Saturday, June 11, 2011

Texts, posts, and Wendy's.

Sitting in the midst of Wendy's with a couple friends, there was a funny looking sight to behold. The three of us sat in a triangle shape, reminiscing about things that happened days ago, and looking to recreate those forgettably unforgettable nights.

But I realized. All three of us had our phones on the table. And we weren't all necessarily using them; we were actively waiting for an excuse to do so.


In seeing this, the conception of this generation's addiction to the screen became clear.

When we go home, we sit in front of a screen, and interact with it. When we are outside, we bring a miniature screen to serve the same yet portable service. And it's become not just a common occurrence, but apart of my generation's life. There has not been a physical human interaction for this generation after 12 years old that did not involve someone eventually pulling a mini-screen from their jeans, or sitting in front of a bigger one at home.

We are essentially the first generation to depend on this technological interaction not merely for convenience, but as a distinct part of our culture, and the first to grow up through adolescence and young-adulthood with it.

The beauty in this statement is that it can be corroborated by physical, statistical evidence. If you look onto the Facebook pages of people older than, say, 26 (People who did not have social networking or texting as preteens or teenagers), they do not have the same amount of friends as someone younger than them. So as the FB accounts get younger in age, the more friends those accounts are connected to.

This doesn't mean that the younger you are, the more people you know. Merely that the younger you are, the more likely your peer group is immutably connected to the social network, and so there is a bigger pool of friends you'll have access to.

The negative in this increasingly addictive need to utilize every screen available to us is that we've become perpetually connected to our closest social circle. This gives us little reason to venture beyond that group, and thus means we're less likely to make an effort to create deep relationships with people as we get older. Why leave the comfort zone if it's always available for you?

This is unlike the generations prior to us, because when they left the house, they were unable to interact with anyone who wasn't physically there with them (No Facebook, no cell phone, no wi-fi, no laptop). So they were forced to sustain deep physical interactions with various people at all times.

The counter claim to this is that we can maintain contact with people from miles, and perhaps oceans, away. This is true. But those interactions contain little substance, and for the most part could have not happened, with no consequence on your maturation.

However, the positive is that the pool of texts and Facebook posts that we insatiably imbibe from is pristine, and has sincere human behavior. The Internet is a place clean of commercial/government influence, where people are about as much as they can be without the worry of propaganda seeping into their heads and casting shame.

Granted, this also means that we are delicate about our status in our peer group, as the Internet provides a constant view into the world of others, which means we have a constant source of people to compare ourselves to.

But changing the perspective, this means we hold social allegiance to one another. Not a nation, a corporation, or any vague entity. The people who hold the most influence over this generation and every generation after us are ourselves. And there's something kind of pretty about that.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

A Good Time

This is a short story I wrote about a girl who meets a boy. The final few paragraphs are very adult in nature, and you probably don't want the wrong people around while you read it. Or maybe you do. Fuck 'em, right?

She boarded the bus haphazardly as she ever did. The bus driver gave his look of acknowledgement, she reciprocated, and the 1.50 transaction was completed. Her walk down the aisle involved, as it always does, a few stares from unintiated masses. She took a seat in the back, as she always did, because it was "fun to watch unfun people".

She reflected upon the day she had. As the sun poured into the back window of the bus, floating upon sharp brunette eyes glazed by deep thought, her mind was screening a less delightful view.

Scurrying between tables, she found herself slightly overwhelmed. And the patrons weren't particularly considerate.

"Hello! I'll be your server. How are you guys today?"

"Let me have a --"

And the words "obnoxious cunt" would often spring alive between her ears, like the sudden zombification of the dead. But her smile, modestly sized and well-curved by her palpably soft and gently pink lips, played facade for the verbal whiplash cracking behind it.

This rude style of exchange ("if you could call it that", she'd often say) was not unusual. In fact, it was routine. But she awoke everyday to the same black polo, tight black spandex, and the classic chucks that have endured years of manifested teenage angst. And everyday, as she ritualistically ponytailed her boldly brown hair, the long bang bounced enthusiastically as ever around her right eye, embodying the borderline psychotic concept of waking up to the "same ol' bullshit" with stark eagerness.

But her affably blunt nose edged downward with the same boldness she aproaches her daily life. And her politely tanned skin humbly hides the scars her psyche persistently endures.

These thoughts and descriptions of her were the very same that scrolled behind her narrowed eyes like an animated news ticker. And they were not unusual.

The bus found itself slowed to a halt at a fairly obscure stop near the park.

"That's when he got on", as she often uttered when she recanted this tale.

He was tall, slender, and fairly confident in the way he seemingly refused the banility of this bus ride. His long, pale face did not care, his long, unkempt black hair did not care, and his white button up, black dress pants, and black sneakers did not care. This wasn't apathy or nihilism, however.

"That sort of hipstery 'fuck society' kind of thing", she'd elaborate.

He walked down the aisle in almost perfect syncronicity as his aura. He sat a few seats ahead of her.

"The perfect staring distance."

She understood it to be the back of his head, but she registered it as something far deeper. And in the same thoughtful manner as she had done earlier, his head titled slightly towards the window. He captivated her. And her eyes pierced through his skull like a sniper, with all the deadly accuracy of a marksman.

There was a rising fountain of urge in her stomach. Why, she did not know. Only that it begged for conversation from him. And with every exerted mental effort to inundate the compelling cries of her nerve-wracked intenstines, it would ricochet with greater force.

"...so what is there to be scared of..." she reasoned, mid-sentence. "It's either....he ignores me and it's all the same...or I get what I want....but I really don't....avoid rejection..."

Her logic argued for apprehension. But little do emotions care for what reason has to say. The buzz in her stomach swelled to her head, and her heart was at the peak of its crescendo. The urge was making its argument by force, and it was quite convincing.

Somewhat uncoordinated, she stood from her chair, and began a small walk down the aisle "that felt like fucking forever", as she'd explain. The world was shrouded in a blurry veil, made of concentrated anxiousness and makeshift courage. During that walk, there was nothing but him, and her.

She sat next to him, and the world suddenly flashed back. Having forgotten, it was then that she realized there is no context for their meeting, and that this was completely unsolicited.

"Um."

She'd forgotten how to introduce herself.

"Hey." he exclaimed, softly as he carefully turned his head to acknowledge her, and back towards the window.

"...is that like...a dismissive hi...." she thought.

It was.

But her urge would not allow it to be fully digested. And so she trembled onward.

"I've been staring at you for like a minute."

It had been 15 minutes since he boarded.

"And it felt like forever."

"That's because it's been 15 minutes since you've been staring at me." he sharply replied.

She found herself mentally slackjawed and physically ill. Her hands burrowed slightly into the crevice between her legs. She'd assumed the worst, and seemingly, the worst had happened.

"...And I would've stared back had I not sat here."

Like a hand pulling her from the edge of a cliff, abundant relief cascaded over her previously disconcerted body. Reciprocation was made. It was only a matter of time.

"So...."

"So."

It was during this brief silence she'd realized he had not been looking at her throughout the conversation.

"So let me see your face."

"Later."

She blushed.

"Later? That's pretty presumptuous of you."

"Then fuck off?"

She was amazed by his sincere bravado. He was irrational, and perhaps antisocial, but he was right. And irresistably so.

"I don't think you want that."

"I don't." he said, somewhat begrudingly.

She made her way in, she thought. But still, she was lost. She'd made her thesis statement. But what was there to argue for, exactly?

"Which stop do you get off at?"

She found herself surprised. She did not ask that, she thought. She couldn't have even fathomed that question. Something else asked it for her. A question like this entails many things. But in this instance, she knew there was only one implication.

"The next one."

His well-toned response answered the question explicitly as it did implicitly. They had agreed to a million things with 9 words.

In the gap prior to the stop, a silence had fallen. In this silence, she found a shame lying beneath this entire encounter. She was not a nice girl, by any means. But she wasn't entirely removed from naiviety. And while she was clever enough to understand any situation she was placed in, a childish guilt was crippling her. "I don't normally do things like this", she'd often say, as if to excuse the events of that day. So she found herself "extra out of place, you know?".

Back and forth, she volleyed thoughts of retreat and thoughts of indulgence. She looked to his face for persuasion of the latter, but to no avail; he had refused to turn to her at any time during this trip, and did not do so then. "I was a goddamn mess" she'd later admit.

Knowing she was chest-deep in hesitation, she broke the momentary silence.

"So what's happening later?" she slowly asked, emphasizing "later" with great curiousity.

"Shit."

"Aren't you a goddamn charmer."

"You're still not fucking off?"

"I won't." she jabbed, with annoying glee.

"Good." he replied, his face stoic as his mouth remained flat and shut. A strange sight next to her brightened eyes and crescent smile.

The silence took its original place, but with an underlying voice that marked what was about to happen. It whispered a mutual enjoyment of what was to come.

He remained peering relentlessly out the window and she facing her front. But she suddenly found herself less "awkward about the whole thing".

The bus found itself slowing down, the sounds of its engines steeped from an incessant growl to a confident hum. This drop in noise was in sharp contrast to her climax of emotions; as if the void in sound was filled by a sickening ball made of her nerves and self-doubt. This was it. This was their stop.

Without cognizance, they rose from their seats and exited the bus's back door, much to the shagrin of the small bus crowd they had been discreetly offended by their promiscuous charms. Their eyes trailed their exit, as though to brand the back of their heads with a scarlet letter.

"I felt them burning my spine." she muffled, apparently thinking aloud.

"They do that." he immediately replied, as if violently brushing any scrutiny off her shoulders.

They scuffled off the bus, walking in equal cadence. The doors closed behind them, and the bus vanished in the middle of the distant horizon.

He swerved left with pride, but she percieved there was little in the way of actual direction. In fact, everything about where he was headed and how he was headed there implied he may have been as lost as she was.

"You're leading the way."

"Yeah."

"...So why does it look like you've never been here before?"

They paused, and he insisted on staring forward.

"Does it really matter to you?" he asked.

"Duh."

"Why the hell should it?"

She caught herself speechless. Why should it matter?, she thought. As long as whatever they've serruptitiously agreed to happens, what is it that's so important about the destination, and who deemed it so?

They began to pace forward a little more as this thought embedded.

And then she found a response.

"Because if I'm banging a strange guy, I wanna make sure it isn't a strange place."

"We're not banging." he replied, offended in tone, but calm in nature.

"I could've sworn that was the point." she said, almost satisfyingly startled with a half-smile. "Everything about this stupid...thing suggested it."

"We share a few words and you assume I'm having sex with you?"

She'd ignored this, and suddenly realized how unusually deep she took this encounter. But before she would succumb to feeling naive, she realized something. He does not express agreement explicitly. That it only occurs beneath a harshly layered crust of curt conversation and perpetual angst. So it was clear to her.

"This is the part where you say 'I was right'." she said smugly, with a sardonic smile to compliment her profound discovery.

"No."

They stopped, and he turned right towards the porch of a dimly lit, one-story home. He took his steps deliberately, as though giving space for a signal to sound between every step.

As he made his way for the door, her sardonic smile faded. She'd realized he wasn't inviting her in, and seemingly had no intention of doing so. His body wreaked of rejection, and his relentless sense of disgust was waiting to be allieviated by the door closing behind him as he slowly walked in, and her face no longer being there. Nothing was going to happen. It was all for naught.

Her face twisted as she percieved this, and embarrassment tied a deep knot in her stomach; a feeling which forced out the one innocuous phrase that summarized the sudden futility of this encounter.

"Fuck you!"

The door opened from its closing. He turned to face her.

Before she could process whatever clever wordplay landed her here, his sharp arms were securely gripping her supple waist, her legs twisted around his lower back, clenching alongside her arms for whenever she felt her tounge needed further thrusting onto his. He stumbled from the front of the house into his bedroom in a flurry of salvia-ridden sucks and gulps as he let her control the situation. But this was a momentary lapse in dominance; as he stumbled into the bedroom, he placed his arms underneath, his protruding wrists dug into her deep rear, and took force as he slammed her into the wall.

A pulse of uncivilized pleasure electrocuted her innards, and compelled her right hand onto the back of his head. She gripped his hair unflinchingly, and in response, he bit her lower lip for one of the few moments their tounges were not conjoined.

Her lip sent desperate messages to the brain, begging for mercy. But she'd knew that he would not stop. Not unless, of course, it was reciprocated.

She took her left arm, cocked backwards, and slapped him across the face with no hesitation. She braced herself for the oncoming drop, and landed awkwardly, falling against the wall a little, her palms reaching for grips that weren't there. He took a few steps back, as though to provide her space, with his arms bent at his sides, unsure of what to do.

She felt a small trickle edging towards her delicate chin. He had drawn blood. And his face had endured a small bruise to the cheek. And for a moment, only the sounds of their syncronized panting could be heard.

"Fuck you!"

He smiled. This was not a rejection. This was not a denial. And it was not a plea to stop. No, in this instance, "Fuck you" was an invitation.

Before he could take his steps towards her, she stomped across the room at him and pushed him towards the bed several times, until he was forced to fall on his back. They both knew to remove their pants, and they scurried doing so, to where they'd forgotten to remove their shoes. They had to connect. He had to be inside her. And that was all that mattered.

She jumped onto his erection and her vagina warmly housed it. They stared upwards in their respective directions, relieved by what they'd been foreplaying all along. She grinded foward and backward, her knees and shins on the bed, and her thighs providing leverage. He dug his hands inside her inner and outer thighs, and he could not help but to scratch the delicious curves that surrounded their union. She began undoing his button-up to reveal his wonderfully gaunt upper body, which seemingly awaited her nails, and so she did oblige. He winced quietly to himself, but his penis certanly did not.

He motioned his upper body towards her. She had assumed it was for a kiss, but instead felt his hands clawing at her biceps, and before she knew it, she was on her back. It was his turn.

He thrusted into her erect legs violently, so as to indulge in the sounds of their thighs slapping against one another. And with each thrust a soft "oh" escaped the girl's lips. With his left arm holding him up, his right hand grasped a part of her face, and dug in, as though to find the source of her beautifully gentle moaning. She'd known he was scratching her. But the burrowing of her face compelled the burrowing of her cunt to be all the more enjoyable. She grabbed his hair again with greater passion, to signal the unquantifiable pleasure he had been providing. And he replied by dragging his hand downward, from her eyes to her neck, and occasionally cutting her breathing off.

With one arm around his lower back, she'd been begging for it deeper. And he had been giving it to her. Moan, panting, moan, panting; each picked up louder, and louder. And before either of the two understood it to be so, they climaxed into one another, in a glorious collage of nails, bruises, blood, and cum.

She did not know what occurred. Only that it did occur. And at that moment, she did not care. In the wake of sheer euphoria, she found herself drifted into sleep.

"I'd never forget that morning", she'd often say. She awoke to find herself alone, in the strange bed of that forgettable room. She "felt like shit...and it was wonderful. Like I've never done this before, and always should've.", a thought reinforced by a small smile that curved onto her tattered face. The previously kempt ponytail and bang was replaced by an unkempt mangle of brunette strings. And her polite tan was marred with discolorations and reddened streaks. Her waist, arms, thighs ("Hell, probably my cunt too") were equally as decimated.

She got up from the bed, and looked at the empty spot that belonged to him. He had long since left. Perhaps right after she went sleep. There was not a single reminder of his existence. And she found herself smiling again.

All that was left to ponder was what would happen when she returned home to her parents, uninformed of her impromptu tryst. She plotted the conversation, and concluded it would only consist of two lines.

She would go home with cuts and bruises in various places, and would she be asked "What happened", her sole response would be a monotone cut through thin lips; "I had a good time".