I'm sitting in some uncomfortable chair, a style of which I have never seen before. It has the usual aluminum grey frame, a backrest adjusted to a standard of height, blah blah-blah. But it has these strange pads connecting the seat, pads that shoot up and fill some of the space between the back rest and the ass rest with some sort of. . . spinal rest? The color of the rotund woman's shirt--toothpaste blue-- outlines this extraneous pad.
I stare at her, her lumpy body a pile of toothpaste squeezed directly into the same spot. I play with the bracelet on my right wrist. I wonder if it is really home made. I doubt it.
I gaze around the room. Most of the crowd is young. A guy in the corner looks like a disgruntled underwear model. Not big time, just a locally owned department store maybe. There are many attractive girls my age.
Several people speak out of a small paperback. Everyone seems to have a copy. After introducing ourselves, I get one too. One with numbers. Not the numbers of the many attractive girls. Just numbers with male names next to them following MEN: at the top.
"How are you?" she asked me. No, wait, it was "Are you well?" Or maybe it was neither, but had the tone of both, concern backing the question.
I told her "I'm fine," with little enthusiasm. The tree above would wet us occasionally with drops of dew. She bounced her baby a bit, gently, and a breeze blew his wispy hair. He was concerned with the wind. He stared into the soul of a wavering plant, trying to understand its movement.
"He doesn't really understand object permanence yet," the father, my friend Tyler, said. I didn't want to say Piaget was wrong. I didn't want to say anything. But I said something like, "You mean like peek-a-boo?"
When I introduce myself, I am the only one that simply says my name. This is my first time and I have not yet developed the ability to confess my heart to strangers. A kid younger than me speaks up. Says his life is better now, says he's happy ninety-five percent of the time. I think bullshit, life is a constant of inconsistency. Fuck your 5% estimated blue time. Then I realize he at least thinks he has something worthy of sharing. I cannot begin to imagine a similar image of myself.
I said goodbye to the family after a walk down the street. It was pleasant. The sun was just beginning to tire and the air cool. Leaves tumbled to the earth around us as we all hugged. Phoenix, their child, grabbed hold of my bracelet. His grip was strong and I didn't want to pry his hands off of what he wanted to hold. But they had to visit another friend(a mother) and I had to go home. So Kat pried his demonically possessed fingers from it and we said goodbye.
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