(didn't mean to make it seem like I edited the whole thing! yikes! but there was one line that was particularly bad. I'm embarrassed it was in there for so long. I was tired when I wrote this so it's kind of messy. The prose doesn't flow quite like it should, but it lays out some ideas I think are important to continuing with this story, if I'm to continue it. I noticed this isn't quite as good as the first one I did, and because I was tired, unless I rewrite the whole thing from scratch I'm not quite sure I could fix it. Sorry.)
Daria stared out of the window, it was a lovely day. Cynicism had not yet reared its ugly head and beauty consumed her entirely. What was there to whine about on a sunny day like this, anyways? She had everything she wanted and all she had ever dreamed of: Jane was hers. It hadn't ever occurred to her to want somebody. 'Why would I want somebody?' she asked herself plaintively. I'm just the lonely little nerd girl, I never needed anyone…except I need Jane. It was strange to want someone, to need someone. High school had been hell, she couldn't want anyone there. Rather she could only put on her cynical face and arch her eyebrows in surprise when anyone even spoke to her. It was weird to be so accepted and wanted by someone, and want them back. That's for sure.
Jane's black hair, that triangular shape of hair, was so lovely, so silky, the sheen was so bright she could sense it for miles from the gel or mouse that she used. The lovely pierced ear, the peaked face and rosy red lips that were never without their perfect rouge and blush. Jane was excellent at her appearance, it achieved where Daria's was mush. The most Daria could energize herself for every morning was to comb the wild beast that was her haughtily uncut hair. Daria was always so messy, like some misshapen Picasso, a big bulge of glasses and hair. Jane was perfect, a piece of art, cut perfectly out of a mould. If Daria was a painter she would paint Jane, as a lion or a tiger, a huntress or a cougar, some predator of the jungle. Jane was always on the hunt, nose pointed toward amazement and ravishing excitement. She loved the forwardness of Jane, her black widow girlfriend didn't think of herself self-consciously; in a way she was too simple for that. Jane was like an arrow ever pointing forwards, shooting through the night sky, impaling poor limpid stars on its way to the moon. Daria thought of herself more as a mump, rather than some beautiful caricature. She didn't really like herself, even if she put on the pretension of doing so. The world wouldn't change without Daria, but Jane was wonderful. Jane was love, Jane was a vibrant hue of red. And what world could operate without the color red?
Daria thought of those long thinly haired legs that shot down to a pair of ratty sneakers, 'What a ravishing creature!' she thought. It's extraordinary she could be mine. Peaking at her from afar, admiring her, something I couldn't catch…but now she's changed, in some ways tamed by my love. How can this ever work, she thought, Jane is a wild beast, not some golden trinket I put around my neck in the morning to seem more interesting. Outrageous, Jane paints things I can only dream of; she is fire, she is burning, a sulfurous stench in my soul that I don't ever want put out or extinguished. I want to feel filthy when Jane is filthy, if she is ever filthy. The smell of Jane can be my locket of love. She smiled.
Daria wanted to bottle the red flame Jane, she was hard as stone and would freeze at the first bite but the touch made her mind amorous. It was like loving a statue, an immoveable object which could only animate on cold nights and splintered moons. Daria licked her lips, that cold room, that blue cold room and the wonderful smells. Or would you call it stink? Jane's stink. She had always thought she disliked the look and smell of other girls, with their nasty makeup trays and dithering eyeliner. She had been taught to normalize herself with heterosexual attitudes, always trying to think about what guys smell like and what boys might be doing behind the bathroom door. What do they do when they shower? Do they think of me and lose their minds? Is it smelly? Daria realized for the first time that she had never really cared what guys might be doing: they were boring. Men weren't considerate, men were cruel. Jane was soft, she was sweet.
That bastard Tom, what a dipshit, he only wanted what he wanted when he felt like it. He wanted to hang out with someone like himself while shopping for his kinds of things at his time of the day, and his time of the day was her worst midnight, the blackest night she had ever lived through. The ego of Tom, the Sloanes and their enormous house and expensive materialism, she could never relate to someone who was brought into existence strung up to a fantastic inheritance and the world on their plate. Sometimes he was sweet, sure, but mostly he was just an absent boyfriend who condescended occasionally to female whims. Daria was one of the guys with Tom, a blank slate scripted however he required at the time. On the other hand Jane would never write her like a caricature, or in any unrealistic way. Daria and Jane were the real objects d'art, not materialistic backdrops to wealth.
She sat on a bench in the park across from the South end of the university and reminisced the various dates she had attended with Tom in toe. Oh-so superficial Tom, never really there. She didn't even really understand him or actually get along with him, either. They met eye to eye on novels, read once in some desperate antisocial quandary in the misery of Texas; and on esoteric historical terms related to Nitzche, Dostoevsky, Russian history and other randomly assorted historiography. All, alas, was her cover for social awkwardness and incompetence, and looking back it was indeed a shallow point to start a relationship on. He had liked and wanted the smart Daria, but she doubted whether she really was all that smart. Today she was in college being herself, doing all in her power to get into an Ivy League school and forge the future she had dreamed of since those dumb-laden days in Houston. Teachers didn't like her, brushed aside her ideas and used her as a stamping post in front of the other unaffectionate book learners. In high school she was a genius, in college she was an absentee whose only real emotions were those of dread and scarring. Peachy world, this.
But here she was in this park on this cold creamy day of acid-yellow cloud and white overcast, and Jane, the one thing she had struggled so mightily to hold onto through those godsent, albeit ridiculous last years of high school, was even more than a friend. Jane didn't need her to be perfect, or a Midas dummy, but the regular good ol' girl from Rhode Island who she in fact was, truly was. She was always pretty smart, she had her own ideas about how things should be, but not who or what she was. What she wanted had been to be left alone, now it was... And in this revelry of romance she was like all the other guys and girls in high school, a confused meandering plebian stuck in the backroads of New England. Tom had thought Daria was some arrogant doll to shine laurels on, but come to think of it, was it her differences that had actually attracted him away from Jane, one precipitous school year day? Perhaps Tom was seeing his opposite in the glasses wearing, bushy haired girl, the miscast outcast of social order, who didn't fit in but to her own intellect. No private schools, lordly education or brilliant parents (well, one). He had pegged Daria as a kindred spirit, but too vane was Tom's MO. No overachieving for little Daria from Texas, she wanted laughter and play, like all commoners, minus some innate isolation.
In the early years, the other kids would laugh and stare when she brought up her favorite subjects, fiction, novels, history. No TV meant no easy relating and no relating meant no play with the others. She wasn't accepted and she didn't accept them. They were airy, just like Tom, that forsaken scion of East coast wealth. Tom didn't have to stand out, his whole life was an unflinching confidence. Whatever he liked, the prince attained. Pick up chicks from the local poor person's high school in a rusty old car? Sure. And of course little Daria fell for it, hook line and sinker, a miserable fish chewing that last bit of line from wealthyland to povertyville. The little lonely isolated girl, who couldn't get enough of appreciation, couldn't deny the wit, charm, and most especially cardigan sweaters of the next financial advisor next door. She was wanted, and connected to him, through intellect, a fabulous idea, but Tom had never understood her, not the way Jane did, Jane does.
Jane loved Daria, that's for sure. No one had to be anything else between the two. But was she being desperate? How much can you love someone who befriends you for really the first time in your life? Were there other girls, or, heck, guys she might like better? Shopping around sure hadn't occurred to her.
There was something about Jane though, something about that elegant crowning neck and placid white skin, that unceasingly ironic demeanor. Tom was always an ironic asshole, while Jane was brilliantly ironic; charming, witty. Jane did what she wanted when she wanted, she was her own woman, and so was Daria. Tom, that sniveling rat, too smart for his own rotten self, he would come to no good end and Daria didn't want to be there when his life derailed. He would either cause a financial crisis or do something wrong with a sorority girl one drunken night, and it would be all over.
She wondered if she and Jane would eventually become too different, and eventually split. They coexisted between two different hemispheres, painting street art and writing for some random publication, if she could get published. Maybe she'd end up a depressed forty year old working at a coffee house, dreaming of the life she always thought she'd have. Could it work, was she meant for the life of an artist, selling her soul for dimes but being unbearably happy? Times of poverty could be awaiting one who condescended to another's fate. What would Daria have been with Tom, a drag on his future? The gaudy rich are meant for grand schemes and politics. He was a destined power player, and Daria's future was up in the air. It would have been nice to get in on that money and power, though perhaps Daria was too dull to satisfy bacchanalian lifestyles of the rich and famous. Besides, he would have cheated on her eventually, leaving her a house pet to show off to his rich fellows while spending weekends "working" at a retreat with his "pals", more like his cruel mistresses.
Daria wandered in her mind while the bench she was sitting on grew colder and harder. Would Jane cheat on her too? Interesting, and morbid; she loved her, but forever? Were they too different even for love?
Some kids were playing on the jungle gym in a sand pit surrounded by unmown grass and concrete steps. There was laughing and screaming about all the things small children love to get hyped up about. There were flashes of red and green and yellows and blues in between the random architecture of a plastic elevated walkway. It was a nice day to reminisce with one's own thoughts and depressing sensibilities.
Her high school uniform of black skirt and green jacket was long gone, tossed in the garbage to symbolize her transition to college. She simply dressed in a coat, scarf, and hat, and some average blue jeans which fit tightly and were freshly cleaned. New look, new Daria, and the same old Jane, her usual messy, catty outlook torn off some cheap used salesrack somewhere. Mom had become a partner in her law firm and Dad was roving about the house happier than ever to be doing hardly anything. Upper middle class paid its way for warmth on crisp fall days like this. It was strange, she thought, that so much time should be wasted indoors just because of modern heaters and typical youthful laziness. Oh well.
Sweet childish laughter echoed towards her. Daria smiled, Jane laughing. If she went full girl-on-girl now she'd never have her own kids. They didn't seem all that bad; annoying, but guidable. She loved to guide.
Daria all of a sudden realized she had been sitting on a hard park bench for far too long. She got up. Butt wasn't wet, 'luckily I didn't sit on a wet bench or anything', she thought to herself as she began to step with achy legs that weren't quite awake. It was a really nice day, her paper was due in two days but it was hard to care. Somehow, Jane's love had broken the cold shell of college and the world it inhabited, and brought its own sense of warmth to the bespectacled nerd girl. Jane was so lovely, wonderful tall Jane who moved like a stork and peacocked like a rare bird. I love Jane, she thought to herself as she stepped over a pile of mud and wet grass. I can touch her, feel her, kiss her, hug her…I can touch somebody. It was curious how when someone spread their finger tips and rough, callused palms over your bare stomach, instead of flinching, you just felt warmer. It made the papers, grades and professors, and especially her overbearing mother, seem noxious and forgettable.
Love Jane, I'll always love Jane. The sweetest words emanate from her candy red mouth, "lover". It sounded funny, she laughed, it was strange and crazy how a woman, of all things, could love her so much. Or at least she liked to think it was real love. She had touched Daria and all the pain and anguish went away, only to reveal a new formal pressure. It was a relationship, but not really a relationship. There was pain in not knowing: what would Jane be tomorrow when Daria just wanted some toast and wasn't there to impress that sullen cynical art bird with relationship, lezbo Daria? What if she just wanted to soak in various carbohydrates and nutrients? How long could this mirage go on with this exciting physical romance, before it drifted into the tedium of their old friendship?
And what would her mother think, her father, her squat insipid sister who always made the most catty judgments and formed the most asinine quotes to pain her mind. What would Mom say? Tom would be a blithering idiot about it, and then he would tell his friend and they would laugh. And was Jane really serious? Who, after all, was ever serious? Wasn't the world one big joke she had to carry around on her shoulders because others didn't want to take life too seriously? And why wasn't there a shelter at the bus stop, wasn't it about to snow?
'I love Jane,' is all she wanted to say. I don't need the others, but I need my family, and even, perhaps, erroneous Tom to carry me if this doesn't work out. What will I do if this doesn't work out? Where will my life end up if this fantastic love thing fails? I'll be on the cold street and no one will have anything to do with a rake-thin glasses girl who avoids all social activities and never once condescended to the world's standards. I'll be all alone, with no sail on my boat, just a leaf in a stream.
The crosswalk was rough, people bustled in her way at every step. It must be lunch time, everyone is going off to their private cafes to sit with a bowl of soup and talk about their dreary Boston work lives. They wanted a slice of warm air and gooey French cheese to forget about their lives for an hour. But she couldn't forget, and she didn't want to forget, that Jane was just a mile and a half away, in her tower of ivy, and here was prince charming coming to save her.