Chapter Five: Cute
Notes and Disclaimer: Woo. This chapter drove me absolutely nutty, writing it. I'm still not too fond of it, but I'm not re-writing it again, so I guess I'll live.
Thank you so much to everyone who's been reviewing. I'm thrilled to know that you're enjoying this, whatever it is.
The late, great Jonathan Larson owns all.
Maureen
So, this kid really is pretty cute. Not hot; to be hot, a guy's got to look.. you know- not breakable-looking. Not skinny and pale. With a smile that makes a girl giggly in the wow-that's-making-me-horny sort of way, not in the aww-that's-so-fuckin'-adorable sort of way. He's got to be confident and strong and exciting; everything this kid isn't.
But he's cute. Blonde over blue, short, with that I-couldn't-afford-to-eat-during-college look to him. Even if he doesn't look old enough to be out of college. He's cute. And, unlike a lot of guys, he looks good in glasses. In thick, very unstylish glasses. When a guy looks good in glasses, you know he's got to have some kind of redeeming quality to his face. I don't know what it is; maybe it's his eyes or his cheekbones or the shape of his nose, but there's got to be something good about his face that I can't put my finger on. Yet.
I saw him looking at me a little while ago. Staring at me like I scared the shit out of him or was going to make him sick. Butterflies. He was sitting on a stool at the bar next to some slick-looking black guy, and I guess I sort of thought he was gay at first. I mean, this guy kept throwing his arm over his shoulder and shaking him, laughing and grinning and nudging him square in the chest. Maybe he was just really wasted. Either way, I kind of brushed him off the first time.
But this blonde kid-- he was just sort of staring, you know? Like I was the only one in the place. Very cute, and I've got to admit: there's nothing like knowing some stranger is tripping head over heels for you...besides maybe fucking said stranger after getting pleasantly drunk and sweaty dancing. So, when I saw him again outside the bar, drenched from the rain and dripping, cold, and very much alone, I figured: why the Hell not? It's not like he's going to have girls hanging all over him, and it's not like I'm going to be crushed if it turns out he's gay or on his way home or involved with some other girl. It's not like I've got anything to lose, and a fling never hurt anyone who used a condom.
So, after spending like, forty-five minutes with him, I've gotten this much: His name's Mark. ('M-mark Cohen,' as he put it when we first walked through the door and he thrust his free hand out towards me, realizing that he hadn't asked my name and apologizing excessively.) He's very polite. Maybe a little too polite, but still cute. He lives here in the Village, making us practically neighbors, and he's got a lot of roomies, which means that he can't make rent by himself. But, hey, I don't need a guy with tons of money; if I did, I'd be looking in all the wrong places. East Village guys aren't known for their cash, and they don't tip well.
I kind of get the ide that Mark hasn't had a lot of sex. As a matter of fact, I kind of get the idea that Mark hasn't had a lot of girlfriends; he looks down at his feet a lot and blushes even more, and when I managed to drag him out to dance, he looked a little bit sick, like he was going to pass out because I was pressed right up against him. I'll admit that I was a little offended at first, when he tried to ask that I not grind into him without really having to ask it, but his clumsy attempt at dancing was too cute to keep me mad. And besides: being so close to him, I know for sure that at least some part of him was enjoying it.
You know what else is cute about him? About blonde-haired, blue-eyed Mark? He wants to shoot films. He wants to write and direct movies, so he carries around this camera -small enough to hold in one hand, but too big to fit in his pocket, which sucks, because I'm itching to dance again- everywhere he goes. I wonder if he sleeps with it. He's always looking through the eyepiece, very quiet and very still, just looking around at things that aren't really all that amazing: a cigarette dying in an ashtray, a bent-up bottle cap, a smashed bottle, destroyed on the floor. He looks.. I don't know.. sad, I guess. Or maybe just really, really focused on what he's doing: filming funny little artistic things.
He's watching the bartender's hand drawing beer from the taps now, while I opt for a bottle and, in turn watch him, amused with his quirky moments of silence and concentration, but quickly getting bored with the lack of attention he's paying me. When I wave my hand in front of his lens and cup my palm over it, he immediately pulls backwards against the bar, clutching the camera to stomach and staring at me like I was going to hurt it or something.
"Whoa, chill out," I say, laughing and holding my hands defensively in front of his chest. "I'm not going to kill it. I won't even touch it, okay?"
He gives me a smile for that and finally puts his camera down, stopping the film and letting it rest on his lap, still cradling it even when it's off.
"But, Mark," I start, pushing my fingers back through his hair and grinning when he blushes, "Why don't you film people? They're usually more interesting than beer taps."
"Oh, I-" He picks his camera back up again, fiddling with it while I keep pushing his wet hair back off his forehead. "I mean...that's kind of voyeuristic, don't you think? Just watching people? 'Hi there. I'm a complete stranger here to film you for my own purposes. Just keep doing what you were doing and pretend I'm not here.' Couldn't I get arrested for that?" He gesticulates with his hands while he talks, waving them around close to him like he's talking more to himself than to me. Maybe he's Italian.
"Mark, this is New York, land of tourists. Nobody even thinks twice when they see some college kid staring through a camera."
"But I'm not a college kid," he protests, "and I'm really unlucky. I'll start shooting the wrong guy, and he'll.. I don't know.. kick my ass and steal my camera."
I get this really bad feeling all of a sudden and put my beer back down onto the bar, biting my lower lip and looking at Mark, who leans back a little, like he's afraid of what I'm going to say.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh.. You're not in college?" Fuck. Now, I really have nothing against younger guys, and I knew when I saw Mark waiting outside that he couldn't get in because he was too young-- eighteen or nineteen. There's no way he's old enough to have graduated already, and if this kid isn't in college yet, he's... what? Fifteen? That's really sick. "Oh, shit. Mark.. I'm really, really sorry." I'm not a cradle-robber.
"Oh! No, I-" He sits up suddenly, holding his camera close and blushing to his ears. "I.. left. I was in college, but-" He shrugs and dies off until I urge him to keep going. "My parents had it all planned out, I guess: I was supposed to be a doctor, so I took Biology and stuff at Brown-"
"Biology? Did you cut open a frog?"
"Yeah, but-"
"Mark, that's terrible! Don't kill things for something stupid like that!"
"It was already dead. I didn't kill it." I frown, but when he sees that I'm trying to keep quiet, he hurries on before I have the chance to interrupt again, fiddling with the lens cap to his camera without looking at me. "I skipped second grade-" Oh, so he's cute and smart. "-so I was a year ahead. I'd be a doctor by twenty-four if everything worked out, and I'd get married and have 2.54 good Jewish kids, and my parents would be proud and happy grandparents."
"Wow. Your parents must be pretty evil."
"Well... no… just a little controlling."
"Same thing." I wave for another bottle of beer as I finish mine off and blow over the lip of it. "Keep going."
"Okay... I- uh… just didn't want to be in medicine, I guess, so two months into classes, I switched my major to film and my minor to writing and... my parents almost died when they found out. They said that they were going to cut me off if I didn't switch back, and I didn't believe them until they actually did."
I wince hearing that and twist another curl into his hair. "Aw. Poor baby." He blushes to that, in his usual way, and grins a little bit, looking up at me for the first time in a long time, then back down at his camera.
"Well, it's not too bad. It gave me the excuse to leave. At the end of the first semester, I got on the train and came down here, and I've been living with Roger for a few months now."
"Roger?"
"Oh. My roommate."
"Sure he is." I take another sip of my beer and start to laugh at the color in Mark's face, and even he manages to laugh lightly, if a little anxiously, and looks down There's a long moment of silence while I nurse my drink and Mark fiddles around with his camera. I don't do silence well, as little Mark will find out if I keep him around.
"Mark," I start again, snaking my hand around the back of his neck and drawing circles with one finger right where his wet hair starts, "Why don't you film people? Why don't you film me? The camera loves me."
That left him plenty of room for a pick-up line or something, by the way, but in his very Mark-ish fashion, he just smiles awkwardly and blushes, turning his camera over in his hands and apparently finding it very interesting, seeing how he's been staring at it for minutes on end.
"Please, Mark?"
"Oh... sure. I just didn't think- - I thought it might be rude to just... you know, start watching you. You're really okay with it?" He's so cute. The way he looks at me, with his blue eyes wide behind his glasses and his eyebrows raised, it's like he's asking me permission for some great, huge deal, like he's genuinely curious as to what I'll tell him, worried that I'll turn him down.
"Of course I'm okay with it! Mark, if I'm going to be an actress, I can't be camera-shy. Come on.. for me? You'll be helping my career. I'll owe it all to you, one day."
There's no arguing with that, and it's only a matter of a few seconds before he's got his eye to the camera again, smiling this time, while a little black and white me grins and pouts and flirts with the camera, striking blatantly sexy poses that naturally make the cameraman color.
"Aren't you going to narrate?"
"Oh, no." He stops the film, then, drawing the camera back down into his lap, where he continues to fiddle with it. "It doesn't do audio. Well, not for more than a few seconds, anyway, and then it gets out of sync... I need my tape-recorder for that, and I just mix the video and the audio when-"
"No, I mean.. just talk. Just say what's going on. It doesn't matter if it's on tape or not. It'll help you remember, so when you're old and grey and thirty, you can look back and remember being here, with me, filming me and having me tell you to narrate. It'll help things stick in your memory if you talk.." Of course, I don't really know if this is true or not, but like I said: I don't do silence well, and Mark's definitely not saying anything while I'm working to seduce him, and that's weird. "Well, it works for memorizing lines, anyway. You should really try it."
"So, I just.. talk?"
"Yeah. You don't do a lot of that, do you?" He blushed, of course, and grins nervously. Aw. I intimidate him. How cute.
"What should I say?" he presses, holding the camera a few inches from his face, winding it up, and pointing the lens at me. "Just.. anything?"
"Well, you can introduce me, for one. You could talk about how, with looks and talent like I've got, I'll definitely be famous some day." Oh, yeah. I'm the Queen of Modesty. "Or you could say that you're in a sleazy bar with a beautiful woman who is slowly succeeding in making you very nervous and extremely horny all at the same time."
He opens his mouth to say it, then closes it right away, his face burning all the way to the tips of his ears as he catches the last part of my suggestion. "Maureen, that's not.."
"Oh, so.. I'm not doing anything for you."
"No, it's not that-"
"So, you are horny."
"No! I'm not-"
"Oh, okay. I guess if you don't really feel anything for me, then-" I stand to leave, and he jumps to his feet, ready to go after me, his camera held close and his blue eyes wide and scared behind his glasses.
"Wait! Maureen, please. I wasn't.. I didn't mean that I don't.." It's so hard to hide a smirk while he fumbles and trips over his words, wringing his hands around his camera and tending to look down at his sneakers. "Please don't go."
Like I'm going to argue with a face like that. I make a big show, though, of studying him, eyeing him up from his toes to the top of his head, where his blonde hair is starting to dry into curls, but paying special attention to his hands, which are clutching desperately to the camera. It's here that I notice this guy staring at me again. I caught him watching me once or twice when Mark and I were dancing, and now he and some girl are watching us again. Oh well. It's not that I'm not used to guys staring at me.
"Fine." I push that guy out of my mind and scowl lightly at Mark, then start to grin and take him by the arm, much to his obvious relief. "You win, Mark You win." He's finally smiling again when we get back to our seats at the bar, enough to show teeth, which are nice, which means that he must have had braces, which means that he was probably that poor skinny kid in the big glasses and braces that got picked on in grade school. "But since I'm going with you now, you've got to come with me later. Okay?" I bite my lip and try not to giggle when the color momentarily drains from his face.
"What..what do you mean?"
"Mark, the night never ends in the bar." He doesn't get it. "The night ends in either a hotel, a hospital, my place, or your place." Smirking at my painfully shy little Mark, I lay my hand on his thigh and lean in close to his ear, rubbing my hand up and down his leg, much to the darkening of his cheeks. "And it's not going to be in a hospital. And it's not going to be a hotel; that's so cliché for a first time."
I could swear that I hear him squeak, that I can feel the heat from his face on mine.
"Or... I could always go and talk to that guy over there," I tease, nodding in the direction of that guy who's been eyeing me up for a while now. "I'm sure he'd be happy to come with me."
At first, when Mark looks over at him, I get this crazy idea that he's jumping up to go and tell that guy to lay off, but it's fleeting; anyone can see that Mark would get his ass kicked. He goes very, very pale all of a sudden, and then the blood roars back into his cheeks, and he stands up, frantically trying to leave.
"Oh, God. Maureen, we've got to- damnit.." He spins back around, trying to sop up the beer that he's spilled, getting more flustered by the minute, while that guy and his girlfriend start heading over to us.
"Mark, calm down. Come here."
"No, we've got to-"
"Mark." There's no way he's leaving me now. We barely danced, he didn't drink, and theres' been almost no skin-to-skin contact in the last forty-five minutes or so. With all this in mind, I do the only thing I can do: I follow Mark up, then quickly turn so he's against the bar and in front of me, my knee between his legs so he won't dare try and jump if he values his fragile masculinity.
When I first kiss him, I feel him tense up again under me, like he's trying to melt into the bar and disappear. With my hand low between us, though, it's not long before he decides to open up and give in, and it's pretty obvious that he's glad he did. I sure am.
"If I were you, Mark, I would be filming this."
I pull away slowly from a shocked and breathless Mark at the sound of a different voice. A male voice, lower than Mark's, and not as clean. Much to my lack of surprise, it's that guy, a rocker-looking guy with a smirk and a goatee, and he's got his arms around a skinny girl, a groupie girlfriend, probably.
"I mean, come on: this is closer to soft core porn than you've ever seen."
"Outside of the loft, at least" the girl adds. The couple grins, and Mark blushes wildly, trying to wriggle out from between me and the bar without hurting himself.
"Let me guess: Roger."
The guy doesn't flinch. "Yeah. Roger."
"Well, I'm Maureen Johnson, mister badass."
Mark's glaring daggers at this Roger guy, scowling in spite of the blood in his face. Roger rolls his eyes and pulls his girlfriend closer to him. "This is April." Mark's still glaring. "It's a pleasure to meet you, really," he phones in, sneering at a very red Mark. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Charmed. Whatever else. God, Mark. You're such a little mom."
"Be nice, baby," the April girl chides. "Don't embarrass Mark in front of his girlfriend." The two of them smirk again, and Roger reaches out and cuffs Mark in the side of the head.
"He's already pretty embarrassed. I don't think I can make it much worse, huh, Mark?"
"You're such an ass," Mark mumbles, easing my knee out from between his legs so that he can stand on his own. Aw. He's got to be all macho in front of his friend. That's so ninth grade, but it's cute, in an I'm-in-denial-sort-of-way.
"Fine. I'll be an ass, and you can be a sick, drunk ass." Roger's smile is at the same time cruel and fun, and I can't really see how he and Mark can possibly live with each other. "Remember?"
Mark nods, and I run my fingers back through his hair, much to April's giggling. "It's okay. He's cute, anyway."
"Oh, yeah. He's really cute when he's sick." Mark lowers his eyes, April scowls, and Roger sighs, caught between his girlfriend and a hard place. "Look, if you're going to be a cute, sick, drunk ass, at least do it at home, where the beer's free. You won't blow all your money that way, and I won't have to bail you out of jail or the hospital"
"Gee, Roger," Mark replies bitterly, "You're really one to talk about wasting money."
There's a moment of silence, and when I get the feeling that Roger's about to slug an unsmiling Mark, I bend down to kiss my boy on the cheek and throw my arms around his shoulders. "Mark! I know where we're going tonight." Without even looking at me, he whimpers. "Come on, I'm in the mood for a party, and free beer and two couples is a party."
"Maureen, that's a really bad-"
"What's wrong, Mark?" April asks, disentangling herself from Roger long enough to pinch Mark's flushed cheek. "You're not embarrassed of us, are you?"
"Don't let us intrude," Roger adds, grinning and pulling April back to him. "We don't want to see that, anyway. We'll leave you alone."
"Roger, we're not going to-"
"We're not?"
Mark's going to make his nose bleed, with all this blushing he's doing. He's so frigging shy, but I guess I'll have to work on that.
"Come on, Mark. Please?"
Avoiding Roger's smirk and my pout, Mark shrugs his shoulders and nods, sighs lightly, and stands up. He's going to be a challenge. "Do I have a choice?"
"Right now?" I grin and latch onto him, kissing his neck once or twice before tugging him off towards the door, his friends following behind. "No. You don't."
Notes: Well, I really dropped the ball at the end, but it's better than it was. I've really got to work on Maureen.
