04 May A Short Story: Tangible

*This story is entirely a work of fiction.*

The dimension was interesting, for the clouds were hazardously raining while evaporating simultaneously… I’ve never viewed a phenomenon like that before. Then I started to think… observe, that this was potentially a metaphor for the way people’s souls exist; a constant and consistent cycle of being there, while not being there at all.

I woke up to the sound of a girl yelling. I opened my eyes and saw her frantically walking around the room holding a trash bag that she was angrily throwing my notebooks into. She finally stopped for a second, looked at me and with a scolding tone of voice said, “You have some nerve Avi… do you know that? You have some nerve.”

I softly responded, “What did I do now?’

She quickly laughed… a type of laugh that had a sinister sound to it then said, “Right. What did you do? I’ll tell you… you create all of this beautiful art that’s going to be worth a lot of money one day and give it to random girls, but with me you’re so –“

She stopped talking for a moment, opened one of my drawers and emptied it into the trash bag then continued speaking, “but with me you’re so fucking cheapo style!”

I just kind of looked at her dumbfounded and then calmly said, “You know how I’m an artist…”

I could tell that really pissed her off because she walked over to the window, opened it, then said, “And why are you so fucking good at everything… it’s annoying.” And then threw the trash bag out of the window.

I stood up, walked over to her and whispered in her ear with as much smoothness as possible, “Baby girl… baby girl…”

She turned around; got on her tiptoes like she was going to give me a kiss, but stopped herself and said, “Don’t call me that.”

She’s much shorter than me and since I’m tall I could look directly into her eyes and see that she was in fact not even the slightest bit angry, so I decided to keep playing the scene and said to her, “Woman, you know how I’m not good with names, you know how I be forgetting names all the time, you know that girl. You know how I’ve never been good at remembering names.”

She abruptly started laughing uncontrollably and under her breath said, “This motherfucker… I really hate to love you… do you know that? And do you know why people love to hate and talk shit on you?”

I swagfully responded with a drop of my shoulders, “Because I’m really handsome?”

She smiled while trying not to smile, placed her hand, gently, on my left anterior deltoid and then said, “No… and you’re not that handsome, but they hate you because they know that you know that you could be the best if you wanted to be the best. But instead, you just waste all of this time practicing, when you know you could just do what you need to, to get out of this poverty starving artist state. Why are you incrementally progressing when you know you’re already there? And, for example, do you think that someone who has been playing the piano their entire life likes looking at you play better than them after only like 6 months of ‘practicing’? You can’t even read music, you just write your own compositions… That’s just one example… I can give you more if you’re not feeling that smart today.”

I could hear a real sense of hatred stemming from her tone of voice, so I quickly responded, “Woman, why you look so good today? With the rosy cheeks, teardrop eyes and with your ass and tits out like that…”

She let out a defined sigh-shrug and proceeded to walk out of the room.

I reached for her hand and stopped her from leaving, then I very calmly said to her, “Just listen to me for a second… you’re basically undermining my entire life. I’ve been writing since I was seven or eight years old, that level of dedication and maturity matches any other life-long artist that exists. And there’s never enough practice. And I’m not just doing this for myself, I’m doing it for other people… people have to understand that there’s no magical cosmos… people have to understand that life is about working hard and that progress follows a process. And for me, it’s not about copying other people’s styles; it’s about inventing a new style of art. That takes time… experimenting… understanding… evolving…incremental, observant steps.. Do you want me to be like everyone else? ”

 She rolled her eyes in a way that let me know she wasn’t really listening and said, “Fine. Continue being poor your entire life then.”

That got me slightly offended, but I still softly responded, “You’re really feeling some type of way today, huh? Money makes you not poor?”

She walked over to the nightstand table, pointed to the notepad upon it and then said, “Right. Just like you said you’re working on writing a masterpiece, when there are no words on any of these pages…”

I sat down on the bed, so she could look into my eyes and said to her, “Yes there is.”

She grabbed the notepad, flipped through the pages then responded, “No there is not Avi. Do I look dumb to you?”

I folded my hands together, which is what I typically do when I’m trying to concentrate the tone of my voice and then said to her, “Do you know what the meaning of luck is?”

She folded her arms in an annoyed way and then said, “Of course I do. I’m not dumb.”

I moved my hands over to her waist and placed my thumbs on each one of her hipbones and pressed firmly (she likes when I do that), then said, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You look at that notepad and see no words, I look at that notepad as preparation and when the right opportunity is present…I see words.  I’ll have a masterpiece soon and make more money than I could ever need, but right now I’m remaining patient, preparing for the right opportunity. And once that happens, it won’t just be one masterpiece. I’ll create masterpiece after masterpiece after masterpiece and it won’t matter what type of art form I choose”

She pushed me back onto the bed and then she promiscuously jumped on top of me. She started to unbuckle and unbutton my pants and then said to me, “I’m feeling lucky right now…”