In a crowded setting, one seeks out their partner. Whether it be undeniable similarity or magnetic differences that pull those two fated adventurers together, their bond, to them, is unbreakable, could weather any storm. The rational sensible mind knows that the second the last song of the party ends, or one finds a better job, they’ll never see each other again. The rational sensible mind attempts to compartmentalise memories, into the fickle and inconsequential, a bleak container filled with beautiful memories just like the aforementioned encounters, a container which will inevitably be discarded. The rational sensible mind doesn’t govern the subconscious, luckily enough for me. In the liminal land of dreams, the characters you encounter manage to merge together, erasing already hazy boundaries. In that land of dreams, every night, I revisit the man whose name I have already forgotten.
It was Elisa’s party in her industrialised apartment with the quaint little bathroom that overlooked the canal. Her interior decorator was blasphemous. The flat was part of an old block, a scene stolen straight from a 1930s crime novel, I said to myself on the elevator ride up. The fittings were all still raw brass which shined in the dim, orange-tinted light of the cramped box. It made me want to fall asleep. That weightlessness I felt as my eyelids flickered shut in an extended blink, increased the size of the elevator until it felt endless. The red carpet seemed to drone on and on leading to a non-existent elevator door. I almost forgot that there was another person in there with me. I must’ve turned to look because the memory of his face is ingrained deeply in my mind, perfectly fused with this very moment. He clutched a bottle of wine to his chest, awkwardly with his feet shuffling every second. I only noticed this because of the sound of the friction between his feet and the carpet. Elisa had very few friends, and they were all carbon copies of one another like a production line of detestable Barbies, and this man was the furthest thing from doll-like, so I assumed that he’d be going somewhere like floor 5, rather than the floor I was going. I noticed that after I clicked by little button, he didn’t click his respective one.
“You going to Elisa’s party?” I asked politely.
After receiving no reply, I proceeded to stare up at the ceiling, quivering with embarrassment, simmering in quiet indignation.
Expecting a night of over-priced, bitter wine and dull, pretentious conversation, I painted on mask of haughty indifference with the most subtlest of smiles which teeters on the edge of a sneer. They would natter on about their industrialised apartments, they would gossip about their social inferiors whilst trying to emulate the quintessential gentility of the wealthy, they would sample their meagre h’ordeurves which never lead up to a hearty dinner. But what would I do? Cling to the corners of their never ending rooms and swill my fetid coffee in the stained mugs I sneaked from their aesthetic kitchens.
My designated corner will always be right by the largest window in the largest room. There is no setting more intimate than a large room. The rest of the party are too preoccupied with their trivial gossip to worry themselves with my menial ponderings. And the window, it’s a given. The biting cool London air both soothes and braces. Hosts and hostesses always have the courtesy to hold parties in that short window of time between last light and pitch black darkness. One can still make out the faint silhouettes of the few drunken stragglers from the window but not their faces, lending a certain anonymity which both emboldens and comforts me. My corner had been usurped. Not by anyone I could love or respect, but instead the one who so callously spurned me and ruined my elevator ride.
“Hello,” I said it unfeelingly and obligatorily. I ensured my tone was as blasé as possible. No room was left for his ever-expanding ego. My detachment was steel armour against his obdurate spite.
He smiled this time, strangely normally.
“So-r-ry,” he broke up the simple words into short strained syllables that seemed to catapult themselves off the tip of his tongue.
My anger dampened by his kindness caused my proceeding sentences to come out with a sickly sweet tone. Absentmindedly, I spoke to him like an accomplished five year old.
“It’s fine, sometimes I don’t feel like chatting either. Most of these parties, I spend my time holed up in a corner talking to myself. Have you ever been to a quintessential Elisa house party?”
He nodded.
“She always runs out of hordeurves an hour into the event and I’m starving. Are you hungry?”
Once again he nodded. The hunger and the liquor and the cool breeze and the dim lighting and the tight dress and the stench of acrid aromatics and the close proximity to that inhumanely tall man. It was too much olfactory, tactile and gustastory description to pay attention to the lack of auditory stimulation.
“There’s a super good deli down the road. The only place you’ll get a decent sandwich these days. Named after some guy with an italian name or perhaps spanish. The effects of gentrification, I’m telling you. Old Tower Hamlets would send most of these hipsters running back to the suburbs of Sussex. Elisa’s family owns a house in Sussex, overlooking the most gorgeous beach. Sussex has the best beaches. Every grain of sand runs through your fingers like time and the water still has the lingering scent of frost around this time of year. I could spend centuries and centuries there because time just ceases to exist on the sand. Have you ever been?”
The words were simply tumbling out of my mouth, and I could barely take a beat to wait for his automatic nod. For once, I was not conscious of my imposition on the social scene. I ensured to take a look at him every few seconds. And he looked at me in wonderment. He hung on my every fickle word like they were fine prose. At first, I wished for him to say something, to interrupt my dreadful diatribe with some kind of witty interjection however he sat there providing the palliagtive lull to my whirlwind chaos. As I delved deeper and deeper into my monologue, his silence became comfortable. Surely he had to have had thoughts, scintillating ideas, but they didn’t seem to flow in the impetuos manner that mine did. His serenity ensured that his thoughts were caged up, but I could tell from the gentle creases in his forehead that at his core, my thoughts and his were similar, frighteningly so. Our names were inscribed in one stone at our respective creations, our fates and thoughts forever intertwined.
About 20 minutes after the genesis of our mutual admiration, Elisa entered the scene. With her excess of lucious air and assured predatory stalk, she managed to pollute the sanctity of our little corner. Her intrusion, to her was a given. Her every act as a hostess was governed by precedent even though our personalities dampened her buzz and our choice of fashion was too last season.
“You guys, you just slunk in without saying hello. You look great,” she adressed us both but looked directly at me. I was flattered by her excess of attention but also slightly confused. That was the theme of the night.
Then she looked towards him and began to engage in menial conversation. Expecting a conversation about the weather, or a farcical take on current international events, I shifted my attention to the small, damp spot in the opposite corner of the room. But this was something different. They began speaking in tongues and he all of a sudden came alive. Syllables and phonetics I’d never dreamt of hearing were suddenly whizzing out of their mouths and past my heads. Secondary school linguistics couldn’t have prepared me to hear this language that teetered on the edge of romantic and germanic, whilst also having the harsh tones of an African dialect. Him, my stoic soldier, and her the harebrained hostess, had channelled the power of the Rosetta Stone to engage in cocktail party conversation. His voice was flat and monotone which lended an air of loftiness to his already established intelligence. His eyes remained fixed on me, possibly an illusion I created to preoccupy my jealous mind. I had only managed to entice two syllables and a series of languid nods, whilst she had made a public speaker out of him.
Forcefully he said something to her, before turning to me, clasping a rugged hand on my shoulder, then marching away in a dignified manner. My gaze lingered on his dwarfing form, following each of his echoing footsteps until he reached the elevator, the site of our first and last congress.
“You meet Mohammed?”Elisa said in her archetypal sagacious fashion.
“Yes. Where is he from?”
“He’s a doctor, just immigrated from one of those unfortunate ‘stan countries where I did my gap year. You like him?”Absentmindedly, I nodded.
The man in the corner was mine, but Mohammed was not. Mohammed was the persona which he performed to the world in exchange for their veneration. The man in the corner was my equal, Mohammed was my superior. The man in the corner was corporal in nature, existing only in my dreams and in that corner which would most likely be renovated or torn down by the time Elisa hosted another soiree.
My clammy little hands had stroked my destiny and met my true match but hadn’t had the gall or certainty to grasp it. My own dauntlessness would curse me to spend charming evenings cowering in the corner of rooms, amused by the bracing memories of Him.
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