The Perpetual -- Open

[julius]

Brief Notes:

I would like someone to thrill me.
quality > quantity
but if you've got both, hey, let's get hitched.
In case it's unclear, Josk is looking to attend the University in New york, just got of the plane from Europe, and (unmentioned) is looking for a job opportunity.

August 21, 2009

New York City; Coffee Shop

TITLE: The Perpetual




street signs and satellites do not dim when stars become bright behind hazes of a margarita-mix skyline, a jagged and haphazard horizon filling up the scent as lime green off the rocks, glinting off chrome and glass and gold – you could get drunk off of this world. You could get high, get down, get over it or try to leave like you’re not addicted to the sound, the scene, like the Perpetual isn’t a faction that everyone is attempting to enter, to begin, to belong.
And that’s the problem. These bright-eyed hopefuls staggering from the railway stations of underground and out from the thundering cathedrals of Opera have no notion of city slickers willing to line them up and pick them off like shooting shots.

The lambs roll dice and raise stakes for scraps without knowing how to win
to sin
to cheat
to lie
while they come in knowing how to dream
to scream
to pray
to cry,
and them’s the breaks. They bet everything and lose it all, and well
we’re not all destined for destiny.

Josk looks like a dreamer, like a virginal proposition for a predator (what is he, they may wonder? poet? actor? painter?), gazing up at giants and industry and business with a hung jaw and drawn eyes as the crowds pass by and shove him, as more lights flicker on and blind him, as urgency honks and opportunity knocks
him out of the way. He re-saddles the black messenger bag slung over his shoulder and shrugs them off, youthful face striking a half-hearted grin for apologetics over his shoulder and receiving no notice – it’s not what he expected because this isn’t a movie. There is no deletion of irrelevant conversation or whirring of speeding traffic to make way for meaningful, fitting music to suit his soul. There isn’t a director directing the moments to pan in on specific objects – the octagonal ‘STOP’ versus the red blinking hand meant to say ‘nay’ versus the one-out-of-three color scheme to ‘GO’ (to leave – what are you waiting for?) – and back to a close-up reaction from him (but he doesn’t know what they are expecting). There aren’t commercials or ‘CUT – SCENE 5, TAKE 3’ so that he can catch his breath and breathe out the fog, the exhaust, the luminous tubing of neon contortioned into

OPEN

McDONALD’S

DRIVE IN

COCKTAILS

CAFÉ – MOTEL

FLASH

FLASH

flash. The Perpetual.[/center]
The steady stream of people disorients him, infatuates him, makes him walk the boardwalks at their pace and curve street corners or cross intersections when the majority pulls; it’s unison, the way they join in and break away and he, lost, flows. ‘They must be going somewhere. They must have some idea. I have no idea.’ His narrowed tunnel vision is beginning to notice the signs aside from the obvious, beyond the electric grids and digital lines like warnings (CAUTION) (DO NOT TOUCH) (PERSONNEL ONLY), suggestions (BUY ONE; GET ONE FREE) (LADIES’ NITE) (BE BOLD; BE BEAUTIFUL), and restrictions (MEN; WOMEN) (NO ANIMALS) (21 OR OLDER) which, like his actions in movement, happen with automatic precision. Everyone is hesitant at the word ‘caution’. Everyone denies physical contact and entrance when warned. Everyone considers the bargain, considers the women, considers themselves beautiful for boldness. Everyone would be embarrassed for mistaking ‘men’ for ‘women’ or for intruding with an animal without reason. Everyone notices the barrier of age. Everyone gets the witty commercial. Everyone reads over ‘SALE’ and the next moment, becomes illiterate at the ingredients, but not to the warnings, the suggestions, the restrictions, the elicit instructions of Masters they have never known, but serve

the Perpetual. You have no freedom. You give in, all the time. You obey the signs, the automatic, the autodrive that has driven Josk to where he doesn’t know anything or anyone, and to where he has no choice but to take in all the opinions, influences, words into his body until his head whirls with chatter and percussion and noise noise noise and just sound sound sound that the ruckus shuts its ears to – too much, far too much
of these thick, syrup concoctions – intoxicants.

He was so intent to fill himself up

that he didn’t care of what

he took in.

Gasping, surfacing from the euphoria overdose, he retreats to the entrance of a dark alleyway where his mind can rest. Drunken, he watches the world dance and vibrate and move and views what it looks like in various radiances, glowing greens like beer bottles held up to his eyes. It makes him queasy, uneasy, and his hands take to his pockets for a cigarette to loosen his jarred nerves when he spots the ‘no smoking’ sign in front of him, graffiti glossing over the importance. He breathes slowly and puts his bag down. He gets his back to the wall and rests his hands on his knees, feeling jeans. He registers the dark for darkness to his left and the light for insanity to his right, calculating which path to take.

You have no freedom.
You give in.
You obey.

Perhaps free will appears nonexistent only because you follow rules you’ve never questioned

but Josk isn’t free.
His eyes fasten on a non-playing saxophonist across the sea of passing beams (he stands out because he doesn’t glow, he isn’t lit up, he isn’t moving), his charred, sun-beaten skin aging him to ancient and sunglasses suggesting a bad visionary. A cardboard sign that reads ‘will play for change’ is propped up against the drug store’s front wall behind him and prompts a passing woman to bend and drop change in the waiting tin can. The musician, a man of his word or a simple victim of the sign, brings the money closer to his feet, licks his lips, lifts his instrument, and Josk becomes angry.

‘How obscene!’ he thinks as the man washes him with guilted blues, ‘To play like that, out in the open, exposing himself…’ like it’s something wicked like being naked, or some crude, shocking act that makes a few passerbys stop, stare, fold their arms and judge. Maybe he was once a bright-eyed hopeful lamb with jazz in his bones, but had his entire frame crushed by some ten ton lion – I hear they aim for the jugular. I hear they fill up the custodials with men who once wanted Broadway, and motels and bordellos and strip clubs with women who wanted ballet or a big break or some other limelight to get them high. That’s the problem, the want of satisfaction, gratification, the Perpetual – a faction
that everyone is attempting to begin, to enter, to belong, because it would mean being immortal – quote me.

Sign (noun) : a willingness to find meaning in things greater than they are
The Perpetual (noun - proper) : the continuous; those who are worth quoting; those who are controlling; immortal

Like signs! Like street-talk and language
beat-boxing the commands no one is aware were delivered, but sure as hell cannot deny, cannot reject, even if conscious. It boils down to coming here, to New York, wanting sweet oblivion to forget whatever they had before, then finding the problem, finding that the Perpetual exists only in the A-list, only in Michelangelo, only in Jesus and God and novelists, and they did not have the backbone for this
body-caving,
spine-breaking work

for instance, being a street performer, selling your body, your soul – striping
in the presence of people who are impermanent, will carry on, will forget you, that you are homeless, hungry, oh so fragile and likewise temporary. They will think, regardless of truth, that you will buy alcohol to imitate what you actually wanted…
which shouldn’t be curious, considering (NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE).

But obsessing over hypotheticals can cause it to become your reality.

Josk reenters the stream, his bag shouldered, his head down, his body taking blows and giving them back as he fights the flow, wanting desperately to be on safe, solid ground. He pushes away from that man’s sound, plucking at his heartstrings with such a ferocity that it could snap them, and there would be nothing holding him together anymore. ‘Hold it together, Crow.’ He shakes his head and says that they are not the same, that his dreams are realistic, that higher education has definite merit whereas hoping to become famous is a gamble, a sham so venal that angels could find themselves encased in entrapment.

But he doesn’t know where he’s going. He doesn’t know what he wants. New York University? Then what? There is something big that he is missing, a fundamental element of humanity that eludes clarity, and is just him guessing. Most people have this emptiness, but some lose it, some die with it, but no one is born with it. It’s all intelligence, consciousness, lucidity. Absinthe! he
is not old enough, not in America. A bell jingles, signaling his entrance to a small, quaint coffee shop where the door bars city hums so that they become mere static, echo, white noise. He sighs. He wants to smoke but they are inside. He approaches the counter but catches himself in the one-way mirror; it is plexiglas, but the fluorescent lighting outdraws the outside landscape, making it black with contrast aside from the fleeting, bright intensities of coloration.

It’s him, standing there with the stance of a doe-eyed dreamer. His eyes are muckish-green and trusting, his dark hair is careless and juvenile, his bag suggests a novice or newcomer, and his clothes (jeans, a tight, dark blue tee that speaks “WELL LADIES, it ent gonna suck itself” underneath an open black coat reaching just short of his thighs) sums him up as teenage or college-affiliated. The tattoos are visible at his neck, his hands, and he wonders what they say about him.

He shrugs it off, pretending he doesn’t give a fuck, and faces the register
and the signs: free coffee, specials, coupons, magazines, and the wide selection of all the different ways of mixing imported ingredients with vanilla, chocolate, raspberry
of which we plead illiteracy.

The worker asks him what he wants, and he doesn’t know what to say.

‘Make me Perpetual’

[ameliae]

It must not be easy, she considered, being new in such a large place that demanded your competence. It must, she considered once more, be enough to make one run back to where they came from to see all of the regulars of the city making their way so easily though such a congested mind-fack sorry excuse for a city. Sure, New York City had all anyone could ask a place to offer, but where was the fun in that? Wasn't half the fun travelling those backroads to nowhere to get to that coffee shop that sold that one mix you loved so much? To find the mall two hours away when you hadn't one near you? Where was the fun in having it all on the tips of your fingers? Lo didn't see it, but that didn't mean that New York was wearing on her. Of course, she'd rather live somewhere less busy, somewhere that didn't offer everything she needed within the two blocks around her home, but with the work she did and the son she had who was so young, familiarity and having it all just an arm's reach away had it's advantages.

This specific coffee shop was a regular stop for Lo and her son, although today he did not accompany her. He was at home with the sitter, whom Lo did not trust one bit. The young mother trusted no one at this point after all that she'd seen and all that she'd done. Hell, in some cases it was hard to trust herself, but she knew better than to think like that. It was that sort of thinking that drove people to do crazy things-- self mutilation, drug addictions, up and leaving to go somewhere unfamiliar and new so futile attempts could be made to change one's self overnight with the vanity of no one watching. Lo knew better than to let the thoughts get the best of her, although she was always deep in thought and always a step ahead of the game.

She didn't look at all like your typical New Yorker, but at this point what was typical? The city was filled with so many different names and faces, colors and voices. . . Nothing was typical here. Diversity was typical, and in that sense, Lo could be considered the most typical of all.

The girl was more pale than you might expect one to be. So pale, in fact, that one might momentarily consider her to be a creature of the night. She was not living in immortal bliss, though she rarely roused during the day unless her work required it of her. She worked during the night and therefore saw very little sunlight-- part of the reason that she absolutely had to have a babysitter for her young son. He didn't need to live that sort of life, or maybe he did. What did Lo know? But the boy saw the light on a daily basis and played, learned, developed and soared above the others his age.

Her skin color was just one of the things that set her apart, nevermind that you could see every vein in her body. Her skin was not made of tracing paper as one might conclude; Transluscent so that you could pick out every pulse, every line blood travelled though to and from her heart. Her hair matched her skin. Naturally it was so pale white that sometimes she mistook it herself for being a part of her flesh. There was no change between her face and her ponytail, no difference in colour. Might she be albino?

She shoved the oversized white shades onto the top of her head. They did their job, holding the hair back out of her face. Her eyes were crystalline blue, almost white except for the deep cerulean linework around the edge of her irises. Startling, but typical for the city if we're still considering diversity as the control here.

She was dressed rather oddly, though, not wrapped up to protect her skin from the wind. No scarf wrapped around her neck, and she wasn't dressed as a businesswoman or a student. Looking at her, one wouldn't guess her to be a mother, either. She was sickly skinny-- anorexia, much? No, this wasn't her problem, though one might coin it so. Her upper half was wrapped tightly in a bone-hugging black tee. Strapped across her back was a holister of some kind, though empty. Her lower half was completely covered in black pants that looked as though they gave her barely any room to move, although they weren't considered "skinny". . . More so "straight-lined". Another set of empty holisters hugged her thighs on either side, and a badge was clipped to her snugly fitting belt. It shined that sick brassy-gold of law enforcement.

Lo was smugly content in her appearance. She looked like a night-cop, on the force with NYPD's best, though if anyone looked close enough they'd read something about special forces on her badge. Typically the badge would be worn on the shirt, but Lo didn't go by the rules. Lo wasn't one of those people that felt the need to follow the law, the signs. She never found herself curious about the latest bargain and certainly never adhered to the unspoken social restrictions.

She wore no makeup today, and looked as though she was either getting ready to go on or had just come off her shift with "the force." Neither could be farther from the truth. Sure, she'd made a stop in to her "office," not so many hours ago, but she was not working for the police force this afternoon. Her radio snug at her belt, her ears open for the next call. Who would be the next she'd stop? Who would pop up tonight? She could never tell, and with the newfound information on the last she'd tried to take out a few weeks ago, she was more than ready to jump at the next chance to stop the underground evil of the city.

Firm, quiet steps brought her into the coffee shop, although she couldn't hide her arrival completely thanks to the bells that jingled when the door opened. A young, tattooed man was at the counter, she noted, and seemed unsure of what order he'd place. The cashier taking care of him seemed to know that, too, and turned to Lo instead. "The usual?" She asked the woman with some amount of perkiness that was completely unneccessary. "No," she answered firmly, too assertively. "Big mug of raspberry cappuccino?" she requested instead. Her voice was thick with Russia, something she hadn't been able to break herself of in the two years she'd lived here. Slowly she walked up to the counter, drawing a card out of her back pocket with just a glance at the man beside her. "Where's the little one?" The cashier asked nosily. Why was it that people always had to address change? Could they not be content in the change of pace? Did it make them indesirebly uncomfortable for something so small to be different? "At the park, with the sitter," she hummed quietly, swiping the card through the machine in front of her. "Oh," the cashier replied quickly, her cheeks blushing with embarrassment that she'd even asked. Tully didn't come with Hehlo all the time. . . It was rather silly to have made such an ordeal of it. "Mmm," Lo hummed, turning toward the man.

"Excuse me for cutting," she said sweetly, with that face that you couldn't be mad at. "Try one of the toffee lattes," she suggested with an honest smile across her lips. Her face was gentle, much in contrast to the rest of her physical appearance. "This girl knows her coffee," the cashier piped in. "Here every day!" Lo shot her a grin that shut her up and made her go back to straightening up the counter. "Stay away from the black of any kind. . . Tastes, how do you say. . . Charred?' She chuckled and slid her card to the cashier. "On me," she smirked, wandering off slowly to her usual seat in the back of the shop.