From the Desk of The DBeazy One-Man-Think-Tank

 

As a writer, I am my biggest critic. I feared that all of my work held the same feel, the same “sound.” So I wanted to produce something from a different voice. Lines from a different tone. 

I apologize for the lack of “Featured Art.”  Or, I should say, “related” featured art. I have art from Ms Chelsea that I will use for this piece, though it is not relative to this story, I cannot resist not using her work.  Ms Chelsea is the Most Talented artist I’ve ever known, though we have never met in person.  I give her a few suggestions and magically she delivers. One doesn’t find an artist with her talent every day. So I give you her artwork and my words. So I hope you enjoy both separately. (Contact me if you need an artist. I will hook you up.)

She stands there, her back to the expanse, she sways to the music a little, but not enough so that anyone would notice. She felt herself move to the beat, caught herself, and stopped, knowing that the vision she saw in her mind was smoother and with more grace than any her body and limbs could ever reproduce. She would allow herself to make a step, then turn a three-quarter turn, just to glance across to the other side. But just for an instant, any longer and she might be too visible. Maybe later, she tried to convince herself, but not now. It was just too early.

She was the prettiest girl in the room; the prettiest girl in town and possibly the prettiest girl in the entire state. She was unaware of this truth because she was young and had not yet been jaded by the inevitable. She still possessed a sweet spirit and was generally happy and content, her only potential flaw was that she was in a hurry. She was in a hurry to be older and she didn’t want anyone to watch her as she danced.

He leaned against the opposite wall, gazing across the room. Though he was afraid, he had summoned enough courage to put on a brave face. He was the leader of sorts, of a group of five or six other lads, and felt it his responsibility to choose the way. The maintaining of his leadership position commanded that he set an example and that was exactly what he intended to do. A new song started and it was a good one. He had seen himself in the mirror and felt like he was ready. But now that it was time, he just didn’t want anyone to see him dancing. His feet felt like they were encased in lead, but he managed to move a couple of steps forward. The gym floor turned dance floor might as well have been a deep and uncrossable chasm because those two steps were all he could muster. He hoped that in the time that it would take for another song or two to finish that he might have managed even more resolve, that she would look his way, and that he wouldn’t freeze at her sight. After all, he had his reputation to uphold, well, sort of.

Later, strictly by accident, she looked his way and their eyes met for the first time. Both knew that they were running out of time and that the first dance of the year would soon come to an end. They also knew their peers could be brutal if they witnessed one misstep. Just one goofy move and they would be the subjects of ridicule for the entire seventh grade, if not the entire school. They would do it just to take the pressure off of their failure to reach the dance floor. He thought he had recognized something in her eyes and she thought that he might be ok to dance with, but they both allowed time to be called. The gym lights came on as the last song finished. The DJ thanked the participants and students started for the exit. She exited from one side of the basketball court and he the other and as she approached the door, she glanced over her shoulder. His gaze was fixed on her and their eyes met again for an instant as she exited the building. He drifted off to sleep later that night, frustrated that his fear had kept him on the sidelines. Her parents had questions about her first dance, but she kept her answers vague, generic, and most of all, short.

Years went by and she developed in mind and she developed in spirit and she began to build a sense of who she was as a person. Probably due to an inordinate amount of time spent with her grandmother, who served as an escape from her parents. The extent of family dysfunction was not fully known, but add together the minuscule pieces and factor time into the equation and the result isn’t particularly difficult to see. But in as much as she grew positively in spirit and mind, she also continued to develop in beauty, with every physical attribute desired by superficial men and women alike. Groomed and pushed by a mother who wanted more for her daughter and was convinced that looks alone were all that was needed to obtain that goal. Also, whenever her father was mentioned, there was an unmistakable vibe that everyone noticed like a dark cloud, but there was never any discussion of it.

She grew taller and her body developed faster than her friends and she began to garner all of the attention. She attended a local private school and her mother continued to push her in the way she had dreamed for herself, sparing no expense for clothing, hair, and makeup. Her father expected adherence to a very narrow set of rules, all aimed at keeping her under his thumb, and except for school activities, commanded her time to be spent at home or with her grandparents. There were no sleepovers, no slumber parties, and no telephone calls. No contact with anyone outside of family or the students and faculty at the small private school. All to no avail because her beauty and her developing body brought the attention of every male in the school, from the elementary grades up to the seniors, even male staff.

Too quickly, her natural physical appearance evolved. Add to it, the styled hair and the expensive makeup, and clothing designed for much older girls, she never was allowed to be just a girl. For all of the reasons stated, she was forced to be older and to act older than her actual maturity level, she just wasn’t allowed any deviation. The result was that she was that emotionally, she was never in the center. She was either sky high, happy, and jovial, or, she was very low, subdued, and often, very, very angry. She had friends, but she could only have one close friend at a time. There were guy friends, of course. Some, but she mistook their feigned interest in her and her problems. She believed that they understood her at face value, when all along, they always, always wanted more, a fact that did not exist within a realm of her understanding. Her early teen years were spent with her believing in the good in others. She often questioned why things were as they were. The other pretty girls were often jealous of the attention she drew, and the “less than beautiful” girls believed her to be crazy. Some of her friends felt that she misused her beauty, but when one mentioned it, she just shook her head, and in that act, in her mind at least, the idea was dismissed. She was that way though. With a shake of her head, a thought, an unpleasant memory, a suggestion, anything could be erased, like the shaking of an Etch-A-Sketch.

The boys. The boys were a different story. To the boys, she was an object, or at least to most of the boys. To the popular ones, those born with a silver spoon up their ass, she was looked upon as something to possess, and she kept up quite a stir amongst them. She had known most of them since the first grade and they all reached the hormonal stage at relatively the same time. She liked the attention, but she had not yet come to understand the meaning of it all. She was a quick study though and learned that flirting and kissing gained more attention, but only let it go all the way a time or two. That didn’t stop all of the boys around from making claims and she soon learned that the male of the species only sought her for sex and she began to hate them for it; to despise her beauty as well.

Then in the late summer of her junior year, when most of the girls were refining makeup tricks and sporting the new fads in clothing, she came to school with no makeup and dressed as plainly as possible. She had changed greatly from the previous Spring and seemed to have lost interest in everything. It seemed as though she had retreated within herself. She held up the façade, the cheer squad, the popularity votes, and so forth, but that was only keeping the peace at home. She couldn’t keep down what couldn’t be hidden, no matter how she tried. In today’s terms, she was a “genuine smoke show” and there was no way to deny it.

She began to pay attention to boys who weren’t the most handsome, boys who weren’t the most popular, at least in terms of those with big egos. She regarded the handsome guys as shallow, with nothing beneath their perfect lines and high cheekbones, they disgusted her. She found that a boy, average in the looks department, would work harder, would do more, would risk it all to lay it on the line for her attention. This approach worked for a while it seemed, at least until she found that these boys too, were capable of lies.

She got older and gained more independence from her parents. She began to stretch her wings and venture out more. Convinced that exposure to the spoiled private school kids had been part of the reason why she felt numb, why she felt empty, why she felt like something more, something better was still out there, somewhere. She left her “protected world” to fill the void, and was met with early promise on many fronts, but all roads led to the same ugliness, cruelty, and the same duplicity. She wondered if she wasn’t covered in some blight, invisible to herself, but visible to everyone else. Did she give away her secrets? Did they all somehow know? How was she giving it away?

Self-destruction came next. She could never judge how, despite running variable after variable through her mind, she would ever have a chance to experience life the same way that others did. She was far from stupid and she knew that the good she experienced was because of her looks, primarily, and argued to no one in particular the unfairness that beauty brought, the advantage it gave, and the ease in which it allowed many things to unfurl. But she acknowledged the premium in which beauty demanded to be indemnified. Her “freshman 15” came a year and a half early. The expensive outfits gave way to wrangler jeans and any oversized tee shirt that she could con a guy out of. Her last perm grew out and her makeup became bolder, “trashier.” and more like one might see down on Bourbon Street, after 2 AM. By God,” she thought, “if they want a slut, then I’ll show them one.” She found beer, wine, and hard liquors and when those failed her, she found some “diet pills” in her mother’s bedside table and she swapped them out for some non-nocuous, but similar looking tablets. Her downhill spiral continued until she was all but forgotten.

Who knows what became of her? One day she was popular, known by many, and then, after some time elapsed, not one soul would know if one was to ask around. On occasion, someone might speak up like there was more current information like she was working here or that she had married and moved there, or that she was seen in a place, but every time, without fail, it would turn out to be an old nugget that everyone already knew. Someone said that they knew her brother and that they would inquire with him, but for whatever reason, that conversation never materialized.

Now, enough years have passed and most have forgotten her, to most, she never crosses their minds. If she is alive, no one can attest, and no one seems to care. She is just gone. Some remember that she was “pretty” and that “maybe something happened with her mother or father,” but no one remembers any details.

There is one, however, who never forgot. He still remembers vividly, the young girl who stood frozen, way across the dance floor, many, many, years ago. He regrets that he didn’t walk straight across that floor, take her by her hand, and lead her to their first dance. To him, the earliest failure of his life is that he allowed that moment to pass. There would be no serendipitous act that would supply another such opportunity as one just doesn’t get a do-over for their first school dance. To this day, though he recognizes that such a quest might have returned one of many outcomes, he still wishes he had taken the chance and asked for the dance.

 

 

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