The Prestidigitator

I’d be lying if I told you that I haven’t thought about you since. It creeps on me during the strangest of times. I wouldn’t call it painful but it certainly is far from desirable, the reminiscing. Remember Almora? We talked about it; we spent the entire night under the influence of what may or may not have been hashish, discussing isolation and taxes. I remember because you mentioned it was too cold to be pondering meaninglessness.

You joked about how Zarathushtra may have been just a mad man suffering from some variation of cabin fever. In hindsight, I doubt it. The overman, we concluded, was a farce. We laughed at our seeming cleverness.  And I cannot help but wonder if that night had anything to do with what happened after. Did it?

No, don’t answer that.

I concede that a year is a long time. I do not wish to bring up the unpleasantness but I want to tell you that I’ll take you up on the offer. I’d rather spend a year away from this noise with you. In isolation. We can still prove that the overman is a collective.

I’ll hang up now.

I counted seven of them; passed out on the floor surrounded by smoking paraphernalia and empty jello cases. The faint strain of a Marvin Gaye song came from somewhere in the decrepit apartment.

“What the hell does your boytoy want, Gwen?”

Gwen motioned me to follow her in.

“This is the guy I told you about Stu. He’s the one who wants….”

“Yeah yeah.”

Stu walked in from the toilet, wiped his hands on his khakis and plopped himself on the stained couch. The room reeked of cannabis and urine. There were copies of High Times, Extreme Golf and back issues of comic books I’d never heard of strewn about. In one corner of the room, there were giant stainless steel boxes that had wires going in and out of them. Temperature controlled vaults. Nonetheless, the place was the antithesis of what I had expected. Weren’t these people supposed to be a bit more, disciplined?

Stu sized me up and let out a condescending chuckle. I took that he wasn’t too impressed. I looked over to Gwen who seemed to be showing no emotion. Enter paranoia.

“I told you I wouldn’t sell to any wannabe latte sipping yuppie after last time Gwen. Why do you bring these little fuckers over?”

I tugged at Gwen’s sleeve but she didn’t seem to notice. I didn’t want to inconvenience the man any further. He probably had vegetative substance to get back to.

“He isn’t like the others Stu. Besides, why do you care for what he does with it?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t care what he does with it Lady Guinevere. You do. We all do.”

“We’re not having that conversation again. Stop being an elitist prick and just give him what he wants.”

Second thoughts now. An unemployed pothead was on the verge of putting me through another bout of existential angst. And from the looks of it, it’d take more than three bottles of vodka and a Dario Argento film to fix it.

Stu seemed to be contemplative all of a sudden. He picked his nose and drifted off for a minute.

“Alright, but I don’t have it sweetheart. You’ll have to see this Chinese kid. Peng.”

He turned to me, “And no asswipe, he doesn’t live with his mother.”

Hours later, I was trying to keep pace with Gwen as we raced through dingy streets and shady alleys. Screw Melbourne, this was Australia’s best kept secret. We waited by the Indian restaurant as instructed over the phone. Peng was a lot more like I’d imagined. He looked the type. Dressed in a Green Lantern t-shirt and jeans, he walked over and we shook hands awkwardly.

He seemed shy and didn’t make much eye contact with Gwen. From what I could make of his broken English, he wanted fifty more than we had agreed on. I shrugged and gave him the money. Too exhausted to haggle.

“You very lucky man. You take care of this, okay?”

I tore open the paper cover like an impatient schoolboy. Two years. Two whole years of tracking people down, forging unlikely friendships and promising unusual favors. It all boiled down to this.

I felt Gwen’s hands on my shoulder.

“Now, about that other thing.”

Awkward glances and smiles did little to alleviate the screaming silence. She just stared at the outside world through the grimy window pane. I noticed her break into a smile now and then; memories I had no place in. I breathed in every single detail – the braided hair, the mole on her chin, the back of her neck and the rather odd looking pair of glasses she held on to.

I asked her how far along she was with her graduate school applications. She went on about about how difficult her day job made it to devote enough time to anything else; about how adulthood made childhood dreams seem naive. Time, we both agreed, was a commodity in short supply. She, like me was going through a crisis of sorts. But then again, my life had been one crisis after another ever since I turned twelve. She sullenly mused on how our parents had it easier; competition was less fierce and expectations weren’t so unreasonable.

Nothing brings two people together like shared angst. From there, conversation became easier. We flitted across politics, inflation and the recession. We shared a cigarette as we delved into the macabre.

As smoke gracefully escaped her lips, I was engulfed by sudden sadness. This would soon be over too. Another connection would be lost thanks to the inherent randomness of life. I knew then that this would be an encounter that I would later romanticize; I would invariably project my idealism onto this mediocre moment. Infatuation does that. Nonetheless, we bonded. Conversation was never sparse. She was well read and we debated on the nuances of Eco’s Semiotics and Kafka’s predicament. The subtleties of cinema were not lost on her either. She seemed to eagerly await her turn as I delivered a rather pedantic rant on the French New Wave. I can be a pretentious prick but she seemed to lap up the bourgeois pseudo intellectual display.

I could not let this slip away. Carpe mundum. As I worked through lines in my head wondering what the appropriate way to ask her out would be, she gently touched my hand and smiled.

‘You shouldn’t think so much.’

‘Well, what do you propose I do?’

‘You look like the kind of person who’d know by now.’

‘You have me figured out, don’t you?’

‘Of course, you’re a Libra right?’

And it was over before it had even begun.

He was clumsy at almost everything that required any sort of physical exertion; litheness was an unattainable pursuit. Goddamn genes. Yet, there he stood, at the edge of what he was told was a 50 meter drop. Nausea set in. It wasn’t too late to back out; but what would he tell them?

“Hey Earl, has anybody died abseiling?”

“Fifty meter drop. Death is being optimistic.” Condescending chuckle.

“What?”

“Nope. Nobody’s died.”

Taking a deep breath, he looked at the gear he had on; like a chastity belt. Everything seemed so tight and restricting. That was how it was supposed to be he assured himself. He buckled himself on to the belay device that went through a set of pulleys and other contraptions that were meant to keep him from having to depend on himself. He tried recollecting the coefficient of rolling friction and felt safer. Deep breaths, Earl kept telling him.

“You have to enjoy the moment man, it’s pointless doing this otherwise.”

“Hey Earl, I think my legs are shaking. Is that going to be a problem?” Beads of sweat made their way from his forehead to his lips.

“Self awareness is the key.”

“What the hell am I supposed to be aware of?” He slowly leaned back and felt the rope tighten around his waist. Craning sideways, he took in the view. It was a long way down.

“You aren’t a separate entity. One with the rock. One.” Tree hugging bastard.

“Earl, I think I want to come back up.”

“You’re not coming back up. Lean back and trust the rope. Ten year olds do this, you little shit. Work your fingers through the buckle and slowly loosen your grasp on the rope. You won’t fall.” A beat. “If nothing, you will have learnt something about yourself today.”

“Right.”

He did as he was told and felt himself being lowered. Confidence rushed in from nowhere. He let a little more rope go and swung wildly scraping his knee on a jutting rock. Great day to wear shorts. He paused for a minute to collect himself. People do this everyday. Why was he making this seem so hard?

As he felt warm blood trickle down his knee, he suddenly felt more alive; more determined to see this through. Sometimes, all it takes is a knee-scrape. On his way down, he bruised himself a couple of times more but was no longer perturbed. Pain was a only a sensation, he told himself. He smiled at his borderline masochism.

Feet on hard earth again, he felt the rush of accomplishment, fleeting as it was. Sun beating on his face, he looked back to where Earl was.

“Hey Earl, I want to do this again.”

“Climb back up then.”

Carefully unkempt twenty somethings with guitars standing next to bright red and blue boxes; another new indie band promoting cheerful nihilism. Methodically flipping through the pages once every two minutes, I thought to myself about what a creep I was being.

From the corner of my eye I watched her purse her lips to hum a tune; Damien Rice. What is it about a girl humming Damien Rice that never fails to arouse? Standing at the counter, she seemed oblivious to the evening commotion, a disposition that I was drawn to. The pretense of seeming interested in the stacks of music and pop culture journals was wearing thin. It was only a matter of time before someone at the counter realized I was not actually going to buy anything.

As I tried forming sentences from a random array of words in my head, he walked in. Quite an entrance, even turned a few heads in the process. I grinned not giving the slightest hint of displeasure and proceeded to return his rather enthusiastic wave. It was hard pretending to listen to him go on and on about coming to pick someone up. Or something. I managed to shrug, sigh and nod wherever necessary. Tilting my head ever so slightly towards the counter, I watched her tip over a can of coffee beans. Our eyes met and she gave one of those embarrassed smiles; I smiled back. I think. She exclaimed, ‘Best day ever’ to someone else at the counter.

I touched his shoulder politely stopping him mid sentence and managed a hurried goodbye. Too much pressure; I had to leave. Maybe another day. Nevertheless, I surprised myself by making a detour to the counter. She looked up and for about two seconds, I had nothing to say. Then, ‘I’ll have a orange juice.’ Fuck. An orange juice. An orange juice.

She smiled, one I’m assuming they taught her when she signed up for work. ‘That’ll be two fifty’. A false sense of confidence rushed over me by the time I reached into my purse, ‘You spilled a can of coffee beans, didn’t you?’ Way to go. That was as smooth as any opening line.

‘Yeah…I tried forcing the lid open and the entire thing just came off’, she was still smiling.

‘You come in on weekends huh?’

‘Mondays and Tuesdays, mornings and then weekends…wait…how do you know when I come in?’

‘No I just see you on…relax I’m not stalking or anything’. Exit false sense of confidence.

She grinned like a school girl. We had nothing to say to each other. She handed me the orange juice, ‘Thank you! You have a good night.’

‘Sure…you too.’

Making my way out, I couldn’t help but smile. Five weeks and so much progress. Glancing back for the last time, I watched him give her a peck on the cheek. She smiled. Not the one she gave me. Happier.

Epiphanies are dime a dozen; even while packing stuff into boxes. Nomadic exasperation perhaps. I’ve realized I have just a single pair of jeans; that too, one that hasn’t been washed in a couple of months and has been worn more times than it was designed for. All my t-shirts have insignias of marginally obscure cartoons a la Thundercats, comic book characters and band logos. I live in my own little delusional biosphere; oxygenated by seemingly intellectual literature, obligatory rock and indie music, cinema and distorted nostalgia. I pretend to care about things I don’t and am apathetic to the things that may matter. I lift lines from films hoping people won’t notice. I have nothing original to say; And now I learn that I am a cliche. Not a beautiful and unique snowflake. Organic decaying matter.

I’ve been told I act far too old for my age as many times as I’ve been chided for not growing up. In all likelihood, I’ll be that guy who hits 40 and still thinks he’ll make it in a band. Will mediocrity be the result of my struggle for a non conformist higher ground?

And today, she calls me a hipster. There is nothing that soothes the soul like being reduced to a stereotype. Nothing.