| New Jersey is boring, but that fosters creativity.
1
It was something of a tale. Well, it was something, at least. Nathan told it to every new person he met. It ensured an easy ice breaker under all conditions, and an opaque, soft sheet to cover up his personal age-old insecurities. Perhaps blanket would be a better word. He did not merely shield its view; Nathan wrapped himself in his stories, comforting him in the cold, crisp air of reality.
He had been living on his own for some 3 years now. His parents deceased by retirement, moving to Tuscany to burn all bridges and disappear into a slow bodily decline until the battery finally gave out.
They actually lived out in the suburbs, 20 miles from Nathan’s apartment, in the same house Nathan grew up in, but he preferred not to think about it. When he graduated from university, they wouldn’t let him move back. He hasn’t spoken to them sense.
“Oh, I’m just here temporarily” Nathan would say, to some blond headed excitement machine of a bartender “I’m planning on moving up and out soon. I’ve got a lot of connections back at the university.”
And so it begins.
He told many tales of grandeur: winning the national debate championship, dating various soon-to-be or long-since-past celebrities, and all sorts of ground breaking research he’d worked on in the nanotechnology field, inserting chips into brains and creating artificial blood vessels. He even always included a comment about how if she wanted to go back to his work, he could put a chip right in her ear and she’d love him forever. He always hoped she’d reply that she already would. It never happened. And it’s a good thing no one wanted to take him up on his offer; he wouldn’t have had any idea of where to begin.
Nathan was a business major. He knew no blond haired girl wanted to hear about how he paid 100,000 dollars and spent 4 years working his ass off learning how to be a schmuck. Sure, they’d want to hear all about it when he was somebody, but not now. Not when he needed it most. So he did what all men do when faced with unobtainable needs; he lied his brains out.
Though, tonight he’d get a break. It was a Wednesday, so the bars were practically deserted, and the ones who were there were mostly married, though wishing they weren’t. Nathan spotted his target approaching from the corner of his eye. He ordered an imported beer (He thought he could taste the culture in the coarse journey down his esophagus, but really, he just really liked the color of the bottle) and when his waitress arrived with his order, the story began again. The whole scenario of his manufactured university experience dancing in his head and leaking straight through his mouth into the open air. He’d repeated the story so much that it seemed real. In fact, it had to be real. There were so many details. His story was more vivid than any memory he could dig up from his childhood, because he wanted it so much.
The fantasy disappeared from his head. His debate metal disappeared from his neck, his Nobel Prize winning professor vanished in thin air, as he was sucked down from his pedestal into a black hole where his limbs and organs were torn apart and rendered perfectly incapable of functioning and then reconvened perfectly together again into the dark grim bar, with the beautiful brunette waitress glaring into his gray eyes.
“Cut the bullshit kid,” she had said, while Nathan was still consumed in his manufactured past. “Shouldn’t you get home,” she asked, “Don’t you have a family or work to get to?”
He had work, but it didn’t matter. It was only temporary, after all. He stood gazing into her eyes, trying to recapture the story into his mind. Instead he noticed her eyes. Crystal blue, but not quite clear. Like a rare gem, just dug up from the earth. They weren’t as beautiful as they should’ve been, dulled by the harshness of reality. No, he realized, they’re more beautiful. They’re real. These weren’t unnaturally Crayola Brand sky blue contact lenses, which had become all the rage. These are real eyes, which have seen everything he’s seen, and which have accepted those images for what they are, and remain facing the world as wide as the day they first lost their innocence. He blinked and the eyes were gone; the waitress had left the bill on the table and was walking away. He seemed to reach for her, but decided it was no matter. He glanced at the bill and noticed a note in plain, almost masculine hand writing. It was so perfect, yet so starkly simple. .
Have a great night. Your business is important to us!
He left a tip, and scurried out of the bar. The whole sentence seemed uncharacteristic of the interactions they’d had. Seemed as though she was cut from a different mold. Yet, here it was, the definition of contrived politeness at, assumingly, her hand. No matter, he thought. Just doing her job.
Yet, still, there was something about the way she wrote, he thought. Some attribute of years of weeding out the waste and excess motion, with every letter formed with the minimum amount of definition, yet still perfectly understood by any eye, even one blinded by age and experience. That is, all of it except exclamation marking at the end. It was in such contrast to the rest of the business clichéd line. So beautiful, as well, yet, it seemed so out of place. The Taj Mahal in Texas. It burst out into an extravagant bubble type, elaborate and bold, seemingly written by someone else entirely. He assumed she was trying to be cute. Doesn’t have to try too hard, he thought.
He then thought nothing, went home, found his bed, and went to sleep.
2
The repetitive unwelcome buzz of the alarm clock aroused him from a world he embraced far more readily than his own. He pulled on his slacks he wore the day before, and attempted to wipe the sleep from his eyes. He stared at himself through the mirror. The small slits of his eyelashes were barely raised enough for him to see clearly, but still looked as if he wasn’t looking at anything at all. He wondered if this was how that always looked. He could picture the girl’s eyes from the night before, looking him in the face, wide-eyed and confident.
Nathan raised his lids to attempt to emulate the feeling. He shut them immediately, seeing the bloodshot and tired eyes in front of him. He rubbed them again, and then stopped looking.
He needed a shave. Funny how the soft masculine growth turns in to the rugged unkempt look in just a matter of hours. Or had he just not noticed? It was too early for him to discern an answer to this question, but he could discern that it was time for a shave, lest he be reprimanded by his boss at the local bookstore. Nathan had always argued that the greatest minds often kept facial hair and rather uncouth ways of hygiene and appearance. His boss, Anthony, was always quick to remind him that the greatest minds in the world wrote, and didn’t sell, books. Nathan, on the other hand, had an appearance to keep. He called it the common man’s compromise with the extraordinary. Nathan remembered one of many of these similar conversations and decided today was not the day for another one as he lathered his face with shaving cream and removed his 2 day ruggedness.
He caked on deodorant to mask his shower-less odor as he looked around his mess of an apartment for his things. Shaking off dirt from his wrinkled dress shirt, he thought that maybe it was time to clean up in the event of company, but he was kidding himself, and he knew it. He had a few friends from his days in university, drinking buddies, others who’s lot in life suffered as much as his, and they often took solace in that fact, but those days were long gone. He had gone back to his town to get the easy rent from his folks. It didn’t happen, but he was done with school and had nowhere to go. So he stayed, by himself, miles from where he grew up.
He had longed for the comfort level that would go along with a move like this. He knew where everything was, and what families live where, but he neglected to realize that the town you grow up in is defined by the people you grow up with, and these were not the same. They had all moved along now. He had left too, but the allure of safety was just too strong to pass up
It wasn’t like he had not gotten his chance either. Having done well in school, he received an entrance level job right after graduation for a national advertising agency. Nathan thought it was his dream job. He showed up on the first day with his suit and tie, and couldn’t wait to get started bouncing ideas off his superiors and seeing them come to fruition in billboards, trendy packaging, and super bowl commercials. Things didn’t pan out exactly as planned, though.
It wasn’t that Nathan wasn’t creative. He spent most of his life inventing ideas out of nothing. He just couldn’t handle the pressure, or the deadlines, or the people. They ate him alive, and spit him out before the end of the year, and he was back looking for a way to pay the bills. He threw out his suit and tie and gave up. He applied to the bookstore and hasn’t looked back since. Hasn’t looked forward either. And that’s where he was headed again today.
He left his apartment, hopped into his Toyota, and in 5 minutes he was there. Anthony let him in, and they shared a moment looking at each other, a moment which acknowledged how worthless they both felt. Everyone grows up wanting to change the world, and it’s just a matter of time before they realize they can’t. Anthony and Nathan were long since passed that point.
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