Love at First Sight

By ‘Negrills’ jerk chicken shop, in the recently developed Jamaicatown district of New York, I walked past a girl who was at least partly passable as ‘The one.’ Everything in Jamaicatown is symmetrical and bright. The color red pops like the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Everything is designed to look old and a little battered. I like it here because it’s quiet. No startling traffic, nothing alarming.

This girl, there was nothing extraordinary about her. Her auburn hair was tousled, and hung longer on one side. She smoked with subtle inhalations, as though the smoking were a chore or that she was smoking to look cool. I actively dislike a girl smoking close to me, but from afar it looks cool enough to be enticing, like the ‘romantic’ city of Paris, until you realise the whole place smells of sewage. 

     Everyone else just walks past her, faces glued to phones or jogging with some kind of miniature dog tucked into a chest pouch. The air smelled of chicken and falsehoods. She wore what looked like, and what I hoped were Tommy Hilfiger dungarees, but with my eyesight could just as easily have been a Jonny Tillfinger bathrobe. Denim reminds me of mechanics, mechanics remind me of cars, cars remind me of oil. That nauseating smell of oil, that gets you all light headed. One searching little flame. One enticing little oil slick. 

She wasn’t as young as the others, probably about thirty. But I saw from a short distance she was definitely the one. I glimpsed a purity in her that I lost a long time ago, or perhaps never even had. I believe in only two things. Osmosis and Dracula. 

I stole glances at a rate the Hamburglar would pocket beef patties. That’s my poetical way of saying I stared at her. There’s a real power that it is only me who knows this, and everything else that followed. 

I’m sure the type of girl you like possesses certain qualities, perfectly threaded eyebrows, a faux innocence that hides their true nature, or soft opinionless lips. I like a girl who can close a drawer with her hips and not look stupid. I’ll often find myself driven to distraction by an unkempt lock of hair that falls just a fraction out of place. It is in these features that her purity lies. An unwittingly neglected feature that tells me all I need to know.

I have no way of knowing how well this girl can close a drawer with her hips, and if so how gracefully she’d do it. But I suspect she would be perfect. 

A small redheaded boy wearing a Jamaican flag themed doo rag appeared in front of me and pointed directly at my face, ‘Hey mommy, it’s a pirate.’ My moment was ruined. He reminded me of Chuckie from ‘Child’s Play’. Good movie. Relatable.

‘Hurry along now Tommy.’ His mother furtively ushered him along before the ‘strange man’ (me) could presumably reveal to Tommy the real contents of a sausage, or something equally as harrowing.

All children are monsters in my experience.

So much for my peace and quiet.

A couple of days later I told Bertie Bear, ‘I saw my 100% perfect girl the other day in Jamaicatown.’

‘Hot was she?’

‘Not really, just something about her.’

‘A prawn then?’

‘Huh.’

‘You know, when they’re ugly as fuck but they got a good body, so you remove the head.’

‘Remove the head? No nothing like that.’ 

‘You bang her? Some girls are into the old pirate look.’

‘No I didn’t even speak to her.’

‘I expected more of you Sergeant.’’

‘It’s Bobby Bear now.’

I returned around the same time the next day, mid afternoon, in the vain hope that the pure one would be in the same spot. I assumed that she must work at Negrills to just be hung around outside smoking.

She wasn’t outside so I guess I was buying some chicken to cover up my true intentions. It suddenly occurred to me that I might need Jamaican dollars. My palms began to sweat. I’d never even been to Jamaica, but I was convinced that I was there in that moment. You don’t normally see palm trees in New York. I composed myself and reminded myself where I really was. I stepped behind a tree, like a child playing hide and seek. I imagined a whole scenario where I went to pay with the wrong money and everyone in the store stood and laughed at me. It was ridiculous. I waited and waited, to see if she emerged, fully conscious that this was ‘stalkerish behaviour’ but simultaneously conscious that no one ever really paid attention to me. At 13:03 she did. Not 13:00 hours. Not 13:30. A woman who lives on her own terms. An angel.

We should perhaps get into my ‘origin story’ to save any confusion. I am what is referred to as a ‘dud bear’. Basically a spoiled little brat entered the ‘Build a Bear’ store one day and started making demands as to what she required in her custom made bear. The gappy toothed little devil began spouting off demands, ‘My bear has got to be bigger than all the bears you ever made. I want him to have a tee shirt that says my name on it in big red letters. I want him to have one ear, one eye, one arm and he can have two legs. He needs to have a pirate hat so i can play the boat game with him and my Barbies. I want him to always be smiling and i want him to have green eyes. I want to be able to poke him in the belly and make him say ‘I love you’. I want to throw him against a wall and show my friends. His favourite food will be meat and he will watch Kardashians with me. Every season.’ Her foppy haired father simply asked the store clerk ‘How much to make this happen.’ You couldn’t have pictured a more obvious scenario of a father with no emotional connection to his child and overcompensating with material goods. The store clerk’s response

; ‘I can’t promise the bear will enjoy the Kardashians but we can pretty much create all the physical requests for four hundred dollars.’ Inept father’s response: ‘Make it happen.’ Which honestly is a phrase I thought no one actually would use in real life, until I was proven wrong when I heard Scott say it on the phone to an assistant in the latest episode of ‘Meet the Kardashians’.

So, long story short. I got made. Kid was disgusted and unhappy with my existence. Father said ‘Make a better one or I’ll sue you.’ And so I was confined to the reject bin, which is where I met my good pal Bertie Bear, who, for some reason instantly became subservient to me and started referring to me as ‘Sergeant’.

I’ve subsequently acquired most of my missing parts from carefully chosen humans. Now, here I stand, with only one eye and needing another to finally feel complete.

I follow the girl from the store. I realise now it is her eye I needed. It wasn’t love at all

The best thing about living alone is that you can take as long as you wish to clean up blood.