hang around the periphery of normal human activity.
I hadn’t come to this understanding until just now, thinking only of the perks to being a wallflower; but I too am a part of this dance.
I can see them sometimes if I am looking for them; my kind; the abandoned souls, the broken hearted and the deep intellectuals. They walk tentatively around shopping centers, eat alone in diners, they hide behind books or laptop monitors in Starbucks and wander the walkways of the school in solitude – they survive off of the residual energy of other people’s lives. Relationships for these people are typically only superficial encounters with tip starved waiters and polite classmates, friendly teachers and kind-hearted librarians, bubbly women or cheeky men who, trying to feel better about themselves, toss them two minutes of self-centered conversation while waiting in line for caramel lattes.
I feel so much pity for that boy, because he could eat a mountain of sandwiches, but the truth is, he was trying to satisfy a hunger that no amount of food could ever sate.
~C
No comments:
Post a Comment