I am because You are

I am because You are

           “Yes, I understand that…no you don’t need to remind me.” An “I love you; you know?” emitted from one end of the phone, waiting to be reflected. “I … need to go. I’ll talk to you soon”. As she hung up the phone and folded her hands around her furrowed brow, a slight imperfection in her makeup became more apparent under the diner’s hanging light.

           She sat alone in the corner booth, her essence expunged of all pretension. Each bite she had taken out of her morning glory muffin seemed methodical, yet the crumbs told a different story. She didn’t notice me watching her every move, examining from afar as if she were a Monet, appearing to change form depending on the viewer’s angle. Her eyes fluttered from her phone, towards the entrance until darting back sourly in accordance with the muted buzz.

           At one end of the spectrum exists those who live life like a Toyota with a dent in the bumper, on the other end are people like her, pure in every form yet guarded by a veil of mysticism as to how they haven’t yet been jaded by life.

           I began to notice her about two weeks prior, the first time when she emerged from a rainstorm, soaked, yet unbothered by the damp nature of the events. She sat in the same booth each time, only drinking water with some dissolvent added from her pocketbook and a saucer holding the muffin of the day. It was quite paradoxical to see someone eat a muffin at night, surrounded by hamburgers moonlighting as hockey pucks and catcher’s mitts pretending to be medium-rare steaks, yet the aesthetic did not misplace her.

           A bell chimed as the front door swung open, revealing a taller, older man dressed far too pretentious to be comfortable sitting amongst the working-class patrons. He walked with purpose towards the corner, simultaneously drawing the attention and ire of the girl. I could not decipher what was said, but the terse sentence sprung her from her seat and into her coat as he laid a crisp twenty-dollar bill underneath the still half full glass of water.

           They seemed to teleport through the night, only visible by the illumination of the streetlights, cloaked by the moonless night. I followed them for roughly three blocks until they came upon a motel where the key from the man’s pocket made it clear this was not only prearranged, but habitual. She was skirting through the night and into the room, comfortable in her ability to blend into the peripherals of society.

           How could I have been so wrong in my judgements about her? She had presented herself as a façade of old-money wealth or royalty, too incumbered with her own dreams to be sucked into reality, the type of person who would rather never be born than to die in blue jeans, yet here she was allowing any man with fool’s gold to lease her. I resorted to using imagination where knowledge lacked; trying to piece together the puzzle of her life, desperately searching for an empathetic anchor I could rely on to once again find common ground with this vixen. In this moment, I could not differentiate my disappointment in her and my anger in society for allowing a masterpiece to rot in its unkempt claws.

           The moon had been exposed through the dissipated clouds by the time she shut the door behind her, looking nearly identical as to when she entered apart from the smudge of haphazardly applied lipstick emulating the Joker, protruding from the corners of her mouth. Taking a quick glance at her phone, she released an exasperated breath before using her jagged fingernail to reappropriate her disguise. She continued into the night, following Charon deeper into Hades. I felt it much less appropriate to cast aspersions when she was visible, her silhouette reminding me why I had grown in fascination with her in the first place.

           She tapped away with a certain aggravated ferocity on her keyboard before the door to the townhouse opened. A man who could’ve been a dead ringer for Patrick Bateman greeted her inside, holding a glass full of smug presumption in his right hand. The paned door removed them from my vision, yet again beckoning me to throw stones at her glass house.

I grew more concerned with the how rather than the why. There is a constant inertia impacting us from every direction, each side-eyed glance, each backhanded compliment, each night spent alone watching re-runs of a bygone sitcom while microwaving the last cup of noodles praying the bear in the bedroom doesn’t wake up. Lying within the how is where I found my answer. Sex is not an activity, it’s not a thing we as carnal creatures do rather it’s a place we go. It becomes a shared escape from reality, a shuttle beyond conscious thought, directly headed into the orbit of the subconscious. He may be fixated on kissing down the nape of her neck, nibbling on her earlobe as he whispers retold lies, all the while she is allocating the money to the electric bill that’s been a mainstay enough on her countertop, you’d think it came with the apartment. People don’t cheat in pursuit of another person; they seek to be another person. She existed as an unfamiliar entity behind these various closed doors, easing my mind that the girl I saw in the diner was not the same as the one wrapped in this stranger’s arms.

I had given up hope that she may leave in a decent manner, and the early morning mist began wetting the top of my head. I headed back to the diner, searching for solace in the bottom of a ceramic mug. Witnessing an interaction between two people leads to an illusion of collusion. Two people may be kissing, but each pair of lips tells a different truth. I may have traced her steps through the night, but it was merely empirical observation, not driven by desire to be the man behind the curtain.

Sitting back down in the booth from where my journey had begun, I felt a sense of dread. Would I be able to look over into the corner and meet her gaze without contaminating the ideas of her dichotomous perception? Perhaps this night was not meant to discover her, but rather myself. Was I merely projecting insecurity onto her in avoidance or were my qualms telling of my own accordance to self-worth?

I had become lost in thought, not realizing there had been a turnover in the waitstaff. Pushing my empty mug towards the end of the table, a beacon signaled for an imminent refill. The waitress waddled over with a steaming pot, filling to the brim, her apron soaking in some of the backsplash from the closing of the lid. As she moseyed over to the only other patron in the diner, I contemplated how she must be at home, where she had the choice of who and what to serve. Perhaps she preferred to be the one being served, not bringing her work into her home. Maybe a person is whatever room they are in.

Peering out through the italicized letters on the window, into the streets brightening in the dawn, the girl with the expensive fate appeared, waiting at the bus stop. Nobody around her suspected anything out of the ordinary yet I now understood the universal truth of Ubuntu.

I am what I am because she is what we all are.