I had deduced over the years that something vital was missing from my life. It was as if there had been something on my mind that I had forgotten for the last two years, but was sure I'd remember it--if I thought just a little harder. But no amount of time staring off into space, laying in bed, eyes pacing the imperceivable ceiling of a dark room, would allow me closure. Something remained unfinished. But what it was, I couldn't tell you.
It was sometime in June when I finally slipped out of my house, around 7, feeling an abundance of energy surging through my hands and feet. The air was unseasonally chilled-the weatherman, a rather rotund character unfit for the morning news, had miscalculated the weekly hi and lows so poorly that I couldn't help but think he wanted to get fired. That seemed like a favorable decision, especially if it is true that cameras add 10 pounds to any figure. Still, in spite of the weather, I was wearing a t-shirt with some banal design, and denim short-shorts. I would likely freeze before I arrived at the bar I had suddenly felt compelled to go too. Usually I can't stand being frozen to the point of developing goosebumps-my skin had always been smooth, protruding bumps pushing out tiny bleached hairs affected any attractiveness to my arms-but tonight was different. I felt on fire-not feverish, but supercharged. I hadn't felt this rush since I was a teenager, hopping into a car that wasn't mine and speeding away after bedtime under headlamps that ticked off the distance travelled in a pointless journey around the neighborhood. But a lot of things had changed in the interim between sixteen year old and adult. My mind wandered into a heart numbing reverie, too reflectant on the way I used to be, mistake-riddled, but oh so charmingly innocent, smiling, always showing perfect teeth.
So reflectant that I completely missed the street I should have turned right on. I stopped underneath a street lamp completing a trinity with an overflowing garbage can and a graffitied newspaper box. Or would it be vendor? That didn't matter much. I slipped my phone out from my front jean pocket, left hand twirling it like a small, rectangular baton until it faced upwards. It was ten. Unsure of how I had spent the last three hours walking but not remembering any of it, I proceeded to believe that it must not really be ten at all-though the sun had set and across the way a group of kids were walking hurriedly up the street, one of them yelling this and that about a curfew. Which was at 10. I strained my eyes to the nearest street sign: Davidson. I was clearly more than an hours walk away from my apartment, I was an expenive cab ride away from my home. To my left were a series of white apartment building, impeccable two story dwellings with a grandeur not spared even on their stoops. Spiraling columns and gothic address letterings cut into limestone blocks clued me into the precise location of the neighboorhood I had dream walked into and was now surrounded by. Somewhere around here one would start finding the high end retail stores and the expensive restaurants that signified the wealth of it's occupants.
I put my cell phone back into my jeans, reluctant to call any one of the people who had cars and could pick me up. My skin still felt aflame, itching almost for me to do something, but having no idea what that something was. I sat down on the steps of 1128 and waited for myself to make a decision. It took sometime, and I found that my eyes had a peculiar way of finding there way to the same staring spot-the alley way behind a Starbucks up the street. Something about the multiple wires that hung above a green dumpster pushed up against a pale brick wall seemed so iconic in my mind that I couldn't look away.
My phone vibrated. I got excited, like a Pavlov dog hearing a bell. Was this a text? I opened my phone to find that it was just an email. A 94-point wine for only $7.99! 3 days only!, it yelled, a little too desperate for my prolonged interest. I don't even know why I sign up for those things. I put the phone back, miffed that no one I actually knew was trying to communicate with me, and went back to analyzing the alley way across the street. It was then that the door elevated behind me starting making the unmistakable noise of locks being unlocked. My instincts told me I should move to avoid any social taboos about using a strangers property as a resting place, but I felt no motivation to fly off the stairs. I was too calm, as if all the energy I had felt earlier was fleeing, leaving me lifeless in the middle of midtown.
Somebody began walking down the steps. I turned my head softly to the left making sure no one would stumble over me. A man wearing a yellow shirt and placing his keys back into his pocket clearly noticed me and changed his pathway as to not collide with me. As he passed he nodded and said, "hey", the way people do when they feel like uncomfortably greeting another human being; a coworker in the bathroom or an ex in an elevator. He passed on down to the street, falling almost with a type of youthful fluidity. Deja vu stirred in me.
"Hey," I shouted a bit, it echoed unknowingly off the brick wall across the street. He turned around to look at me, startled. I realized that my yelp might have sounded too acosting, so I repeated hey again, this time softer so that it didn't fling across the street and down that alley to who knows where. "Do you know me?" He took a couple steps back to where I was still sitting, squinting slightly. "No," he said after a pause, hesitantly as if he had answered wrong. "I don't think so. Should I know you?"
I thought about that for a while, recognizing that I was inconveniencing him by really not knowing him and just being a dumb stranger breaking the laws of strangerdom. "No. I guess not." He laughed. Usually laughter calms me, takes everything and dumps it out as not important enough to worry about. But his laugh put me on edge. The fever came back and I was suddenly on my feet, walking down to stand next to him, underneath a street light, a garbage can, and a newspaper dispenser. Or box.
"I feel like I know you..." I felt crazed and I couldn't control it, even though I wish I might, because I was scaring him. His smile evaporated and he shrugged, "maybe..."
"How old are you?" here hoping we were roughly the same age and therefore might have a greater chance running into each other doing age appropriate things.
"26?"
"Where did you grow up?" here hoping that we had actually grown up together
"Detroit"
"What's your name?" here praying that he was a second cousin or someone famous, to account for me feeling oddly connected to somebody I didn't know.
"Ian MacAlaster".
Dammit, I realized that there was nothing obvious about him which would explain this. I wasn't attracted to him either, and I certaintly wasn't drunk, two things that usually make me approach individuals for no good reason. I was 24, I grew up definitely not in Detroit ( I loathed Michigan and the incompetense of drivers with cars displaying the states license plate), and I was not, in any way, related to any scots.
"Whats your name?" I rambled it off to him, thinking not of my name but of why I felt compelled to yell after a random man. "I'm sorry," I laughed a little bit, faked of course, but I didn't want to seem crazed. "I just had this weird feeling that I knew you. Deja vu, you know?" he nodded knowingly, still eyeing me a bit suspiciously. "I've had the weirdest night. I started walking to a bar from my aparment over on the west side of lake ave, but I spaced out and kept walking for like, three hours."
"What bar were you walking to?"
"Some kitschy 50s place. I don't know why, either. I wasn't going there with any of my friends."
He nodded as if that happened to him all the time. "Come on, you can follow me. I am heading over to a bar, not a "kitschy 50s" place" he pantomimed quotation marks in the air, fascinated by my description of what seemed to be a below par bar, "and Im meeting a couple of friends. Some of who live on the west side. They could probably drive you home." That seemed, almost, too nice, to the point of uncomfortability. Still, I had to know why I had arrived out here, outside his house, with an implacable feeling I'd been here before. "Are you sure?" I asked as we took off down the street. "Yea, no problem. I'm usually not this nice to people I don't know, but you don't seem harmful."
I took that as a compliment as I followed him through the streets of the part of town I rarely frequented to a bar I'd never been to. But the fever relaxed a bit, and I felt eased, almost content.
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