Title: Metronome (Chapter 5/?)
Rating: R for language and adult content (for entire story)
Summary: From hence emerge the prior stories of our heroes. Pre-RENT.
Disclaimer: You know they're not mine; I know they're not mine. I promise to clean them after I use them. I make no money from this. I apologize if I have stolen or caused any sort of bodily harm to anyone through the production of this written material.
MAY 22ND, 1993, 11:43 PM, EST. Maureen Johnson.
You are twenty-two years old and at your college graduation party.
You are twenty-two years old and at your college graduation party.
You are twenty-two years old and at your college graduation party, and you are just drunk and high enough to be narrating the world around you with eerie clarity. You rather enjoy the feeling, the unusual opacity of hearing the story only in your head, the delicious momentary privacy in your otherwise open-door existence.
You seem to remember talking to someone recently; you think it must have been only moments ago, but you're not speaking now and there doesn't seem to be anyone around you.
See Megan over at the beer table, talking to some boy you can't place. Not a theater major, then; you're pretty sure you've seen them all—in one context or another—and you're quite done with that scene. You're tired of explaining how you're not like every other girl they've met from Long Island. Sidle up to Megan and give her a long, lingering kiss on the cheek. She introduces you to the boy—Mark, is it?—and you see that when he looks at you, the tips of his ears burn. You grin, and wonder what it'd be like to fuck him.
Mark tries to ask you the same bullshit questions everyone asks each other when they're young and awkward and in need of conversation, but he catches himself mid-stammer and simply offers you a beer. You take it, just to see if your fingers will touch. He asks you if you're glad to be done with school, if you're excited about the "real world" and he even does the finger quotes with a cute little self-conscious smile. You hear yourself saying that you hope the real world is ready for you. He laughs, a little, enough to make you convinced he didn't fake it, and soon you find yourself explaining that you're staying in the city, that even though you're not a fan of the neighborhood around Hunter, that Hicksville is like Purgatory, and when he mentions Westchester, you know he understands. You realize your beer is almost empty, that he has put his down somewhere and is fiddling with something in his hands, something big enough to broken in the hubbub of partying newly-graduates. A camera? You can't do more than point and cock an eyebrow at him, but it's enough to get the ears burning again. You give him what you hope is a soft smile, and ask about him.
When Mark speaks, his hands—or hand-and-camera—draw circles in the air around him. He's telling you some story about how he and three friends are moving in together—something about the East Village, and a loft, and the fundamental rules of cinematography, and you nod and watch his hands. You are transfixed by them, tapered and strong-looking, how they seem to be pushing him out of his own narrative. How strange, you think, watching him run his fingers through his hair and smile through some story of a cat on the D train and his friend Roger, how odd. He exists on the fringe of his own life story. He seems to be happy—or happy enough—on the outside looking in. He's a peripheral being, not a tertiary character but a narrator, an other. How foreign to you he is, how unlike your desires his must be. The diva rep, you think hazily, doesn't come from nowhere. You like to be surrounded by people, you like the attention on you because worrying about your next watched move means you spend less time looking in. Less contemplation, less solitude. You know yourself well enough to know you don't need to spend more time with yourself than necessary. Enough that other people judge you, enough that you give them something to think and feel.
Mark ducks his head when you suddenly step closer. You want to see his face better, this teller of tales, this voice, this sight. You tell him you're sorry if you're not good company, that you're a little distracted by everything. He looks almost relieved and says he has enjoyed talking very much, and that he wouldn't just say that. At the look on your face he laughs and admits that he would, but he isn't. You wonder what it would be like to kiss him. He pushes a button on his camera and raises it toward you, trains it on you. You ask if he wants you to smile. He tells you he wants you to do whatever you want to do. He affectionately calls the camera his memory, leans out from behind the viewfinder and adds quietly that he wouldn't forget you, anyway. And all you can do is half-grin at him, through a layer of glass and plastic, and wonder what stories he'll tell about you, hope you'll be a character in his report.