[walter doesn’t trust me. no surprise. I can see below the surface, despite the muck, and it is cold and dark. paranoia is an apt term for me, and yet, largely, it has slowly seeped out of my system, to be replaced by some sort of self assurance. people are weird. and most people suck. I finally figured out that--for the most part--their oddness has little to do with me. and I can read most people like a book. especially now. especially when there’s no me involved, when we’ve just met, when our connections have nothing to do with me. I used to wonder why everyone looked at me so much until someone simply answered that maybe it was because I was looking at them so much.]
they eye me but do not greet me. they sit next to me but say nothing. I try laughing at all of their jokes, but it doesn't even work. their dislike of me emanates from them. I wonder if it is him they do not like, because it seems like they tolerate him, and perhaps I am just not around enough, not regular enough to be trusted. And like the curious eyes that meet mine, I stare at them without a word of greeting, waiting for them to acknowledge me, wondering if they even remember me, for it is a given that I know them, I know them intimately and we have never even had a conversation, I know their last names, I know their livelihoods, I know the stories about them. So I sit and stare at their cold eyes, wondering why they do not say hello, wondering if it is because I do not say hello.
I see the fibers tangled in the relationships far beyond what walter sees. I see every movement, hear every word, I am constantly filtering the information, even when I don’t want to be constantly observing, even when I wish I could turn it off, make it stop, I still see her finger trace the tattoo on his arm, and a hush falls over the bar while time stands still for that finger and the tattoo, just out of sight of his girlfriend, who sits stoically on his other side, for she has won him but it is tenuous and she knows it, and she feels that finger and knows its presence intimately and wonders how she ever let it become such an issue, but it’s too late to pretend that it doesn’t matter and now they live together (the finger and the tattoo), and she lives alone, wondering if she’s really won.
I want to believe walter that it is just my paranoia, I want to believe him, drew, that I cause my world, but I know the truth, I see the stories, they fit like blocks in my mind, so perfectly that I cannot listen to anything but what I know is true. schaffer hates me. I ridiculed his sleeping habits once and he has never forgiven me for it. I apologized and he waved it off. I have been branded as un-fun. haughty. un-cool. schaffer has heard about other things from billy, perhaps, things that make me seem weird. and now I am there, in their space, with their friend. it is too much. schaffer looks at me and says, oh, walter! and then, to cover his tracks, he says, the patriots are gonna lose (or something equally lame). this does not match his look. I’ve seen that look before. I’ll see it again.
[the diminishing paranoia whispers that I ought to learn how to read lips. for then I would really have the proof. and just in case, when I speak of them I cover my mouth with my glass of beer. just in case.]
the other things I see are well below the surface: erin posseses billy. billy loves megan. megan loves billy. tracy loves billy. billy is bound to erin. erin doesn’t know who I am but I’m one girl too many at the bar. I’m a girl she doesn’t know. so she saunters over to figure me out. walter and I tell her that megan keeps calling me laura. at the first lull, erin tells megan. megan is embarassed. erin has found a crack in the veneer of the beautiful girl that billy is in love with. erin doesn’t know it, but I will hate her forever for doing that. I will always love megan more because she is beautiful and kind and erin is fat, and ugly and mean.
every other time I go there, I have a good time because this mix of unhappy souls is absent. when they are present, I wish to never return until I am coaxed back by walter, who swears that they are simply not what I believe they are. he doesn’t trust my instincts for stories and I don’t believe him.
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