Pretending

Months back I went through a serious Of Montreal phase. Their song Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games, in which there is a line that I really liked, was particularly appealing to me (I realized later that this was, in part, because Outback Steakhouse had appropriated the song...with changed lyrics...for an ad campaign a while back, so it seemed familiar). Meanwhile, I was thinking about pick up lines and boys (if you can imagine) and began to like the idea of writing a series of vignettes from the perspectives of women, and maybe men, who are all approached by the same man. Here is the first, and only, vignette I have written, just to mix things up (and make me feel like I still write sometimes).

Let's Pretend We Don't Exist, Let's Pretend We're In Antarctica

I didn't know any better. I didn't know it was a line in a song. He said it to me and I pictured us under a mountain of blankets, an unseen tundra's worth of pure frigid air being pushed around our small pocket of burning cozy warmth. A bump. A tiny bump on the horizon, which wouldn't count in the greater scheme of things … that would barely, if at all, exist. A warm spot in a cold map, a tiny little red blip one millionth of a millionth of the size of a speck of dust. I thought he was asking me to nest. To make it about us at the cost of all others, or something. I didn't really want to exist as I was, and winter was coming…and so I kissed him.

Turns out he did this frequently, quoting song lyrics to see if those around him were able to pick them out and identify them. My kissing him was not the right answer to the test to which he was subjecting me. But it wasn't wrong either. It's like those fill in the blanks that are subjective; the teacher knows what they expect the answer to be and most all the students either write that assumed response or guess wildly but, on occasion, a child will come at the question from such a wholly new direction that admiringly, or begrudgingly, the teacher must give them full credit … and rewrite the question for the next year's class. In our version of this situation, of course, I didn't realize it was a test, nor did I realize the possibility of next year's class.

It was a nice kiss. Though initiated by me, he quickly took the lead. This made me more certain that I understood the purpose of his phrase, the meaning of his glance, the slight curl of his lips, the tightening of his cheekbones' skin and overall lift of his brow: he was asking me to spend forever with him, staying warm.