The following is an attempt to articulate a short film I was hoping to produce if I ever made it to film school. Alas, my prospects seem narrow so at least I can still write.
The fog forming on the window was the herald of changing times. Fall had, at last, given way to winter. Suddenly everyone would be wearing sweaters, standing outside would be unbearable, and no one would bother to even conceive going to the beach again for at least three months. This was Jeremy’s least favorite time of year.
The room was quiet. Having turned the AC off gave way to the special silent time when nothing in the apartment made significant noise as neither heating nor cooling was required for two weeks. It was the twilight zone of ambient indoor air temperature. The stale air, however, gave way quite easily to the smell of old fast food, empty Doritos bags, and Mountain Dew in glasses half-drunk. It has been at least two weeks since Jeremy bothered to leave his apartment, living on delivery pizza and the stockpile of snacks leftover from his roommate leaving for vacation. He had planned on restocking the pilfered vittles but was saving the guilt and remorse of replacing stolen snacks for at least a few days longer.
The sun burning through the East-facing window was agitating. It nagged Jeremy on for hours after peeking above the row of hedges and through the small tree on the edge of the property. Jeremy looked up from the rumpled pillow and skewed pile of sheets and blankets to find that it was nearly eleven. He had spent the morning falling back asleep over and over again after initially waking up at eight. There was no chance in hell he was getting up at eight.
For the next three hours he had the pleasure of falling right back into vivid dreams over and over, two distinct ones. The first was some kind of exploration in Europe, Italy to be precise now that he thought on it, with a few old friends. For some reason he had imagined he had the ability to float above the crowd as if holding his breath reduced his buoyancy. After mastering this in the dream he had used his abilities to sail above the terra-cotta labyrinth of roofs and azure canals of Venice. And now here he was covered in Dorito cheese and staring a ripe pile of half-eaten Burger King in the face.
He thrashed around for a few minutes before giving up suddenly to some unnamed urge to get outside today. He felt like he was being pulled on a string into the shower. There he sat with his mind blank for thirty minutes. He felt like shit but he could not put his finger on it. He could not give the crushing disappointment a face but it was gazing into his soul and leeching the emotions from him. He felt slightly dead but still was pressured by fate itself to get outside today. He brushed his teeth and could not bear to look at his own face in the mirror. He fixed his hair by memory even and did not bother to proofread it before leaving the house. He at least felt confident in the messy look.
Jeremy usually talks to himself. He holds small conversations where his thoughts are the point and his spoken words are the counterpoint. Often he gains tremendous understanding from these chats. Today he had hardly noticed he had remained silent. He put on a jacket – he especially liked the way he looked in jackets – and walked out the poly-plastic laminated door locking the cheap deadbolt with some difficulty. He had broken it in a fit of rage a month earlier trying to force the incorrect key through the pins and tumblers. With some jimmying it would eventually yield so he had not felt obligated to replace it. At any rate, it was a tangible subconscious reminder that life was not easy. Jeremy felt with the utmost sincerity that nothing was ever intended to go smoothly for him.
Jeremy thumbed through his keys as he stood waiting for the bus. The bitterly cold breeze was rushing perfectly along this one wide open thoroughfare and was making his throat sore. He had to keep his fingers moving to avoid them from becoming stiff. House key, bike lock key, P.O. box key, and an RFID card that allowed access to the school’s gym. Well there was another effort half-assed and too easily given up on. He wondered if his recent lack of energy was because he had not been to the gym in a while. His appetite had decreased, he felt smaller, and those polyester gym clothes he bought were entirely deadweight losses. He sort of felt disappointed in himself. Standing against the wind with the string-ties flying into his face and the streaming air combing his hair, he remembered his second dream. The tableau in front of him froze. The bus riding perfectly into the stop, the people shuffling around, the leaves rattled from the trees, all of these became a delicate photograph in his mind. A rush of feelings suddenly warmed him inside as he began to sweat. It was one mental image from the dream, but that was all it took to know in its entirety what his subconscious had cooked up for dream material.
It was a face against a black background. The hard edged features delicately covered in light brown hair with a warm smile peeking out. Short blonde hair, thick neck, awkwardly numerous freckles. The eyes were squinted in such a kind way with the left one having a strange quarter of the iris colored gold versus the contiguous green. He only knew one person with heterochromia, his old best friend from high school, Austin. The face was at last joined by a body, sitting so close within half an arm’s length. He turned to face Jeremy as his lips read, “I love you”. There was no sound, only silence. They held hands and Austin shyly closed his eyes and lowered his head to rest on Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy was so happy he felt like crying – in the dream. The hiss of the pneumatic bus releasing its brake startled Jeremy.
He had let himself be the last one in line to enter the bus so he could enjoy the imagery recalled in his mind by his recent dream. Had he not committed to reforming the scene, he could have easily forgotten the whole thing. Maybe it would have been better to forget to a third party, but to him, the memory was intensely cherished and he would like to return to it. For now, he had to awkwardly ascend the bus stairs before the bus driver got the impression he was staying behind – which he had by releasing the brake. He showed his student ID and made way for a place to stand. He checked the time. Well, he had no schedule to keep, so he had plenty of it. The only disturbance was a few text messages from an on-again off-again girlfriend. He ignored them flat out. He then let the natural-gas fueled engine whines hypnotize him so he could return to his memory.
He was there, sitting on the edge of a tattered and rarely used pier in the late afternoon on the beach. Austin was laughing. His smile always was so infectious, it made anyone smile. Jeremy had probably told a joke; he was the one with the actual comedic talent. Jeremy could get lost in his smile; the kindness of his face, the warmth he exuded was enough to melt the heart of anyone within earshot of his off-color laugh. He remembered the touch of his skin; it was thick and not pliable but still very soft. He always liked to joke with Jeremy to get his to rub the sprinkling of fur that went from his lower abs to his sternum. Jeremy was much harrier but Austin did not seem to mind. He was so playful it was likely he admired it somewhat. The dream stream seemed to cut out there before he had to force himself to draw on real old memories. The bus jolted to a stop and his train of thought was derailed.
He clutched the yellow-painted pole as he caught his balance. He obviously was not paying attention to the situation as the bus driver had clearly overshot the stop. As his mind went blank for a moment and people squeezed by him first out, and then in, he was transfixed by his inability to recall his dream. He had totally forgotten why he had even gotten on the bus in the first place. After all, he was doing just fine staying at home and ordering shitty food. At least, he thought he was fine. That is what he always told his friends when they asked what he was doing or what his excuse was for never wanting to go out. He always dismissed any invitation quickly and simply stated he was ‘o.k.’ or ‘fine’ and that he did not feel like going out. After a few weeks they stopped the pestering and he thought this was just for the best. And now he was fine without having to ride the bus any longer. He decided to pull the stop cord for the next stop and just get out.
The stop was a small waterfront park overlooking a marina somewhat off in the distance. The beach was practically non-existent today with the high tide, so he sat in the grass and watched the world go by. Children playing with friends, families having a picnic, young upwardly mobile urban professionals walking their expensive dogs – these must have been prime examples of what normal people were like. And it troubled him so that he could not feel normal. He felt guilty in a way that he had to answer to no one but him for how he felt on the bus. He realized now in the absence of feeling what a rush of sexuality had flown through him and boiled his blood as he swayed with considerable lateral g forces this way and that on the bus. He felt this about his old best friend with whom he had no contact in over two years.
The though made him clutch a handful of grass in his fingers and nervously tear it out of the ground and run the blades through his fingers. He pressed harder and harder as his anxiety grew without even thinking or saying a word. There he was alone in the park and no one would even notice how angry he was. He pressed the grass hard until the green was like dye on his skin. He rubbed it into his shorts with utter disregard for laundry practices. A breeze rolled in and took the squished fibers from his hands and cast them back to the Earth. His face pointed to meet it and without warning he began to remember again.
Austin was turned away, the back of his head perfectly buzzed from a recent haircut exposing the freckles on the back of his neck too. In the park, a child in the distance caught Jeremy’s attention. He was picking up a stick with his friends; they traced the contours of the stick and examined the bark flaking from its decrepit from. The sunlight added a golden cast to his neon-green shirt with bright red sewing. He was sitting cross legged and his arms were folded; it was difficult to divine was he was thinking as they had both actually had quite a bit to drink and had just finished smoking a perfectly rolled joint. Two elderly black men standing on the seawall cast a line and a net respectively into the frothing surf; likely they were hoping to score a delicious catch for dinner tonight. It takes one to secure the bait, the other to reel in the catch. Out of nowhere Austin was starting to shudder. He made a muted sniffle and Jeremy grew very tense. A dark barks and Frisbee soars panoramically across the sky. Austin turned around and had tears in his eyes. He had been obviously choking them back but could not hold it any more. He was overflowing. An old woman casts out a handful of seed onto the sidewalk and the sprinkling of them landing on the pavement in a chorus of subtle chromatic inflections on the same tune. And just as Austin’s squinched face could no longer hold back the deluge of feelings, he bursted out a passionate sentence full of flying spit and discarded tears. “Don’t you love me?” He screamed. “It’s like you don’t even get it! I love you; I love you so much I just always want to be with you!” Jeremy looks away and found nothing particularly interesting to look at. He started to cry back but could not form any words. Austin was absolutely fed up after playing years of games and thrust himself close to Jeremy, laced their fingers together, and ensured their membranes perfectly matched to the point of leg and arm hair entwining. Jeremy was incredibly confused but absolutely taken. Something new, secret, hidden, and beautiful welled up inside him and he burst out into an intense spectacle. A seabird in the distance misses its catch and flies away totally unfazed. Shame about the missed meal, but he can always try again later hopefully when the seas die down. Jeremy leaned in just a little and brushed up against the scruff of Austin’s facial hair. It felt funny but so delightful; it brought a smile to his face. He looked up and met Austin’s eye line and then they both were almost in tears. Jeremy lunged forward and kissed Austin. It felt like forever as they sat with only the sun and the sea to bear witness to the time when something actually beautiful happened.
It was only a two weeks later when they went their separate ways to college. Jeremy had no idea what to make of it at the time and had become unkindly standoffish for the remainder of their time together. Austin stopped calling and Jeremy tried to make new friends. Only here, now, this moment sitting alone in the grass with no one but himself to share how powerful his feeling were does he realize what is true. Only now in the emptiness devoid of anything good that his life once resembled, playing with the broken and shattered bits of a forgotten existence that only exist as fragments of a memory does he realize what the mistake he made was. The mistake was acting in cowardice. The folly was listening to everyone else about how he should be and not looking in to himself. The voice in his head was probably not even fully his own. Now here his is, not even able to trust himself or his own feelings, so many degrees of separation away from the enchanted life he once lived. Now he is alone, watching the people contented to enjoy the beauty in each day pass him by and all he can bear to do is think of squandered beauty. If he ever got the chance, he would like to apologize. If ever he desperately hoped something would un-harden his stony heart and breathe life into his pitifully, miserably singular existence, it was now he was hoping the most. He began to sob and let the wind lick the tears from his cheeks. He was a pathetic sight. He extended his right hand, unfurled his grass-stained fingers, and waited with newfound warmth in his soul for Austin to add what was missing.
The fog forming on the window was the herald of changing times. Fall had, at last, given way to winter. Suddenly everyone would be wearing sweaters, standing outside would be unbearable, and no one would bother to even conceive going to the beach again for at least three months. This was Jeremy’s least favorite time of year.
The room was quiet. Having turned the AC off gave way to the special silent time when nothing in the apartment made significant noise as neither heating nor cooling was required for two weeks. It was the twilight zone of ambient indoor air temperature. The stale air, however, gave way quite easily to the smell of old fast food, empty Doritos bags, and Mountain Dew in glasses half-drunk. It has been at least two weeks since Jeremy bothered to leave his apartment, living on delivery pizza and the stockpile of snacks leftover from his roommate leaving for vacation. He had planned on restocking the pilfered vittles but was saving the guilt and remorse of replacing stolen snacks for at least a few days longer.
The sun burning through the East-facing window was agitating. It nagged Jeremy on for hours after peeking above the row of hedges and through the small tree on the edge of the property. Jeremy looked up from the rumpled pillow and skewed pile of sheets and blankets to find that it was nearly eleven. He had spent the morning falling back asleep over and over again after initially waking up at eight. There was no chance in hell he was getting up at eight.
For the next three hours he had the pleasure of falling right back into vivid dreams over and over, two distinct ones. The first was some kind of exploration in Europe, Italy to be precise now that he thought on it, with a few old friends. For some reason he had imagined he had the ability to float above the crowd as if holding his breath reduced his buoyancy. After mastering this in the dream he had used his abilities to sail above the terra-cotta labyrinth of roofs and azure canals of Venice. And now here he was covered in Dorito cheese and staring a ripe pile of half-eaten Burger King in the face.
He thrashed around for a few minutes before giving up suddenly to some unnamed urge to get outside today. He felt like he was being pulled on a string into the shower. There he sat with his mind blank for thirty minutes. He felt like shit but he could not put his finger on it. He could not give the crushing disappointment a face but it was gazing into his soul and leeching the emotions from him. He felt slightly dead but still was pressured by fate itself to get outside today. He brushed his teeth and could not bear to look at his own face in the mirror. He fixed his hair by memory even and did not bother to proofread it before leaving the house. He at least felt confident in the messy look.
Jeremy usually talks to himself. He holds small conversations where his thoughts are the point and his spoken words are the counterpoint. Often he gains tremendous understanding from these chats. Today he had hardly noticed he had remained silent. He put on a jacket – he especially liked the way he looked in jackets – and walked out the poly-plastic laminated door locking the cheap deadbolt with some difficulty. He had broken it in a fit of rage a month earlier trying to force the incorrect key through the pins and tumblers. With some jimmying it would eventually yield so he had not felt obligated to replace it. At any rate, it was a tangible subconscious reminder that life was not easy. Jeremy felt with the utmost sincerity that nothing was ever intended to go smoothly for him.
Jeremy thumbed through his keys as he stood waiting for the bus. The bitterly cold breeze was rushing perfectly along this one wide open thoroughfare and was making his throat sore. He had to keep his fingers moving to avoid them from becoming stiff. House key, bike lock key, P.O. box key, and an RFID card that allowed access to the school’s gym. Well there was another effort half-assed and too easily given up on. He wondered if his recent lack of energy was because he had not been to the gym in a while. His appetite had decreased, he felt smaller, and those polyester gym clothes he bought were entirely deadweight losses. He sort of felt disappointed in himself. Standing against the wind with the string-ties flying into his face and the streaming air combing his hair, he remembered his second dream. The tableau in front of him froze. The bus riding perfectly into the stop, the people shuffling around, the leaves rattled from the trees, all of these became a delicate photograph in his mind. A rush of feelings suddenly warmed him inside as he began to sweat. It was one mental image from the dream, but that was all it took to know in its entirety what his subconscious had cooked up for dream material.
It was a face against a black background. The hard edged features delicately covered in light brown hair with a warm smile peeking out. Short blonde hair, thick neck, awkwardly numerous freckles. The eyes were squinted in such a kind way with the left one having a strange quarter of the iris colored gold versus the contiguous green. He only knew one person with heterochromia, his old best friend from high school, Austin. The face was at last joined by a body, sitting so close within half an arm’s length. He turned to face Jeremy as his lips read, “I love you”. There was no sound, only silence. They held hands and Austin shyly closed his eyes and lowered his head to rest on Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy was so happy he felt like crying – in the dream. The hiss of the pneumatic bus releasing its brake startled Jeremy.
He had let himself be the last one in line to enter the bus so he could enjoy the imagery recalled in his mind by his recent dream. Had he not committed to reforming the scene, he could have easily forgotten the whole thing. Maybe it would have been better to forget to a third party, but to him, the memory was intensely cherished and he would like to return to it. For now, he had to awkwardly ascend the bus stairs before the bus driver got the impression he was staying behind – which he had by releasing the brake. He showed his student ID and made way for a place to stand. He checked the time. Well, he had no schedule to keep, so he had plenty of it. The only disturbance was a few text messages from an on-again off-again girlfriend. He ignored them flat out. He then let the natural-gas fueled engine whines hypnotize him so he could return to his memory.
He was there, sitting on the edge of a tattered and rarely used pier in the late afternoon on the beach. Austin was laughing. His smile always was so infectious, it made anyone smile. Jeremy had probably told a joke; he was the one with the actual comedic talent. Jeremy could get lost in his smile; the kindness of his face, the warmth he exuded was enough to melt the heart of anyone within earshot of his off-color laugh. He remembered the touch of his skin; it was thick and not pliable but still very soft. He always liked to joke with Jeremy to get his to rub the sprinkling of fur that went from his lower abs to his sternum. Jeremy was much harrier but Austin did not seem to mind. He was so playful it was likely he admired it somewhat. The dream stream seemed to cut out there before he had to force himself to draw on real old memories. The bus jolted to a stop and his train of thought was derailed.
He clutched the yellow-painted pole as he caught his balance. He obviously was not paying attention to the situation as the bus driver had clearly overshot the stop. As his mind went blank for a moment and people squeezed by him first out, and then in, he was transfixed by his inability to recall his dream. He had totally forgotten why he had even gotten on the bus in the first place. After all, he was doing just fine staying at home and ordering shitty food. At least, he thought he was fine. That is what he always told his friends when they asked what he was doing or what his excuse was for never wanting to go out. He always dismissed any invitation quickly and simply stated he was ‘o.k.’ or ‘fine’ and that he did not feel like going out. After a few weeks they stopped the pestering and he thought this was just for the best. And now he was fine without having to ride the bus any longer. He decided to pull the stop cord for the next stop and just get out.
The stop was a small waterfront park overlooking a marina somewhat off in the distance. The beach was practically non-existent today with the high tide, so he sat in the grass and watched the world go by. Children playing with friends, families having a picnic, young upwardly mobile urban professionals walking their expensive dogs – these must have been prime examples of what normal people were like. And it troubled him so that he could not feel normal. He felt guilty in a way that he had to answer to no one but him for how he felt on the bus. He realized now in the absence of feeling what a rush of sexuality had flown through him and boiled his blood as he swayed with considerable lateral g forces this way and that on the bus. He felt this about his old best friend with whom he had no contact in over two years.
The though made him clutch a handful of grass in his fingers and nervously tear it out of the ground and run the blades through his fingers. He pressed harder and harder as his anxiety grew without even thinking or saying a word. There he was alone in the park and no one would even notice how angry he was. He pressed the grass hard until the green was like dye on his skin. He rubbed it into his shorts with utter disregard for laundry practices. A breeze rolled in and took the squished fibers from his hands and cast them back to the Earth. His face pointed to meet it and without warning he began to remember again.
Austin was turned away, the back of his head perfectly buzzed from a recent haircut exposing the freckles on the back of his neck too. In the park, a child in the distance caught Jeremy’s attention. He was picking up a stick with his friends; they traced the contours of the stick and examined the bark flaking from its decrepit from. The sunlight added a golden cast to his neon-green shirt with bright red sewing. He was sitting cross legged and his arms were folded; it was difficult to divine was he was thinking as they had both actually had quite a bit to drink and had just finished smoking a perfectly rolled joint. Two elderly black men standing on the seawall cast a line and a net respectively into the frothing surf; likely they were hoping to score a delicious catch for dinner tonight. It takes one to secure the bait, the other to reel in the catch. Out of nowhere Austin was starting to shudder. He made a muted sniffle and Jeremy grew very tense. A dark barks and Frisbee soars panoramically across the sky. Austin turned around and had tears in his eyes. He had been obviously choking them back but could not hold it any more. He was overflowing. An old woman casts out a handful of seed onto the sidewalk and the sprinkling of them landing on the pavement in a chorus of subtle chromatic inflections on the same tune. And just as Austin’s squinched face could no longer hold back the deluge of feelings, he bursted out a passionate sentence full of flying spit and discarded tears. “Don’t you love me?” He screamed. “It’s like you don’t even get it! I love you; I love you so much I just always want to be with you!” Jeremy looks away and found nothing particularly interesting to look at. He started to cry back but could not form any words. Austin was absolutely fed up after playing years of games and thrust himself close to Jeremy, laced their fingers together, and ensured their membranes perfectly matched to the point of leg and arm hair entwining. Jeremy was incredibly confused but absolutely taken. Something new, secret, hidden, and beautiful welled up inside him and he burst out into an intense spectacle. A seabird in the distance misses its catch and flies away totally unfazed. Shame about the missed meal, but he can always try again later hopefully when the seas die down. Jeremy leaned in just a little and brushed up against the scruff of Austin’s facial hair. It felt funny but so delightful; it brought a smile to his face. He looked up and met Austin’s eye line and then they both were almost in tears. Jeremy lunged forward and kissed Austin. It felt like forever as they sat with only the sun and the sea to bear witness to the time when something actually beautiful happened.
It was only a two weeks later when they went their separate ways to college. Jeremy had no idea what to make of it at the time and had become unkindly standoffish for the remainder of their time together. Austin stopped calling and Jeremy tried to make new friends. Only here, now, this moment sitting alone in the grass with no one but himself to share how powerful his feeling were does he realize what is true. Only now in the emptiness devoid of anything good that his life once resembled, playing with the broken and shattered bits of a forgotten existence that only exist as fragments of a memory does he realize what the mistake he made was. The mistake was acting in cowardice. The folly was listening to everyone else about how he should be and not looking in to himself. The voice in his head was probably not even fully his own. Now here his is, not even able to trust himself or his own feelings, so many degrees of separation away from the enchanted life he once lived. Now he is alone, watching the people contented to enjoy the beauty in each day pass him by and all he can bear to do is think of squandered beauty. If he ever got the chance, he would like to apologize. If ever he desperately hoped something would un-harden his stony heart and breathe life into his pitifully, miserably singular existence, it was now he was hoping the most. He began to sob and let the wind lick the tears from his cheeks. He was a pathetic sight. He extended his right hand, unfurled his grass-stained fingers, and waited with newfound warmth in his soul for Austin to add what was missing.
](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")