Her Eyes

I can’t remember when it was that I realized I was obsessed with her eyes. I can’t remember when it was that I first peered into them, either. Large dark beautiful brown eyes, which are absolutely impossible for me not to look into, I stare into those eyes and I feel that at least for that second that they could possibly move mountains, cure world hunger, do the impossible. It’s those eyes that keep me awake at night and it’s those eyes that make seeing her worth the hour plus long bus and train rides.
A beautiful Latino girl that smiles at me when I do dumb goofball things like stumble and stutter over my words and lose my footing walking up a curb because she makes me nervous. She strokes my shaved head and grins at me through drunken eyes while giving me hugs of monumental affection, or at least that’s what I tell myself. She knows I’m a mess and for some reason something in her heart wants to take care of me and treat me sweetly, not mother or baby me, but just wants to make sure I do things like eat or get home okay after a night of hard drinking, sweet and genuine things, a heart that pure doesn’t come around too often, at least not in circles I’ve known.
She rocks from side to side while speaking to me, throwing in the occasional Spanish word or sentence that she forgets I can’t understand. I don’t interrupt her to let her know. Hell, it’s too damn cute. She talks on and I’m intrigued and mesmerized by those big brown eyes. She smiles and they sparkle like stars in a cloudless night sky and it’s beautiful and it makes me feel warm inside, makes me feel alive, like a real human being, unbelievable. I thought I was a monster until I saw those eyes.
She calls occasionally and we speak on the phone. The conversation is always great, but I can’t see her eyes. She doesn’t know how I feel about those eyes and I don’t know how she feels about much of anything, especially me. I run into her at parties and punk shows where I’m noticeably the only white guy there and she looks at me like I shouldn’t be there, but how can I leave when she’s shooting a smile at me and looking at me with those eyes? I can’t. I don’t. It gets me into trouble, but it’s worth it. It’s worth the hassle, worth the trouble, and hell, it’s the only reason I really even leave the apartment to go to those parties.
She puts out her cigarette and tells me I’m cute while we compare stomach muscles. We’re two shy kids that are a bit too timid to fully click, yet we carry on, for unknown reasons, possibly for hope that something really does happen. What that something is I’m sure neither of us have a clue. Or in moments like these, even care. It doesn’t matter. We’re both smiling and laughing and Lord knows if anybody deserves a laugh it’s us. She tells me I have pretty eyes and I wonder if she knows how crazy I am about hers, makes me wonder if we’re unknowingly telepathically connected. She tells me she’s basically in love with another boy, but she still flirts with me, and I’m confused and I don’t know what to make of it and I tell myself I don’t want her, but then she shoots me a glance again, a glance with those eyes, and everything previously mentioned just disappears, and we smile and we laugh, and we admire one another’s eyes. Why not?

THINGS I LIKE (Past and present:

Drinking box wine on the porch and watching the sunset with a girl.
Waking up to Japanese hardcore blaring from my stereo.
Drinking a whole pot of coffee when I should be going to bed.
Going on long walks and conversing with John.
Punk-rock shows at the Albion House.
Listening to Jawbreaker while picking dried blood off my head from the night before.
Kissing in alleyways, bathrooms, and behind dumpsters.
Eating Mexican food and drinking Budweiser with Russ and Kat.
Blasting love songs at top volume while my neighbors are screaming.
Blowing half my paycheck on records I’ll only ever listen to once.
Playground swings and wrestling with Graham after far too much to drink.
Playing guitars and singing songs with Nate.
Introducing new records to Hoezee.
Eggs and coffee in the morning with Amy.
Buying weapons for kung-fu off Ebay.
Japanese food and saki with Syd.
Taking the train to parts of the city I’ve never been to and getting lost.
Getting hugs from Adi.
Listening to Whiskeytown with Tex.
Watching Rob paint chaotically while free jazz is shrieking from the stereo.
Staring at Sylvia.
Getting cute notes and laying in bed all day with Erin.
Rolling around on the sidewalk with Anastasia while Rachel and Dawn are doing cartwheels.
Barhopping with Erica.
Drinking and smoking at Dwayne’s and beating the fuck out of a punching bag with Chris.
Riding to Milwaukee with Zyger and Wedge.
Eating bar food and drinking beer with the Darvocets and Inmates.
IHOP at 4 am with Ben and Jessi.
Playing in the punkest punk bands in all of West Michigan.
Talking about myself to Bridget.
Making fun of people with Glew.
Shaolin kung-fu.
Receiving sadistic voicemails from Russ at 5 am.
Buying records with Rich in Cleveland.
Drinking beer in the shower.
Reading in bed with Jay.
Sangria on my birthday at Mikey and Amber’s.
Huddle House Grill with Erica and Dewey.
Stealing liquor from yuppies with Rob and Mariam.
Levi’s blue jeans, bad tattoos, and punk t-shirts.
Coffee cake at midnight with Fetus and Jess.
Getting slapped repeatedly by the female bassist in Clockcleaner.
Eating pizza and drinking PBR backstage with 9 Shocks Terror and Disfear.
Breaking my only fan in the alley at the side of my apartment on a 90 degree day.
Finding a GG Allin DVD for $5.99 at Walgreen’s.
Looking at the Puerto Rican girls in my neighborhood.
Falling in love with girls I’ll never speak with.
Drinking, listening to records, and hanging out with 5 random people on a random Tuesday night.
Drunken baseball in Nate’s kitchen with beer cans and a guitar neck.
Eating a whole chicken with Ami sans silverware.
Picnics and walking through trails in the woods with Sparky and Jay.
Writing pointless fucking drivel.

Ami

Ami sits across the booth from me. She takes a large puff on her freshly lit cigarette, then exhales, sending the blue grey cigarette smoke curly-cueing in my direction. "You know. I don't even like boys. But you... you just do something to me. I'm not even sure what it is about you." she says as she takes a sip from what must be her seventh or eighth bottle of Bud Light. "Yeah? I don't know what to tell ya..." I say, while giving her a playful grin like you'd see a child do on a playground, designed to drive her crazy, as I tilt up my tenth or eleventh bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon to my lips.
"The coast is clear now!" Ami shreaks while staring off into the other room of the bar where her friend is bartending, a mere second before leaping over the table and pouncing on me while planting kisses on every line and fold of my face. See, Ami is a Brooklyn, NY native who's now calling Chicago her home. An Italian girl with a fascination of feminism and middle class society and theory, which she's currently studying in college. Ami is also involved in a serious five year relationship with another female. We're also co-workers. We're out tonight in hiding. Drinking the night away and pouncing on one another with kisses whenever the situation allows us to do so secretly. Dangerous move, as Ami's friend is a bartender at this particular bar and is quite curious of me: aka "The boy who's leg you've been humping on all night".
Ami and I went out one night after work to check out some punk-rock bands, something I'm very familiar with. Though Ami doesn't really know anybody at these shows and is somewhat of a social spaz she's getting along just fine with everybody and doesn't look a bit out of place. We're drinking beers, laughing, telling jokes, sharing occasional glances, and as we get steadily more drunk we begin staring into one another's eyes a bit too long. After the show ends we're both drunk and follow a few people out to another bar. We both decide that bars are boring though and buy a six pack to split behind the dumpster of a car parts store. It's where we're sitting when Ami announces that she wants to kiss me. I tell her that I won't stop her, but that I understand there may be some guilt there as she's the one in this situation with something to lose. She leans in and goes for it anyway. The kissing didn't stop until we got back to her place, where I couldn't spend much time as her girlfriend was due home in just a couple of hours.
Though I'm not sure you'd really ever say Ami and I were actually officially "seeing" each other we certainly did see plenty of each other, develop strange feelings for one another and hung out, kissing, rubbing, sucking, and hugging quite a bit over a three or four week period. Most of our meetings consisted of getting very heavily intoxicated in a bar, making out endlessly everywhere we were whether it be a bar, a cab, my bedroom, her couch, or her hideaway bed on her back porch. On our last meeting though, we fell asleep curled up with each other when her girlfriend walked in and spotted us. Being a somewhat reflective thinker though her partner just let us sleep and threw it ever so quietly in Ami's face the next morning over a whiskey on the rocks, making her feel terrible and very guilty, deservedly so.
Still, even after all this Ami would call me, email me, and send me random messages at work about getting together again to hang out. I realized after the close encounter where I could have had my manhood chopped off in my sleep though that we'd both be better off by calling it a day. I mean what were we thinking? We were both just products of bitterness, sadness and loneliness. She, crippled by a five year relationship she was no longer happy being in. Myself, crippled and overcome with such depression over the ending of an eight year relationship I was just forced out of. We were both using each other. Using each other because the touch and feel of another human being felt good, great even. We kept each other company. Kept each other from feeling loneliness and inevitably kept each other from facing the real problem. Ourselves. Instead of facing the problem head on we ran away from our problems with each other, drowned our miseries in drink, tried finding pleasure through physical attraction, trying with all our might to kill the pain that was in both our hearts.
We tried selfishly and we failed. A life's lesson indeed. I played with her heart and she played with her partner's heart, which may be the cruelest thing you can do to another human being. The human heart is flooded with emotions and tends to break rather easily. So why really toy with somebody else's heart when you know how much pain it may cause? Human nature? I don't have the answer to that question.
Still, there are some nights over coffee or drink where I'll peer off into the distance and wonder how Ami's doing or what Ami's doing. She has since quit the job she had working with me and it's been many months since we've seen each other or spoken. I realize we're better off not contacting each other, so I just let my mind wander and drift over the many possibilities of what she could be up to. I'd be a liar though if I said I didn't miss that smile and the way she'd stare at me with glassy eyes through the cigarette smoke in the bar.