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“You know man, this just isn’t meant for either of us.”
The pale smoke dragged from his lips as he spoke, his 27 a bright contrast against the foggy ethos that was Fisherman’s Wharf on this particular Saturday. My friend is hard to describe: sort-of Dylan-esque, depending on the day, with a shock of brown hair and seemingly permanent five-o-clock shadow. Usually dressed in Salvation Army’s finest, and today was no exception: a linen, frayed blazer over a cornwall-blue button up that someone may or may not have died in. He looks tragic; he didn’t always.
Usually, he doesn’t wait for any kind of pregnant pause, or any other pleasantries in conversation, but today he seems tired, and lets the last syllable drag off in a cloud of smoke, gliding in peals from the corners of his mouth. He twists a vagrant curl of hair and pulls a pained face before extrapolating: “We just can’t stay around here. This whole place”– at this he gestures vaguely back across the bridge, through the narrow hills beyond which we both reside– “it kills your soul. We need to be places where people are really people, man, not just this geriatric bullshit.” At this, he spat.
Sitting there on that cold bench, I knew all too well what he meant. I flicked idly at a seagull as it made a lunge for one of my bright orange shoelaces. I hated that skin-crawly feeling I got every time I piloted my hulking wreckage of a car back from my apartment into Marin county. It was always hard to explain, sort of like the feeling when you’re sure you’re being watched; hackles raised, looking subtly in every mirror, I would careen time after time into my hometown, with a lurking terror rising with every clockwork heartbeat in my chest. To hear him express this feeling, too, was at once highly relieving and disturbing.
“I mean, really,” He said indignantly, tossing the burnt filter from his right hand into the gutter and standing suddenly. “We’re too young to be as cynical as we are now. I can’t even go home, because my family has the emotional strength of a five year old right now. This is fucked, man. We need to get hell and gone from here.”
Suddenly, he yells. Nothing distinguishable, but an anguished, timeless cry, one that you could identify only upon its utterance. Mist seems to pour from his mouth as he bellows into the salty breeze, emphasizing the ghoulishness of his actions. The street is empty, except for some seagulls pulling a half eaten happy meal from an art deco garbage can. Exhausted, he sits. “Fuck, man,” he rasps, pulling a fresh cigarette from his breast pocket and lighting it with a banged up Bic.
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