PERIPHERAL

In the Garage I was bleary-eyed and faded. My eyes could barely stay unstuck, as I peered through chinky tight lids and focused on the monitor. My mind was left in ruins, brain spores having squeezed out seed-thoughts, having sacrificed precious cells in order to reproduce ideas...

Archiving the secrets of the animators, I was comfortable in my drug haze. No one bothered me-- they let me be, they let me exist, I stayed in my cocoon.

I knew Dolly peripherally, that is to say, she was Dave's girl and they were real close-- they even looked alike, down to the eyeglasses and nervous grins. Pure souls, the both of them together. Enough to make you want to find a perfect stranger on the street and force them to fall in love with you...

Dolly sat down next to me and talked my ear into oblivion, and where this all came from is anyone's guess. She always eyed me with hunger, and it unsettled me, because she was Dave's girl and they were real close-- so close that she wasted no time in telling me, quite frankly, that she and Dave had run off to tie the knot a month prior.

I paid attention, twisting my head to give congratulations, to not appear rude, but there was so much to inventory, so many files to commit to some type of categorical system...

And she kept on talking and talking, singing as it were, reaffirming her bond with her man who was out of town presently, all the while staring at me whenever I made eye contact, trying to get a reaction, trying to unnerve me somehow, and it really surprised me, because normally this type of assumption on my part would be seen as massive ego milking, but what can you do when you ask nothing and still receive the whole gist of her rambling in such a short amount of time?

It was important that she tell me that she and Dave were wed, and maybe because everyone else already knew and she hadn't told me yet, or maybe she wanted to tell me all along, and either way I couldn't care any less than I already do... no offense, but this was peripheral, and I never had an inkling before today that I would need to keep track of these details...

I smiled and nodded. We smoked hashish. Dream state. Giddiness, laughs with a virtual stranger. Dolly is cute but mousy, gorgeous eyes framed in oppressive underglass, frayed hair and crooked smile belying vivacious laughter... I can see why Dave made her his own, and yet I have no idea why she is telling me any of this, anything, when she and I have never had so much as a ten-minute conversation on ANY given topic...

I get these vibes all the time, from women who have men on their arms-- they look at me with their predatory eyes and it's as if I were being stalked, staked out, checked out, patted down... it isn't animal allure, or chemistry, but fascination... what kind of creature is this, walking among men, but with a faraway mind and walls so firmly in place that they cannot be scaled nor deconstructed?

I have always known how to shine my intrigue but lately I am too lazy, and for some reason this comes up as she prattles on about true love, and how we all will find it. And I am not arguing this point at all, but she puts up a giggly resistance to my damning pessimism, because it is a refreshing kind of looking down, an insult wrapped in the skin of a grin, a putdown at my own expense as I sit in the front row and applaud...

She wants me to know what I missed out on but I maintain that I miss nothing when I am being creative, and even she admits that romance puts a crimp in her productivity, and I ask her what she does, and she shows me shiny jewels laced around her fingers...

I just don't get it-- why the attention? Why is she bugging me? Why? What did I do? Did she think that my occasional comments were an invitation? If so, what kind of invitation?

I will never understand the fairer sex, and they will never understand me, which is why they embrace men of action but come sauntering up to me when I want to be left alone, when they want sensitivity and to ask me what I am thinking about... and I feel like I'm the one who is trapped in a dead-end relationship, except I did nothing to instigate anything. These women just assume that I am there for their amusement, a constant in the fluid nature of existence, never-changing, never in transition or crisis, metastasized permanently.

Later on, another girl makes the assumption that I will play cards with her. She already had it in her agenda. Her man entertains the regulars and I am babysitting, in a strange way. I am minding someone else's store, without any inclination to run it myself. Leave it to the business-minded to keep the budget black, to make the gears run and float the boats... I am here only to pass the time, being used in a curious way that doesn't drain me, and if anything it exposes vulnerabilities that I'd rather not witness, thank you very much.

I am a mirror, onto which women project fantastic realities, none of them true.