"TONGUE" PART TWO

     "TONGUE" (part two)

     In the middle of a blizzard, she felt her blood cease to circulate. Somewhere, she knew this wasn’t true but it sure felt like that. Desperately wishing to catch a snowflake on her awaiting tongue, she entered Der Rathskeller hoping to find a familiar face. There he was. Sitting by the amplifiers, as always, tugging at the “Doctor Who” scarf that hung delicately from him black trench coat.

     “Mind Release is playing,” said Moonman, feigning boredom. Mind Release was the rage and the brainchild of some student musical genius, wunderkind, or some other superlative music critics trip over themselves to use as praise for a promising youthful talent. Moonman followed all of the band’s shows, beginning his ritual by seating himself by various amplifiers trying to catch a glimpse of the band’s constantly changing set list which was made up of almost entirely original material. And there he sat, on his musical perch like a lost puppy who just found his way back home. God...did she want him...    

     “You know,” she started tentatively. “I think that someone told me...or maybe I read it somewhere...like in the Cardinal, possibly...that they actually have a single coming out.” If she could connect with him, really connect, on any level...

     “Careerists!” Moonman snorted, not even looking at her.

    ...well, maybe not on this level...

     “I mean–what’s the fucking point?!” he continued without provocation. “Just write songs and make the music! Why openly court the musically homogenous big leagues and end up sounding like every Pixies reject?”

     “Then...um...why are you...ummm...here?” she asked.

     With a simultaneous sincerity and a hint of unmistakable annoyance at her question, Daryl Moon barely gave her a glance and wearily replied, “They ROCK!”

     She shrugged. And then, sat next to him anyway.

     She never intended this to be her life

     And it didn’t have to be...

     The apartment, located in the student ghetto of West Washington Avenue was filled wall to wall with people and sounds. It was like an unearthly pinball machine, everything and everyone bouncing from one to another. Maybe nothing was actually moving at all. Who really knew anyhow? Crunched in a corner by the deafening stereo blasting Love And Rockets, she wondered that very question about movement and inertia as snowflakes danced across her field of vision while she gazed out at the partygoers. Were these people three to four years her junior or right alongside her in a pre-graduation final blast of collegiate existence? Why on Earth was she gracing yet even one more house party?

     It always seemed to follow the same pattern: Against better judgment, she would decide to make a voyage to Der Rathskeller, trying to again hook up with Moonman, while falsely convincing herself of a completely different (and fully imaginary) reason for entering the Union in the first place. 

     She would decide to dress down tonight. He hated makeup, perfume and any of the remotely resembling glamour. “I like the earthy type, “Moonman once said when no one even asked for his personal taste in attractiveness. So, aside from a quick shower, that was it with grooming. With her most faded pair of blue jeans, an ancient Vicious Hippies t-shirt (Moonman’s last favorite college band before their demise), a “fashionable” flannel shirt and her own pair of cracked cowboy boots, she was almost ready. The final article was her older brother’s Army jacket which he had a peace symbol emblazoned on its back. All jewelry was left aside. No styling of the hair. Nothing else. She was ready and as if being pulled by some invisible force, she was off to Memorial Union.

     Thinking of her association with Daryl Moon, she couldn’t exactly remember how it all began with him. Surprising how memories can grow to be so unformed, so malleable, so murky in such a relatively short period of time. She remembered wanting to one day meet him after staring a hole through him three times a week during a full semester of Comparative Literature sophomore year. She remembered staring at how he hardly ever looked up from his notebook in which there was rarely any note-taking. She remembered wanting to desperately see what his eyes looked like. She remembered how his lips formed as he said her name when piggybacking upon one of her in-class responses. She remembered how he had a slight slouch as he walked. That trench coat. His seemingly natural scent of caffeine–just like in the coffee aisle in grocery stores.

     Their first time was unexpected, amateurish and anti-climactic yet it was with him. That’s all she needed as pathetic as she knew it sounded, as pathetic as she now knew it was. Wasted emotions and years over a young man who was always somewhere else when he was right in front of her.

     She was sick to death of feeling her stomach drop at the sight of him and she never understood that after all of these years (and just knowing better) why she felt that same bottoming out. And here she sat, just as she had countless times at other college house parties, her once razor sharp mind clouded with thoughts of him, which in turn, clouded her thoughts about school, her failures, her writing, her now-departed friends, her now-disappearing future..

     She never intended this to be her life...

     When she awoke in the glaringly sterile room with strange faces hovering and strange voices phasing through her brain, she tried to piece it all together. After she fell, she saw red and that was pretty much it.

     Despite the fact her arm was bandaged, her evening meal was now liquidized and hearing about her unusually non-existent good luck since the glass narrowly missed her vital veins, all she could really think about was if her parents had been notified. For the last few years, she kept her parents at roughly three states lengths. “I’m better at a distance,” she reasoned to herself. She felt that she and her parents seemed to function more harmoniously while apart. Once together, during a visit to campus one year ago, she nearly walked out of their dinner after an especially heated argument concerning her grades. Yet, on the very next afternoon, all was forgotten and she received a much needed (and unasked for) monetary reprieve from the anguish of monthly efficiency bills.

     Even so, what would her parents think now that their middle, troublesome daughter, nearly done in by falling face first into a glass table while under the snowflake haze? How could she ever explain herself? How could they even bother to listen to an explanation pulled out of the air? How could they pick up the pieces for someone not worth the trouble?

     What am I worth?

     Will they even come this time?

     Do they even know what happened to me?

     How did I end up here?

     For no provoked reason, she began to cry silently, tears slowly sliding down her cheeks, the taste of salt reaching her tongue. While she sadly lost herself in thought, she took a fleeting glance out of her window to see the sunlight melting the claws of ice which surrounded the building.

     And soon, she saw a reflection of her Mother in the window, staring at her, sadly, silently mouthing the name, “Alice.”

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