MAN ON THE SIDE

"The King", she said.

I said "I'm right here. But I can't do the moonwalk."

Is this sadness, though? I mean, every word said appears to be heftily laden with doubt and that's doubt beyond overrule, because while to overrule is completely up to oneself, at a personal level, this doubt had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with her, or it had everything to do with me and she had nothing in it whatsoever, and since there is a nothingness and an accompanying completeness in existence, there can never be a part-clarification. And to clarify in entirety would still remain at the place where it's always been: forever a foot from me.

"Poetic romance", I said. "Heard he's so very giving that he overshoots it."

"To each, his own", she said.

This is not an email conversation. And that means I can see her, face to back, for she's always faced away from me whenever we've spoken and maybe that's because that's the part of her I admire most, not out of my fetish but her exceptionality. Particularly those moments in front of the mirror, doing something I dislike but not of her, for she is someone who could possibly turn me, making me like it, for I would somehow detach the glossiness from it, sizing it up to be purely an act of necessity, not of beautification of outer self, but as a stronghold on inner confidence that only merely shows on the surface. Or maybe I would like it only because she does it, and that would be reason enough for me.

"If that's the case", I lazed, "then you have just cracked the judicial system."

I sniffed, not letting go of the half-smile that so supposedly reinforces me and I reinforced it with this twitchy stiffening of my left jaw that had strangely become habitual. And I had just said something that made me earn a look from her, from under the very same eyebrows that help cool her burning eyes (I know, I know!).

"What of Gandhi?" she questioned. "What about Lewis Carroll?"

"What about you?"

She paused, open-mouthed, fighting with all her feminine brute to snub the smile that tried to show, as the obvious eventually came out.

"Do you do this as a profession?"

"You know I don't", I smiled.

"Well", she turned back to the mirror, still stubborn, "how much do I know then, right?"

"Well", I mimicked her. "You know about the King, you know about Gandhi, you know about Lewis Carroll, and oh, you know I'm a half-geek who thinks he's just a tenth of what you are."

I bit my lip in the same "Let's see you pull this one off" kind of way traditionalized by Ethan Hawke in 'Before Sunrise', and I was struck by this thought that told me I was pushing this whole 'Being a bundle of everyone else but myself' thing. She remained quiet, the room was dark but I could feel the heat of her breath and the rush of her blood and that made me feel so like a mosquito all of a sudden, pointlessly buzzing about her.

"Excuse me Miss Busybody", I almost sang. "Could you pencil me in?"

She laughed and laughed and laughed, and I realized that I could actually regret what I say.

"I know", I sighed, as she proved wrong an assumption of mine, being incessant with her laughter.

"Hey.." she said as she subsided. "Study beckons. I'd see you then?"

"Yeah well", I paused. "Sure."

"Ta Ta."

And she hung up.

I fell on my bed, rolled on it, punched a pillow and thought that if the best I could currently do was to quote an obvious John Mayer, then I clearly needed a life.

But then again, wouldn't she always have said the first goodbye?