THBBM - Pink Fiberglass

Pink Fiberglass
this is for all the headless acrobats...
4-19

"You look like somebody famous."

The remark catches Kevin off guard, causing him to sputter a disapproving cough onto the lip of his bottle. He takes a moment to try to decide which is more shocking, an actual woman coming into a dive like this, or the fact that for some reason she was actually talking to him.

He checks his watch, realizing just how long he has been sitting there. It had turned out to be a bad idea, his coming into this run-down locals bar looking for all of the bigger answers. At the time it had seemed like a beautiful green oasis in the middle of an endless khaki-sanded desert, but now as he sat there looking at the label of his beer laying in a pile of tattered shreds on the bar, he realized that it was just another mirage, another hallucination of hope brought on by the dizzying heat of the sun passing away the hours of this directionless part of his young life.

He'd come to this place looking for some sort of reassurance of those things in his life that he'd always felt that he should never doubt about himself. Those graspless traits that made him sure of who he was, opened doors for him, and allowed him to have just enough oxygen in his lungs when he went under so that he could always make it back to the surface. Lately those things seemed lost in the shuffle of his responsibilities and the expectations of everyone around him. Every now and then he felt like he saw them, but mostly it seemed to be just a shadow of an old identity. An identity that seemed to just out of reach these days.

It used to be that the only block in the road was time. Everything else was easy answers, childish riddles, and impossible to miss opportunities. Now, looking for salvation under this flickering neon sign, it seemed that too many things had changed since he'd gotten out of school, so many clear paths through the forest had gotten covered over with leaves and debris...

Throughout his life, Kevin had been the one who always tried to buzz in early, tried to be the one to answer the question before the game show host had a chance to finish reading it. That was his gift. His edge. Places, faces, history -- Kevin saw it as nothing more than an interesting collection of trivia; but his ability to recall it instantly, utilize it to make points during conversation or class discussions had somehow carried him into an invisible upper class. He was the guy with the answers, the smart one. People looked up to him for it, expected great things of him.

After a while, he began to expect great things from himself, as well.

Unfortunately, it was at that precise moment that the double jeopardy round started.

Harder questions, bigger money. He still knew all the answers, but now the other contestants seemed to be buzzing in faster, getting there first. Then, his confidence threatened, Kevin would buzz in as soon as the host began talking, blurting out the first thing that came into his head.

No, I'm sorry -- that's incorrect. Let me read the question again for the benefit of the other contestants...

Now he wasn't sure what he knew anymore. He had a head full of facts, but none of them seemed to be particularly helpful to him...

The sign on the door said "$2 cover," but when he walked in, he discovered that there were only three other guys in the place. The bartender seemed more interested in watching Sportscenter than in collecting any money -- barely acknowledging Kevin's presence until a commercial came on. He took Kevin's order with a quick nod, reached into a cabinet on the floor, and pulled out a longneck.

The bartender placed the beer on the bar. Kevin was about to ask how much he owed for the drink when, as if he had suddenly remembered something important, the bartender picked the bottle back up and tossed a tiny napkin under it. After replacing the beer on top of the napkin, he turned his attentions back to ESPN, ignoring the cash in Kevin's hand.

When he reached to take a sip, the napkin clung to the bottom of the bottle, waving through the air like a flag of surrender. Picking the wet scraps off of his beer, he felt instantly out of place.

"Why did I come here?" He wondered.

It was probably something he had picked up from the guys he had worked with during a summer job he took on a construction crew. The company he worked for refurbished downtown apartment complexes so that they could be turned into office buildings. It was a job his father had gotten for him, saying that it would do Kevin some good to get his hands dirty before he headed off to college. It was the kind of thing his father always said, the kind of thing that his father always thought he had to be the one to say.

In the mornings when it was cool out, they worked the roof -- replacing shingles, patching leaks. Later in the day when the sun started to beat down they moved inside. They would knock down the walls, replace the asbestos with pink fiberglass, and hang new walls on top of it.

It was hard work, but there was something oddly comforting about the simplicity of it all, the way that these men carried themselves. They were working men; unshaven, habitual -- yet they all seemed to be strangely in control of their destinies, unconcerned with the passing of time, youth, or any higher ambitions of fame and fortune. These men were the ones who never seemed to be touched by anything resembling a lack of confidence. They just pushed along happily, only pausing to get angry about things like their cable TV service going out, or the president opting to negotiate with some foreign nation instead of bombing them with extreme prejudice.

Despite his age, the men in the crew instantly accepted Kevin as one of their own. They shared their lunches with him, traded jokes, and dragged him into run-down bars on Fridays when they all got paid.

What impressed Kevin the most was the way that these men always seemed more proud of what they had, instead of worrying about what they didn't. The pressures of the world didn't seem to trickle down to these guys. Sometimes Kevin felt that this fact held these men back from whatever potential they might have, but more often than not it seemed to be a blessing that he wished he could share in.

These were men who had jobs, -- not careers, and they seemed to be completely content with their situation, just as long as they got equal time for both work and play. The men at the construction company scoffed at the business types in their suits, and the women walking to the nearby office buildings with their cell phones glued to their ears.

One particular day at lunch, Kevin and his foreman watched two cars bump into each other while jockeying for the same parking spot. Two men got out, their dark neckties flapping in the wind against their white buttoned shirts as they shouted obscenities at each other. Tempers rose, and soon a punch was thrown. As it went from there, Kevin's foreman shook his head.

"Don't know what they're so upset about..." he said, "Dent like that, take maybe ten minutes to fix."

The men in the neckties continued fighting. Kevin and his foreman returned to their lunches.

*****

"I can't think of his name!" She says, trying to catch Kevin's attention. "He's an actor, in the movies.. young guy? Kinda cute?"

She stands beside him, a look in her eyes asking for something like approval. She has on a short black skirt and top, her shoulders covered by a mesh shrug.

Her looks are Asian, but Kevin isn't sophisticated enough to know anything more specific than that. She has muscular arms and legs that are so long that they somehow make her torso seem especially small. A dancer's body. Her hands clasp the edges of her shrug almost as if she were trying to pull it over her neck and chest to cover up the skin her outfit can't help but reveal. Unfortunately, her shrug is designed to look like a loose fishnet, and it offers no protection to her privacy at all.

In a way, Kevin decides, it almost frames the lightness of her skin against the gloomy darkness of the bar. In another time and place, this attention might be appealing, maybe even tempting. But here, with the mood he was in, the things that were happening all around his world, somehow this situation was not what he wanted at all. Sure, when he opened the door and ordered that first beer he might have imagined something like this happening, the same way anyone daydreams things like this happening to them when they go into a strange bar. But now that the situation was actually here - it seemed plastic, forced.

Flattering as it was, something about her forwardness smelled of professionalism.

Her long, curved nails transform gradually from a dark shade of red into a lighter one, and are adorned with diamond-like stones near the tips. Not wanting to be rude, Kevin compliments them. She takes a moment to admire her own hands. The speakers on the wall begin to pour out some sort of high pitched pop music that Kevin doesn't recognize. The Asian girl breaks into a smile, and begins to sing, swaying her hands above her head.

"Christina Aguilera," she beams, "Oooh, That's my girl!"

He watches her sing for a while, allowing himself to enjoy the performance. Whatever else this girl may or may not be, she has a nice singing voice. She tries to look into his eyes, but he won't allow her a decent glance. She plays it off.

The song begins to fade, and she sits down next to him, motioning to the bartender to bring her something. The sounds of DMX begin to float out of the speakers, and the guys in the other both begin to holler and high five. The Asian girl rolls her eyes, and begins to dig through a tiny purse Kevin had not noticed her carrying before, eventually retrieving a white pack of cigarettes with a green logo on the side. She offers one. He doesn't smoke.

She smiles, lights up, exhales into the air beside her. The red nails take hold of the cigarette, pulling it away from her mouth in one quick motion. The smoke hanging in the air chases her hands in a quick circle, then slowly dissapates into the shadows.

"So," she says suddenly, "Do you work around here?"

Kevin smiles, takes another pull from his beer. "Not really, I'm sorta.. between opportunities right now."

Her drink arrives. The bartender looks at Kevin. It takes him a second to register what is going on, but eventually he finds himself fumbling in his pocket for a few bills. She smiles, and takes a long sip of the drink, looking at the bartender.

"What kind of work do you do?" she asks after a moment.

"Computers," Kevin says, noticing that she's watching the men at the other booth.

She drags on the cigarette again, exhales loudly. "Seems like there would be a lot of work in this town for a guy who knows computers."

"There is," he admits, "But I just don't know if that's really what I want to do with my life anymore."

Suddenly Kevin wonders if he's offered too much. At first, he didn't really want the complication of her being around him, but the prospect of her abandoning him for greener pastures (of a sort) fills him with a sudden compulsion to not lose her company. He still really didn't know what to think of the girl, but something about having someone to talk to had brightened up this whole bar for him.

"I know what that's like." she says. "Me, I've always wanted to be a singer. I think that would be the perfect lifestyle." She puts a hand on his shoulder and laughs, "And honey, you better believe that I would have the best of everything. I would be livin' large!" She flashes a confident smile and goes to put the cigarette back in her mouth.

There's suddenly something distant and serious about her demeanor. For a moment, even though she is sitting right next to him, she seems a million miles away.

Almost as soon as she had slipped into contemplation she is back, flicking the ashes from her cigarette onto the floor beside her.

She lowers her eyebrows a little bit, stares into Kevin's eyes, and asks, "If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be?".

"I don't know," Kevin smiles, "I was thinking about going into construction."

"Construction?" she answers, a note of surprise in her voice, "You look a little too smart to be doing something like that.".

Kevin lets a long moment go by, and then motions for the bartender to bring two more drinks.

"Yeah, I know."