The Drifter, the Girl, and the Androgyne: Synthesis � Lena
I could say at exactly three o�clock in the afternoon, I stood in front of my locker in the congested hallway at school, facing my black bomber jacket and my books. On both sides and behind, my peers viscously moved and chattered, like a confused flock of birds in place, with the same goal of leaving the dank, decrepit building that confined us for seven hours each day and breathing on the street once again. After hearing the clash of metal upon metal in my ear and swinging my bag onto my back, I turned away from this inane, chaotic scenario and headed with audacity to the parking lot to find my motorcycle. Then again, what couldn�t I say?
Upon leaving the cloistered environment, I became immersed in the outside - the concrete, the smog, the buildings that towered unnaturally above the streets, the air that infiltrated my lungs, and the cars, with their mirror-like qualities. Eying my ambiguous, contorted reflection on each of the front of the cars I passed before finding my motorcycle, I sensed I was the only moving body in the parking lot, but I adored the solitude. Contrary to the archetype of a daring, audacious individual, in which loneliness causes melancholia, I embraced the social desolation. The aloofness added to the mystery, and thus, made me more of an enigma.
My walkman played the New Order tape I left in there from the morning. I turn sideways to the sun; I keep my thoughts from everyone. The Drifter shifted on the seat of the motorcycle, with tailpipes gleaming in the afternoon light, trying to find a comfortable position, before turning on the gas and abandoning the prison of mental decay in the foreground. Taking hold on the handles, the Drifter�s palms perspired into the worn black rubber that was grasped several times in the past for a journey such as this - one without destination. But weren�t all "true" journeys like that? The motor, wheels, and tailpipes on the candy-red painted motorcycle were, indeed, the Drifter�s legs. The intertwining metal parts took the Drifter anywhere, before the gas dissipated into nothing, thus causing the Drifter to become occasionally stranded. But, could a drifter be truly stranded? Perhaps the question received a negative answer, for the next conquest involved finding the fuel to continue on the original journey.
In the Drifter�s thoughts, faces - familiar and forgotten - passed like gusts of wind. The familiar became resurrected every time a two-sided conversation occurred. The forgotten, however, received a response with the audacious frontal, since neither could remember why an original conversation occurred in the first place.
At the far end of the street, the cafeteria appeared, like a tangible oasis in a desolate wasteland, as I approached and slowed down before halting in front of the large-windowed weathered brick building - but all buildings around here were like that. On the sidewalks about the building, people, weary and lackluster, awaited the next bus. Bus schedules were always irregular - as a proven fact - and, thus, the passengers always stood around, waiting and hoping another vehicle would pass by and stop for them. Occasionally, a bus would forget to stop, and those in upright positions would continue to stand. Time seemed to have to bounds, but a day would still end in twenty-four hours. However, I owned the candy-red motorcycle, and time passed in its usual increments, without moving viscously or slowing to a halt.
Parking my motorcycle, I stepped off and onto the pavement - what else was there to do? But, despite I stood upon the ground adjacent to the group waiting for the bus, I became mortal for a second and waited in silence with them but still aloof. However, as I stood in silence, I gazed into one of the large windows facing the street. Although the inside - counter, booths, and people - was covered in a light-gray shadow, I was still able to distinguish each object distinctively. Solemnly, the customers ate and the workers stood behind the counters, pouring cups of unblemished coffee into uniformly-cut Styrofoam cups, as if the cups were an army that needed to be fed. However, as I scanned the dispersed denizens inside - mostly senior citizens who ate lunch late or dinner early - I noticed two figured - one familiar to my eyes, and the other, not, but by physical description, I could assume his identity; the Girl and the Androgyne ate like all of the other sedentary bodies in the plastic booths and appeared oblivious and innocuous to the outside realm beyond the windows and indifferent to the serves, dressed in white uniforms, as they poured the coffee into the uniform white cups. In the cafeteria, however, the Girl and the Androgyne were enraptured in their own realm, surrounded by a soundproof, invisible brick wall. Diverging from the sterile, bleached uniformity, both the Girl and the Androgyne brought color into the scene. The Girl adorned herself with the usual flannel shirt and faded blue jeans - bordering on androgyny - but the red that stood out in the field of plaid on her shirt stood out in the room like a spec of blood on a white sheet. The Androgyne appeared as the antithesis of the Girl; clad in a royal purple blouse and faded black lace vest, he sat across from the Girl, as he fingered the several long strands beads that hung about his neck. Like his blouse, his hair was dyed a dark shade of purple, and although his visage was pale, he embellished his face with an array of gaudy lines - pinks, purples, and dark blues - as well. The Girl paying sole attention to the Androgyne, took large bites from her doughnut, covered in powdered sugar, which left its residue on the skin above her lip, and the Androgyne, seldom looking at his own doughnut, drank his paled coffee in large gulps. As an outsider, I stood on the street and watched them in their realm before I decided to break through the wall and accompany them in their isolation.
With my thumbs hooked loosely in the pockets of my jacket, I sauntered into the cafeteria, casually gazing at the various archetypes sitting in the booths and eating mediocre food. However, before I moved in the direction of Glynis and the Androgyne, I paused to take a glance at my watch. But that slight gesture was a mere act, for I didn�t even see, let alone remember, the time. Glynis and the Androgyne ensconced themselves in their benign pleasures: coffee, doughnuts, and androgyny. I, on the contrary, would immediately step into the scene like an unscripted actor.
As the Drifter slowly approached the Girl, the Girl continued her discourse with the Androgyne. She laughed, and her eyes became black crescent-shaped moons. The coffee in front of her still released its steam, but she only regarded the doughnut, laying on a napkin adjacent to the coffee. The Androgyne was captivated by her words, but only partially by them. Unlike her, he had finished his doughnut, by the indication of the residue on his lips, and concentrated on his coffee. Next to him, a black trench coat lay, with some correlation to him, the Drifter assumed. However, by his polychromatic attire, the Drifter saw no relation between him and the coat, other than to serve as a shroud to covet his effeminate appearance.
After a few passive moments, the Girl looked away from her doughnut and the Androgyne and noticed that the Drifter stood a mere foot away from her. However, the Drifter�s shadow cast itself backward, away from the Girl and the Androgyne. The sunlight entered through the window beside them and the table and threw itself - perhaps unwittingly - upon the Drifter.
Moving her lips to speak, the Girl asserted, "Why don�t you sit down with us?"
At last, I permeated the wall. "I was just planning on doing that," I replied, sitting down next to Glynis.
"Lena," she said, pointing to her silent companion across the table, "this is Jesse."
Indeed, the Androgyne had a name. Smiling furtively, he first looked away, out the window, before outstretching his hand - pale flesh covered with scars. I, as usual, spoke first. "So, you�re Jesse, huh?" I said, trying to have a slight air of chivalry. He only smiled again - this time, more discreet - in response.
"Did you ever get your motorcycle back?" Glynis asked, now turning her focus away from the Androgyne and her doughnut. But, the dialogue was too terse and not laconic enough, as if they were still coveting their sacred secrets from me.
In recollection of meeting her on the subway yesterday, after a two-week hiatus beginning with the afternoon we drank whiskey in her bathtub, I mundanely stated, "Yeah" - neutral in tone, but not much substance. The fine I paid to retrieve my motorcycle and our brief encounter on the subway were both vague in my mind. "There were only a few scratches on it."
"It�s kind of strange, the fact that yesterday only it was towed."
"Yeah," I stated, exacerbated at the shroud she spread over her statements. "Y�know, but don�t you expect that from a decrepit city that can�t even plow its main streets," I replied, as I glanced outside at the few cars creeping up the street, like prisoners archaically handcuffed in a line.
Surreptitiously looking out of one of my eyes at Jesse, I noticed that he had become uninterested in and indifferent to our tepid conversation. Not regarding Glynis or me, he seemed to focus on the surface of the table, drawing invisible lines with his finger tips. Glynis did not look over at him, but, instead, focused on me.
"Care for anything to eat?" she asked in a tone too jovial for my taste.
"No, thanks," I responded. "I�m not terribly hungry today," I lied. Despite we talked, the wall continued to ensconce her and Jesse.
As we spoke - for our conversation didn�t meet the loose definition of "talking" - Glynis�s eyes locked with mine, but I still continued to notice every slight, minute gesture she executed, such as the twitching of her eyebrows, the unwitting smirk at the corners of her lips, the undulating motions of the muscles in her neck, and the stillness of her hair, now subtly streaked with blue, once it fell in front of her face. But, in an instance, or perhaps more than one, my heart sank, plummeting into the dark abyss of my subconscious of hatred and anxiety that was usually masked by my stance of audacity. However, I didn�t know what I wanted, exactly. Like the outline of a drawing in a coloring book, my desires were simple, yet undefined, but not fulfilled by anything to vivify them. Outside, my motorcycle was my only permanent companion. With its leather seat, metallic engine, and flame-painted tailpipes, it was the mere object I could trust in my life. Aside from yesterday, the vehicle waited for me everyday after school and always remained in the same place. Every time I turned in on to ride, it made the same sound and vibrated in a similar fashion, no matter how I sat on the seat.
But, my motorcycle and I were not mutual friends. In fact, I possessed the position of dominance in our relationship. Once I sat down, turning on the engine in the process, I could divert its path, veer it in any direction, I chose. Its mere gifts to me were its speed and exhilaration - both like sugar-laden cotton-candy fluff that would end as soon as I stopped and stepped off.
"Dreary day, y�know?" I mumbled, continuing to gaze at her.
"Yeah," Glynis immediately agreed. "Just dull. Simply dull." Pausing for a second, she turned to Jesse, who continued to draw his invisible images on the table�s surface. "Want any of my coffee? I don�t think I�ll drink it." With Glynis�s cup pushed in his direction, Jesse seized it with his hands, but after putting the steaming liquid to his lips, drank it slowly, as if he were contemplating other matters in his own realm that were of no concern to us, and probably weren�t mine, anyway. Under his breath, he murmured something - barely a sentence - almost inaudible to my ears. However, I decided not to question him.
Turning toward me, she asked, "Want to go out for a cigarette?"
Although I sauntered inside merely a few minutes ago, I agreed. When she posed the same question to Jesse, he decided to stay inside and finish his food. With a maudlin expression, enhanced by his pallor, upon his countenance, he continued to drink his coffee and murmur words to himself. Glynis and I, then, stood, leaving him in place, and proceeded to exit the cafeteria. Outside, we found a place - almost a hidden, coveted urban space - between the back of the cafeteria and the discount shoe store beside it. As we stood like anyone would stand in an isolated place, we basically stood in a dilapidated doorframe facing a decaying brick wall. In the doorframe, Glynis leaned against one side, and I, to the other, but neither of us spoke until we drew our packs of cigarettes from our pockets, placed slender tubes of poison between our lips, and lit the tips. With my tepid smoke framing her angular face and caressing her hair, Glynis spoke first. However, her emotion mirrored Jesse�s facial expression.
"I know I said this yesterday, but I real sorry about that day, a few weeks ago -" she paused, removing the cigarette from her mouth and leaving it between two fingers, on a hand stretched away from her, to burn. "You remember. You came to my house, I was trying to do homework before, and we winded up in my bathtub like two drunken idiots." She paused again. "But perhaps I was the only idiot, really."
Although the incident traversed my mind, as I attempted to recollect in the experience of wallowing in a water-filled bathtub and drinking whiskey, as the world, with its usual gray appearance, moved in slow-motion outside, it did not strike a dissonant chord in me. In fact, on the contrary, as I remembered, I felt bland concern and sympathy for her depressed, angst-laden state at the time. However, disrupting her ecstasy in the warm, comforting bath water, her older brother - a hedonistic, primordial being with a subtle glimmer of jealousy in his eyes - forcefully entered the scene. The whiskey she stole was indeed his, and he deplored and resented the fact she stole it.
"It was nothing," I replied passively, as I drew in more smoke from the cigarette.
"I tried to apologize to you on the train, but -" she halted and began to focus her attention on the dead-end of a wall that faced us.
"But what?" I asked automatically.
"It just didn�t seem to matter, y�know?"
As I replied with a simplistic "Oh," she burst with the tears and melancholia that inundated her conscience and that she originally disguised with her cigarette and poise.
"Do you remember what you said as we were on that train?" she demanded, her voice diminishing with each word until "train" emanated from her throat like a distant creaking of a hinge, floors above my head in a desolate house.
"About what?" In my mind, all that surfaced was the fact that I was crossing town by the subway to retrieve my motorcycle. The Drifter stared at the Girl, felt helpless and immobile, and ignored the burning cigarette.
"Y�know, that whole the Drifter, the Girl, and the Androgyne thing. The Girl was infatuated with the Drifter, or words to that affect, but the Girl was still going to see the Androgyne. The Androgyne used to be the Boy -" she rattled on like a tape recorder, repeating facts and sounds over and over again from the past. " But the Boy was moribund, or dead. The Androgyne was going to kill himself, but I had to make sure he didn�t."
The instance in which I asked her about which archetype she wanted to be crossed my mind. But the archetypes were fabricated; I created them as I walked to the subway station out of thinking of our conversation in the bathtub. Jesse - the "�feminate" guy with purple hair. Glynis - the girlfriend you "got to have a girlfriend, yessiree." Me, Lena, the Drifter, and my reflection as I saw myself in the bathroom mirror and on my motorcycle as I drove to her house. The Androgyne, the Girl, and the Drifter. Indeed, as I paid my fare for the subway, it all seemingly made sense. "Yeah, I do remember," I said, in recollection of the distant past that yesterday seemed to be.
"The Androgyne�s still sitting in the cafeteria. He did try to kill himself yesterday afternoon. I remember calling the ambulance from his parents� bedroom." She stopped suddenly but appropriately and closed - or more like winced as she shut them - her eyes, as if she were in excruciating internal pain for a few moments. "He slit some vein in his legs. And now, he�s sitting inside the cafeteria, alone, like he usually is."
"What�s he mumbling?" I asked in utter irrelevance.
"Euphoria," she murmured in the same manner as he did but more audible.
Befuddled, I repeated in question, "Euphoria?"
"It�s the coffee and the cigarettes," she asserted. "To him, those elements, along with make-up and archetypical feminine attire, are his solace and his color. In combination, they enrapture him like an orgy of the senses - taste, touch, smell, see, hearing. I can�t destroy him, but he�s eventually going to destroy himself, I unfortunately know." She halted her histrionics on impulse. "The world�s been destroying him, he�s been destroying himself with that false sense of euphoria, and I�m destroying him by doing this."
"By doing what?"
"This - sitting here and allowing him to wallow alone is misanthropic agony."
Ignoring the cigarette that burned to a perfect stump of paper and ashes between my fingers, I perked, as a surge of attention spread through me from her last phrase. "Why?" I asked. Occasionally, I thought, the best phrases to derive the most information are terse and laconic.
"I�ve ignored him for the past month. First, his parents kicked him out, and then he�s taken in by some transvestite named Vince. But what was the result of such superficial acceptance? He tried to kill himself yesterday. And, for all that trouble, I was away, trying to get my own act together, in school and such."
"What was wrong with you? You usually seem sound, aside from the whiskey incident," I wondered aloud in confusion. Unlike me, she passively migrated through life in a lethargic fashion, it seemed; she went to school, came to the cafeteria after, did her homework in her room with the radio on later, and, occasionally, had some bizarre enjoyment on the weekends, like most disenchanted teenagers.
Before sighing morosely, she buried her head in her hands. "I never told you this, and I originally didn�t intend to, especially after that the first time you talked to me in there," she began, "but as I�ve told you, I�m sixteen years old. But, unlike Jesse and you, in high school, I�m still stuck back in eighth grade because I just haven�t been motivated for these past two and a half years. My eyes must have inadvertently widened, for after she asserted her statements, she immediately came to her defense. "That�s why I just said I was trying to get my act together, so I wouldn�t be a seventeen-year-old in eighth grade or some flunkie-dropout from junior high. But, even though I am old enough to drop out, I still want to get into North High to be with Jesse again, so he doesn�t get beat up anymore. And I wanted to show you that I really was in high school, not feigning some kind of existence or whatever."
At this point in her monologue, her thoughts vacillated between her desire to get into high school to protect Jesse and to motivate herself to study. "In junior high, when both of us were there, everyone used to mock Jesse, but I was always there to defend him with my fists, y�know? Now, for almost two years, he�s been completely alone in that monstrosity of a high school. I just can�t bear it any longer - the embarrassment, his embarrassment and mine. Do you honestly know how hard it is to try to learn Algebra after being truant and inattentive for two years? I didn�t used to be this way, y�know. And, those bastards that used to be with us back in junior high but are now in high school still mock him and jump him in and after school. I hate it. I tried to motivate myself to work, rather than to mentally wander and put a Metallica tape in my boom box. I think, but really don�t care, that I might be passing. He just can�t defend himself, but I guess that�s his nature - can�t fight, can�t swim, can�t be the archetype of the Boy, to later transform into the Man." Glynis terminated her speech after her last phrase. Instantly, her countenance changed, with a tepid, sly smile transforming from the former downward arc of her lips. "Do you know what the Androgyne is doing now?" she asked, approaching me, until our bodies were inches apart.
Flustered, I looked away at the decaying brick wall, as if the crumbling reddish-brown bricks would offer empathy and a solution to every question posed to the universe. "I don�t know," I replied tersely. "He�s just sitting back in the booth in the cafeteria?"
"Do you want to check?" she asked, but by the quizzical tone of her voice, her motive was to test my unwitting clairvoyance and validity of my statement.
Carelessly tossing her cigarette to the pavement, she left the doorframe and headed back to the cafeteria. As she walked away with her back turned toward me, I imminently sensed that my prediction had been inaccurate. Wherever the Androgyne fled, neither of us knew. The frigid winds blew tousled her hair, blowing it about her head until a brownish-blue cloud seemed to surround her face at a distance. But, in the midst of that cloud, her visage, like a flawed soap carving, shone as if it were the only source of light in a dark room. However, beauty, whatever tangibility it held, was transient and merely superficial, like pulchritude that could be marred in minutes. As a painting, a portrait in a lavish frame on a wall, Glynis would remain motionless. For the period someone would choose to paint her, her image at that moment would be captured - but only for that singular moment. Gazing at her at the distance I stood - the pale face and the hair and the flannel shirt that fluttered in the wind like dead leaves in autumn - I desired to be that artist to seize this moment; her worn blue jeans juxtaposed with the mounds of mottled gray and white snow proved to be an ideal subject.
But, only as I, myself, flicked my cigarette to the ground in a lackluster manner and left the alley, did I realize that I could never be that artist. My life centered about these streets, my motorcycle, and a false sense of audacity. Even if I received painting lessons, I could not possess the meticulousness and concentration needed to paint anything, let alone Glynis.
Once I reached the front of the cafeteria, I noticed that Glynis continued to stand outside. However, unlike both of her drastic mood changes in the alley, her present demeanor was of shock, confusion, and hopelessness all functioning together in one body and mind. Pressing her face to one of the windows, she squinted to see the dark figures inside. I remained at my distance away from her, for I sensed my words were futile. The Drifter, like the myriad of mortal beings in this realm, was fallible.
"He left," she coldly stated in a confused but accepting tone. "He�s gone."
Indeed, from taking a glance inside, the Androgyne no longer sat, tracing lines upon the table; perhaps he left when we drifted into alley for a smoke and histrionics; perhaps he had only left minutes before we emerged from our clouds of smoke and ash. But, aside from what could have happened, only two empty cups remained on the table where they once sat, before I entered the scene.
However, other than those few words she spoke, Glynis spoke no more. From the cafeteria and me, she turned away, walking in a passive manner across the street, in the same direction as the junior high. Taking another cigarette from my pocket and habitually lighting it between my chapped lips, I observed her moves until she became one of several figures walking on the sidewalk several blocks away. Deserted, I remained stolid in my stance but not stoic. Contrary to my usual audacity, I leaned against a pole that once supported a sign of some kind; perhaps at one point, a bright red sign reading "Stop" or a yellow one reading "Yield" remained on top, but I didn�t remember and could bet that no one ever paid attention to whatever it said anyway. But, now in this present, only a soiled metallic pole, tilted at an obtuse angle, stood. Like everything that surrounded me outside, the pole had assimilated itself in with the gray, passive facades, cars, and denizens.
In my stance of defeat, I remained erect out of habit, but my shoulders slumped and hair hanged in greasy clumps in my face. The Girl no longer thought of the Drifter, and the Drifter lamented about her disappearance. But maybe for only a transitory period, but I don�t know. The Androgyne exited the scene on his own, and the Girl followed. Kinship and affiliation reigned stronger than desire.
Only once did I attempt to find her after this afternoon fiasco. In venturing to her house and to Emerson Junior High, however, I discovered that the Girl no longer existed, for she left the city in almost the same fashion as the Androgyne surreptitiously exited the cafeteria. In passing by North High a day after the cafeteria incident, I spied the Androgyne smoking a cigarette on the front steps. Although I stood across the street, I saw his lips incontrovertibly move to mouth "Euphoria."
Hours later, I lay in my room, on my bed, probably crying and listening to whatever New Order tape was in my stereo. "Euphoria" appeared like an angel, but, in fact, the word was merely a four-syllable euphemism for "failure" and all the concepts that would elude his and my grasp as the Androgyne and the Drifter.