A/N: We're back in canon now. This is one of my favorite chapters: Mark! He's not mine of course. Neither is the poem. PLEASE R&R you guys!
Mark Cohen, 29, Filmmaker
Ever see those t-shirts in Hot Topic that say 'I Dig Scrawny Pale Guys'? Well I'm of the opinion that whoever came up with that slogan was an intimate friend with Mark. There's no other way to describe this sweet guy. Albino fair with white blonde hair and radar point blue eyes behind his glasses, he's one of those people who's so uncool he's cool. He's shy, gentle, a little neurotic, and possesses a voice that goes back to a pre pubescent crack at the end of each sentence. He hates the first person and is edgier than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs in his room with me, but I can see he's excited by whatever is going to go down. He's sitting underneath a massive Star Wars poster in one of those cliché director chairs with his right leg jiggling profusely.
"Marky, sweetheart, do you like need a glass of water or something?" I try to bite back a smile. He shakes his head and his glasses slip off his nose.
"This is…a poem that a really awesome person showed me because it reminded them of me. It's been hanging up there over my computer for a year."
He points to the bulletin board splattered with rainbow colored pushpins. Snapshots of the others, quotes for inspiration and personal reminders decorate the wall. Mark holds up the paper with a pin sized hole in the top.
"This is a selection from 'Shooting Script' by Ms. Adrienne Rich," he smiles.
I clap my hands and give a little squeal. He positively beams.
"We were bound on the wheel of an endless conversation.
Inside this shell, a tide waiting for someone to enter.
A monologue waiting for you to interrupt it.
A man wading into the surf. The dialogue of the rock with the breaker.
The wave changed instantly by the rock; the rock changed by the wave over and over.
The dialogue that lasts all night or a whole lifetime.
A conversation of sounds melting constantly into rhythms.
A shell waiting for you to listen.
A tide that ebbs and flows against a deserted continent.
A cycle whose rhythm begins to change the meaning of words.
A wheel of blinding waves of light, the spokes pulsing out from
where we hang together in a turning of an endless
conversation.
The meaning that searches for its word like a hermit crab.
A monologue that waits for one listener.
An ear filled with one sound only.
A shell penetrated by meaning."
I clap furiously as he finishes and he goes red.
"Aw Mark!"
I lean forward and hug him around his neck. He's still beaming. I was the one who gave this poem to Mark over a year ago. I didn't really understand most of Rich's work, but this one reminded me so much of the little cameraman I had to print it for him.
"Thought you might like that," he mumbles, playing nervously with the striped scarf around his neck. "So this is my favorite poem because the person who showed it to me is really smart about these things. She said I'd like it and I did!"
I cock an eyebrow.
"Flattery earns you points, Mark, but you still have to do the interview straight."
"How about straight to the door?" he voice-cracks. I roll my eyes and muss up the puffy blond hair.
"Hey! All right, Liv. If you say so."
I smile. Score.
"How do you really feel about this poem? Let's just say this part of it in particular."
"Well to be honest," he mutters. "I really didn't understand the other parts."
I laugh.
"Yeah, tell me about it. Way too philosophical."
"We'll give it to Collins to decipher. Anyway, well there is a real reason…Every time I read this I…I think about Roger. About when he…when he was trying to get off heroin before Mimi. When he found out he was sick."
He looks down at his shoes, takes off his glasses and cleans them with his scarf. I feel suddenly as though I've done something wrong.
"We didn't have money for rehab," Mark explains hurriedly. "So it was just him and me alone in the apartment for almost a year. The first three months was just me convincing him to stop."
His voice drops to a pained whisper. He never looks up.
"Everything she said was how I felt then." He runs his hand absently over the poem. "An endless conversation. Talking to Roger then was like talking to a wall, hitting it over and over. Except this wall sometimes hit back."
I wince.
"I could go through this line by line talking about how pitch-damn-perfect it is." Mark's voice has no emotion. "But I won't. I won't."
He says it again as though I've challenged it.
"None of us will ever go back to that place. He was the rock and I was the water. We battled for a year. But eventually he got it. Eventually my meaning penetrated."
He finally looks up a little. Choking back a sob.
"How'd this even happen?" he asks me. I tilt my head. I don't understand. Mark shakes his head and waves the paper at me.
"This is incredible," he says, words in a rush. "She just wrote this down. Just wrote it. We don't know what she really was talking about but to me…To me she was right there in that room with us four years ago. I mean it's just incredible."
I smile widely, nodding. Suddenly Mark gets a glint in his eyes and leans forward toward me. He takes both my hands in his. He's the only one here with hands as cold as mine.
"You're gonna write stuff like this, Liv," he says in what could be a very firm voice for Mark. "Great stuff. You're gonna write really amazing stuff that touches people who don't even know you. I think about you too when I read this. I think about both of you."
There's a pause in which a huge lump forms in my throat. Mark and I have never been what you'd call close, not as close as Angel, Burrs or Erik, but every once in a while there's a moment like this. A moment when he shows me, in his own way, how much he believes in me.
Mark believes in everyone.
"Aw Mark!" I say again as I throw my arms around his skinny self. It sounds stupid, like it's not enough, but the way he smiles when he lets me go shows me it is.
"You're the best, spaz," I tell him. He makes a dismissive gesture with his hands and chuckles, looking away but smiling.
Suddenly we're cut off as Roger bursts into the room. Both of us start and turn around. Roger's face changes a little and he starts to back out.
"Oopes sorry I didn't know you guys were—I'll come back."
"No," I get up hastily. "No that's okay we're done." I gather up my things and give Mark a last squeeze. "Mark thanks so much." I pause, then add: "For everything."
He grins.
"I mean it, Liv. For real."
"I know."
Roger looks around confusedly in a swish of shoulder length hair.
"Whatever," he shrugs when we don't give it up. "You silent broody artists are bummin' me out."
"Bye, Rog," I sing as I leave.
Before shutting the door I hear Roger ask:
"So how was it?"
Mark says, "Cakewalk."
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