A solitary figure walks with purpose into a dour, gray meeting room. He is greeted by a few empty chairs. He will make this his abode for the day. A few strange figures walk by wondering who might be in there. They hear silence perhaps. Or maybe what they hear is thoughts bouncing off the walls. Some think he might be that hotshot young executive they see in the movies. Others think he’s just some intern, soon to be gone and forgotten.
He is young but not for much longer. His face is childish, and yet so mature looking. He is hard and yet you get the sense he might be tender somewhere deep inside like some prickly Sabra pear. His hair’s jet black like those fierce little eyes, combed somewhat haphazardly to the left side, his better half. You’d better believe a bottle of cologne rests somewhere in his laptop bag nestled between a charger and a notebook. You see, he’d like a girl to stop dead in her tracks to admire the small king that he is. Maybe one did and he didn’t notice. Life happens that way sometimes. He tries his best to capture in verse the dampness of a woman's lips pressing gently on his as faithfully as one can without having tasted such a thing. Deep down inside, he knows that such a thing cannot be, for fate has filed in favor of him remaining a ghost, visible only to those with eyes to see. And those, I assure you, are few and far between.
He has a little red book of verse containing the doctrines of the new man, or maybe it’s just the ravings of a maniac whose collared shirt and polished black shoes give him the perfect disguise of normalcy. Maybe it’s the normalcy that chipped away gently at his sanity. There is a hint of the insane in his fast paced semi-trot of a walk that goes everywhere and nowhere. He works furiously, and then not at all. His efforts come in spikes. Meetings come and go as he strives to say as little as possible, his mind split between the dreams of grandeur and the nightmare of the ordinary world that is. His mind is just going clear from the youthfully exuberant dreams of changing the world.
He loves watching people, but only in the way that zoologists love watching animals. They are mysteries to be solved perhaps, or simply annoyances to whizz past in a fit of unexplained rage that goes pathetically unnoticed. There are times that he gets so fed up with the world. But there are images to keep and nobody to truly confide in, so it’s best to keep moving and let the sweat drain it out. He’ll comfort eat if he must but he’ll keep moving because to come to a final stop would be to shatter the image that he’s got it figured out. He’s got the “smart” stigma to live up to. That is a prison of his.
He distracts himself with math, chess, literature, philosophy and some other things. He wonders what other, more successful people might be up to. Do they even remember him? Maybe it’s for the best that he’s lost contact. Can’t try to keep up with Joneses if there are no Joneses to keep up with. So he forges a path of his own; a left-handed path leading somewhere. Some say it might be hell but he’s not so sure. He thinks they’re just being paranoid. He thinks it leads to the same void they're going to, just through a more scenic route. His feet are blistered from walking, but cars are expensive. Besides, time goes slower and space feels less bent that way.
He is an alien. He’s from here but really from there. He’s erudite and foolish all the same. He wonders if that olive skinned beauty, sweet as can be, can be that for him. At least in a dream or a poem, she can, unwittingly. He wonders why the world ignores him and his art. But he also kind of likes it. In a way, he’s free, whatever that word means.
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