Between Africa and Paralysis

Professional Writing Sample - This short story was originally published at Whimsplace.com.

Shane hasn't brushed his hair in three years.  He wears his dreadlocks piled on his head like a bird's nest.  He sits outside all through the warm months flaunting his freedom.  I wonder how it would feel to wake up in the morning and not worry.

I've been coming to the Beehive for the past two weeks.  It’s a bar with a few tables set out on the sidewalk.  It’s a young crowd that’s drawn to The Beehive.  They dye their hair purple, tattoo black lines around their necks, and they smoke.  I walk here after work to buy a root beer and wait for my bus. And I watch Shane.

He's one of those guys who occasionally works at pizza shops and ice cream stores, but quits when the boss schedules him for longer than a four-hour shift. He says he's a musician, and to "keep up his music", he picks at his guitar for a half an hour every day.  He calls this dedication, although I’ve never heard anything except lazy G-chords trickling from his instrument.

Shane worships the sun.  He sits with his shirt off and professes through lyrics that the human spirit is dying.  I love Shane, with his honey brown skin and his independence.

But Shane can't love me back.  There are so many reasons.  Because my name is Victoria.   Because I eat too much fast food, and I wear clothes from J.C. Penny's.  How could he love a woman who collects casserole recipes?  I'm all the establishment he's ever revolted against.  And I wash my hair.  Everyday.

But I imagined how it would feel to give up my job at the hospital.  No more sick people.  No more soggy chicken sandwiches from the cafeteria.  No more twelve-hour shifts on Sundays.

In my fantasy, Shane and I are lions crouching in the golden safari grass of Africa.  His hair becomes a lion's mane, and his guitar becomes his affectionate growl.   He licks the fur on the back of my neck.  In my dream, I am Mama.  My babies cling to me and learn to be wild.  We are a pride of lions roaming the grasslands in search of good water.

But my fantasy Safari quickly becomes marred by my medical education.  I remember fleas, droughts, and the pain that comes with injuries.  How could I live on a bed of grass without my daily vitamins?

My husband isn't a lion.  He goes to happy hour and drinks Diet Coke while his friends guzzle Ying-ling.  I watch him and wonder if he's really a man.

How would my husband feel about Shane?  He might be jealous, but he would probably just scowl and say I'm insane.

He likes to lecture me in the morning while he's rubbing gel into his thinning hair.  He says I'm lucky to have a steady job at twenty-eight.  He says I will always have money.  He says I'm one of the lucky ones.

I remember the time when I thought I loved him.   He was safe.  I thought he would be good to our children, but every time I mention children now he says we aren't ready.  He says we need to save money.  He says we don't want to make a mistake.  But I want to take my babies to amusement parks.  I want to decorate Christmas trees with popcorn.  Maybe I want children to mess up my life.  Then there wouldn't be time to paint the bathroom that sickly, yellow color.

I'm waiting for the bus that will take me home to him.  My root beer is almost gone, and it's nearly 7:00.  The bus comes at 7:05.  I should be at the bus stop already, but I'm waiting for something.

Shane said hello to me as usual today, but nothing else.  He's busy talking to his friends about the party they all went to last night.

We rarely talk.  I sit at one wiry table sipping my root beer, and he sits at another talking with other wild-haired, lithe, young bodies.  The Beehive is a place for tattoos, body piercings, and revolution.  I started coming about two weeks ago because it was the last place a nurse in comfortable, white shoes should sit.  I was out of place and distrusted for days.

But yesterday Shane sat at my table and told me how he stopped brushing his hair. He said it wasn't planned.  He just got up one morning, looked at himself in the mirror while he was brushing his hair and said "Nah".  He threw out the brush, and the rest is history.  I almost felt like one of them when he told me his story.   But the smoke from his cigarette burned my throat.  He watched me from across the table.  His voice trailed off, and his eyes bore into me; digging through all my years spent buried in textbooks.  His expression turned from mild curiosity to a burning question, "What are you doing here?”  His eyes were accusing me, “You don't belong to our kind."

And he's right.  I don't belong to these nomadic creatures.   There’s something in the way they take up a whole seat on the bus by spreading their legs that says they have power.  There's something in the way they play their instruments on the street corner that says they aren't afraid.  There’s something in the way they leave their hair that says they could survive even if all the lucky ones were choked from this life.

My watch says it's 7:15.  I missed my bus. My husband won't understand why I'm late.  He will stare at me with his computer-glazed eyes and accuse me of sabotaging my life.  Even a month ago, I would have felt guilty.  But now I’m just trying to figure out where to go when I finish my root beer.

By Melody Platz
February 2005