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- Bohemian
- Having informal and unconventional social habits.
Time drips by. Something is wrong. A waiter wearing a grubby white shirt delivers a plate to your table.
When were you in a cafe?
“Ambrosia salad.”
Her voice is slow, a crawling bubble of sound slowly moving outward. What? You don’t recall ordering anything. Look down. It’s oranges and other cubed fruits sitting in a white bowl covered in white peaks of whipped cream. There’s a loud buzzing near your right ear. Or is it your left? The clock on the wall stares at you. For a moment you picture a bee, the face of a bee right up in yours like the two fighters on the television last night, bumping chests and panting like rhinoceri. The multifaceted, brittle eyes, frantically twitching mouthpieces, frothing like rabid dogs. You don’t know if bees really have mouthpieces. Do they? Most bugs do. Are bees bugs? Look down. You don’t recall skewering an orange slice with your fork, like you don’t recall ordering ambrosia salad. What is ambrosia salad? Fruit and whip, that’s right.
Fluid leaks out of the orange slice. It’s small and veiny. Whip. You can imagine cooks in a kitchen whipping metal cans, forcing them to burp out pieces of fruit and syrupy juice until it runs down their sides and they lie in a pool of themselves. Bees are attracted to fruit, right? You don’t recall trying to bat away a bee near your ear, like you don’t recall skewering an orange slice. Is there a bee? You don’t know. Your hand will tell you. It moves like a beautiful model suspended in motion. Your hand never reaches your ear. You don’t recall a strange carapace in your ambrosia salad, like you don’t recall attempts at batting away bees.
Ambrosia. Food of the gods. Are carapaces, marshmallow whip, and fruit the food of the gods? The carapace struggles to fly away. It’s a bee, or a fly. You try to get the waiter to help it free. Nothing comes out of your mouth but a string of drool. You don’t recall much at all, in fact.
The clock is still staring at you. It says an hour, two hours, three hours have passed. What? You don’t recall that much time passing, like the way you don’t recall much. The whipped cream has melted in the fetid, warm air. It smells like fruit, bees, and onions. Are there onions in the salad? Whipped cream dribbles over the rim of the plate, ready to explore. It’ll be back at evening for dinner with his wife and kids. The string of drool has managed to slip down your chin and land on your left leg. Or is it your right? Look down. Oh, how silly! It wasn’t an orange, it was an orange onion. You start laughing and crying. Your tears land next to the drool. Your nostrils burn with the odor of the onions. Are bees attracted to onions? Everything burns, not just your nostrils. You stand up very quickly, surprised at how fast you stand up. You don’t recall being so fast, like you don’t recall the passing of the time. Your chair tips over and shatters on the floor. The whipped cream has splattered all over the table.
Clean it up, your mind urges. The idea of wiping it up with your sleeves comes to mind, so you do that. It burns a hole in your shirt like the onions burn your nostrils. A torrent of mucus is dripping out of your mouth and nose. Can bees smell? Can bees cry? You sit back down. You don’t recall a chair being there, like you don’t recall being very fast. The clock hands are whipping around, making you dizzy. You want to vomit. Vomit what? You haven’t eaten anything. Your stomach acid burns a hole in you. You’re so hungry. The smell of whip and onions is enticing. The clock is now moving so fast that you’re getting whiplash.
What is going on what is going on what is going on what is going on what is going
You don’t recall Bohemian Rhapsody playing from the radio so loud it makes your organs quiver and your bones crackle, like you don't recall a chair underneath you.
Is this the real life?
The buzzing has long since stopped, but your ears are bleeding. A dull ache wells up in your head. You look down and up. Wisteria is across from you. You stare at each other. Her eyes are hard and grey, like little circles of granite. The cruel eyes of a storm about to bowl the yellow-jacketed sailor of his boat. Maybe she’s grown. She looks taller and her hair is longer and blonder, with a rebellious blue streak. Her lipstick is blue too, and she sports a pair of aviators that are wide lensed and dark. The ambrosia salad smells like rotting fish. You duck your head to the side and vomit quietly on the floor. Onions and dead bees spill out of your mouth. Wisteria still is carefully watching you. Her state bores into your eyes and through the back of your skull.
You wonder where she has gone, what she has seen, and most importantly, what will she do. What is she exactly? Naive? Bold? Afraid? She’s grown, yes, but she’s still young, young enough to be scared. No. Her eyes say otherwise. You’re smart enough to see.
Is this just fantasy?
“This is all fantasy. Jejune things, though I’m sure you have realized that now. I’m terribly sorry if I have caused you discomfort. I never mean or meant any harm. The salad is quite tasty I have found, but perhaps it is not your taste. It’s just that my presence can cause a breakdown of what most deem normal. Think of reality like it is a delicate tapestry. The threads rip and tear so easily. A damn shame, because life is one beautiful tapestry. Have you ever walked along a winding desert path and stared at the glittering stardust above? Oh, it’s great, one of the greatest things. A lot of things are really great, to be honest. The piercing spear of light thrown out by a lighthouse, cherry blossoms falling onto streetcars, a baby deer standing in a field of yellow tulips, winding stone stairs coiled like a snake, birch trees in autumn with orange leaves falling around them, the hands of a blacksmith, an albino giraffe drinking at a water hole, a child and a mother. I could go on and on. We truly have all the time in the world here. But I won’t bore you.”
Caught in a landslide
"You must feel caught in a landslide right now, don't you? Everyone really is caught in a landslide right now. You and billions of other people are sitting down across from me, eating ambrosia salad and having a pleasant chat. Millions have already exited this cafe, having nothing to contribute to the conversation. They're waking up now, in their office cubicles and homes, wondering what happened and why everyone around them is sprawled about in various states of semi-consciousness.”
The cafe seems pleasant now.
Pleasant? What made you think that? The wall tiles seem to shift and swirl about. You feel like vomiting again, and an acidic lump rises in your throat. Momentarily, Wisteria is not Wisteria but a giant bee, flapping crystalline wings that are brittle and crack as soon as they hit the table. A giant stinger protrudes from the rear, and a cruel bead of venom can be seen forming at the tip. You scream and fall backwards out of your chair. You don’t reca-
Wisteria is not a bee. There is, there was, no bee. You pick yourself up, embarrassed.
No escape from reality
"If you think you can walk out from this reality like those people and pretend you have nothing useful to say, then you're wrong. Besides, why would you? You and I both know that I could kill you with the snap of my fingers. Wait, no. You don’t. I’ll get back to that later. My, how terribly inarticulate I am! At this point, you probably are wondering why you’re even here. You’re here because I want to tell you a story. A story about me.”
“Why am I doing this? Why am I trapping you here? Because you exist, and if you exist, you feel. Feel what? Feel me.”
Open your eyes
"Open your eyes, and open them wide. This is important.”
Look up to the skies and see
“Have you ever looked up to the skies and stood for a minute? What did you think? Did you contemplate the rich cerulean blue? How there is a vast cosmic dome above us that is an infinite symphony of colors?”
A force tugs your chin. You look down, and then up. She now wears a blindfold, cyaneous and tightly wrapped. Sadly, she shakes her head.
“One part of my job is this blindfold. So I lied. I never saw any beautiful thing. I never saw anything bad either. That’s why I wear this. So I don’t quit my job. ”
I’m just a poor boy girl, I need so sympathy
“Don’t feel obligated to sympathize with me. I’m a terrible person sometimes. I can be abysmal, adverse, alarming, angry, annoying, appealing, atrocious, awful, and so on and so forth. That’s just A.”
Because I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low
“I come easily but can never leave. I don’t possess any fragile mortality. I am blind, and blind forever, an infinite blindness like the infinite symphony colors of the vast cosmic dome. God, it hurts. Mortality is malicious and menacing but also misunderstood. It’s a precious little thing, a gift.”
Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me
“Mortality forces the way the wind blows to matter.”
A lot of details are hard to notice here, and a lot of details are hard to hear here too. She’s clever. The music advances at her pace. A line here or there and then it pauses and she speaks. You just never heard it stopped. Does it actually stop? Something is in your ear. You pull it out. It’s a bee and you scream again. You feel venom coursing through your brain. What is venom? What is poison? Do bees use poison or venom? Red and green stars dance in front of your eyes and behind them.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-
“Are you listening?”
Wisteria snaps in your face with her fingers and your body snaps back, snaps out of it, snaps like a crisp piece of edamame, snaps like Dale Wakefield in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on his 21st birthday, snaps like Ameer Vann On Ready For War in the album PUPPY, produced by Jabari Manwa, Robert Ontenient, bearface, Kiko Merley, Joba, and Romil Hemnani, snaps like a bee carcass, snaps like akvavit in Copenhagen on Sunday, April 24, 2011, snaps like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, snaps like Smiths Snaps Spicy Tomato 21g (Pack of 30), snaps lik-
You’re listening.
“But immortality renders it null. Everything just…blends into each other after a while. The colors are indistinct and distant. Sometimes I search for certain distinct palettes, complementary colors, but the universe can be highly unoriginal and they often revert to the same shades. Greys, blues, and dark purples for the shadows, and orange and tan for the light. I hardly ever see red or green.”
Mama, just killed a man
“I had no mother. I had a foster one, but I lost her because she killed a man. To be honest, my life is a walking cliche. It’s hard to throw it off. But who really cares about cliches? Poets like metaphors, but my life is not a book, and I am not a character. Correction: I am not a literary device.”
“No, I’m… I’m a child in the body of something that isn’t a person. My feelings are immature, my desires are young. I’m addicted to drugs.”
“Do you know how long I’ve been stuck here? Do you have any idea who I am? I was with the first batch of vague human-like specimens that could experience emotions. I was here before you and will be here until all intelligent life, no, all. And you know what’s even more infuriating? You’ve seen the outside world. But I haven’t. It pains me to hear you talk about it, reminisce about it. I wonder when I smell fresh cut grass. I wonder when I hear the birds flying above. I wonder. I wonder what I missed, to be more specific. Nothing is worse than blindness, than isolation.”
Isolation. Denzel Washington and Pelican Bay basketball, 23 hour lockdown, SHU program isolation, 48°52.6’S 123° 23.6’W, R’lyeh, Latin for “no one” isolation, CMB Cold Spo-
Put a gun against his her head
Wisteria makes a finger gun and places it against her head.
“Suicide is a controversial topic, so I’ll try to skim it, not dive into it. I contemplated it, but that was pretty stupid, because I’m immortal. Well, no. I’m not immortal, I’m part of humanity, and I’m tied to your existence. Sorry, that’s a lie too. I’m tied to the existence of things that feel, like you. I’m a universal constant. Wow, I’m lying so much today! Two lies in this one paragraph so far, and more to come in the next few. I’m a…I don’t know what the term would be. A semi-constant? But then I wouldn’t be constant. Then again, I’m not a constant. Accurate, but far from accurate. The most second-most accurate term would be liar, with the first most accurate term being saved for later, when I want to tell you. But that’s all irrelevant right now. Back on track!”
Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead
Wisteria pulls the trigger on her finger gun and blows her brains out.
“First, because my author is so unclear sometimes, I didn’t blow my brains out. I pretended to. Now, notice how I said the word paragraph last paragraph (Double paragraph!). Notice the context. I’m not that blind. I’ll revise my earlier statement. I like to think of myself of not being a literary device, but I am. God, I’m just a tool.”
Wisteria gravely looks over the rims of her glasses.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know your religion. My vision extends only so far. I don’t know what gods you believe in, if you believe in multiple gods, or if you believe in god.”
Mama, life has just begun
“For me, life has just begun, an-”
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away
“And it’s all screwed up already.”
Mama, ooo
Didn’t mean to make you cry
Wisteria starts to cry silently. It goes on for a few seconds, with her eyes melting, before they resolidify and become hard. No, harder.
“I’m not entitled to say what I’m going to say, but I’m still going to say it. I think this is your fault. It’s your fault for you and your species for being such compulsive fighters and criers. Actions have ramifications, and your ramifications found me, and I found you. Let me apologize again. The premise I originally presented for this conversation was a lie. I often get sidetracked easily, but this wasn’t a sidetrack. I wanted to get you involved half my story and then listen to a rant.”
“What the hell am I even doing anymore? I bet you’re wondering why my author and your author devolved this into a convoluted mess of loosely connected ideas.”
“Screw this. I don’t want to talk anymore. We’re done.”
The music stops. She’s gone. It’s over.
I’m sorry reader. I suffer from a disease that many of you are probably familiar with. It’s called lack of ideas. Or lack of motivation. Or defeat. If you really want to know that bad, yes, Wisteria will come back after she recovers from her my tantrum. Let us consider this moment a brief intermission between Act I and Act II. Rest. Go to the bathroom. Get a drink of water.
Oh, do you not like fourth wall breaks? Please. A fourth wall is a figment of literature, a tool, like Wisteria, and in this story, it was written by me. I have every right to break it, don’t I?
I’m not emotionally abusive either, if you are already so attached to Wisteria. After all, she’s an illusion of a human. Illusion is the key word here. It’s not like I’m considering her subhuman. I’m considering my character sub character. There’s a difference.
Okay, go away now, please.
