I was walking down the street in downtown Arlington when I saw her. She was a very interesting young girl, dressed as she was in mismatched colors – a white t-shirt with a fire orange vest, a long purple skirt, rainbow striped toe socks and leather Birkenstocks. Her arms were covered from wrist to past her elbow in jingly metal bracelets studded with turquoise. She held a picket sign that read “HUGS FOR $1” in sloppy black paint. Naturally, I had to notice her. I brushed past her in the semicrowded sidewalk, muttered a barely audible excuse me miss, and prepared to forget all about her.
She did not intend to let me do that. A minute or so later, she tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around to look into a young dirt-smudged face. “Hey, uh, can we do that again? It’s like, uh, it’s like we’re all insects in a colony or something, we’re all on like autopilot or something and we never really talk to each other. I mean, it’s like all conversation is conducted solely for the sake of politeness, like we’re bound to some kind of protocol. It’s gross! Paper or plastic, credit or debit, thank you for shopping here and please come again, would you like cream with your coffee ma’am… it’s like there’s nothing really human about it, it’s all to keep us moving in an efficient manner. I don’t want cream in my coffee, I want real human contact, I don’t want to give that up. I know we haven’t met, but… don’t you feel the same way?”
We walked together a few blocks down the street to get to a seedy diner. I walked, anyways. She sort of skipped and sashayed all at once, bracelets jingling to the rhythm of her strange dance. She lit a cigarette with a book of matches and started taking long drags. “Do you mind if I smoke?” I didn’t. Her long dreadlocks, mousy brown and dyed faded pinks and greens, were wrapped around her fingers. “Hey, uh, are you a dreamer? I mean, do you dream? Like, at night?” I nodded. “I don’t meet too many dreamers lately. I mean, when I was a kid, you know, like in school, we used to talk about, I mean, like my classmates at recess, we used to always talk about our dreams and stuff, y’know? But like, now that we’re – I’m – all grown up and not a kid anymore, no one talks about their dreams anymore, it’s like it’s dead.”
She coughed, flicked away her cigarette, lit another cigarette, and then continued. “It’s like no one dreams anymore or something. I know a lot of people who say they don’t dream, but I know, that it’s not that, but, like, it’s uh… it’s that they don’t remember their dreams when they wake up anymore. I mean I don’t know why that is but dreaming isn’t dead, it’s just... forgotten. They don’t teach you how to like, dream properly or whatever in school, so it’s like, I dunno, like they removed it from our language, like dreamers are banished from society because dreams aren’t somehow real and to acknowledge something unreal as if it was reality, people think that, like, you’re insane, you know? For, uh, talking like dreams, which are like, not real, as if they were. But they are real, at least until you wake up, y’know?”
We sat in the smoking section, of course. I ordered a coffee to drink; she had a Shirley Temple, with extra syrup. Her green eyes locked with mine and I could not look away. “Language, man. Do you ever think about language? Like, something that’s really interesting to me about language is that it’s just, you know, sounds and grunts and utterances and things like that, just random, well, noises. Like, the word ‘dog’ is like ‘duhhhhh-ogggggh’ and it refers to this uh, well, it means ‘small furry four-legged animal that barks a lot at night’ and like the word ‘f**k’ is like ‘fffffuuuuuuuhhhh-chhhk’ and it means like all these things and it’s offensive for some reason. I know it seems like one of those things that, uh, you shouldn’t think too much about but I think a lot so, it’s just one of those things, you know? I mean, why is the sound ‘dog’ acceptable but the sound ‘f**k’ isn’t?
By this time, she had had two more Shirley Temples and was working on her fourth. “It’s like, assigned meanings, you know, reality by consensus, really weird if you take the time to like, uh, take the time to think about it, y’know? As a group we’ve decided that ‘dog’ means ‘small furry annoying thing’ but our word for ‘dog’ could just as easily be like, uh, ‘grafnak’ or something, I dunno. But like the point is, uh, you know, those people who are all about censorship and crap, they’re pretty weird people to go around labeling noises as offensive and unclean and bad, why don’t we start banning certain tempos of music or killing frogs because we hate, like, croaking noises or something? It’s just uh, it’s just silly.
“Like, when you talk about something you don’t really know if what you’re trying to say is what they’re hearing, really… their assigned meanings behind the word ‘love’ might be different from yours, because words are just like, symbols, and it’s all in how we interpret them individually… but yet, when we talk to one another, and we feel that we’ve connected, like, you know, people do, and we feel understood, I think it’s like this feeling, it’s like a spiritual… uh, a religious moment, a communion, y’know? And that feeling is temporary, it doesn’t stick, but, uh, even still, even though it’s only, like, this short feeling, a short buzz, it’s like, it’s what we live for, y’know?”
Her leg is shaking, and so is the whole table. She stops and looks at me sheepishly. The food is here – plain cheeseburger and fries for me, but she ordered something that wasn’t on the menu. “Take some spaghetti noodles and bring them to boil, man, then put some – oh, you’d better write this down, man, because, like, it’s a little complicated. So, uh, spaghetti noodles, like normal, then put some tomato sauce on the other burner, and because I know you have lots of burners, do some alfredo sauce too, and like, put a pinch of nutmeg in it, and a dash of paprika, and some bits of hamburger meat in the tomato sauce and after they’re, uh, after they’re done, mix them together with a spoon and throw it on the spaghetti, and gimme some hash browns with it too, like breakfast.”
When we left the diner it was getting dark out, and the wind had picked up, so her dreadlocks kept blowing into her face. She tossed her head to the side each time to get them out of the way. “So I guess this is, uh, this is it, then? It’s the way it is here in the city, man, I mean, like, when we see each other once but never see each other again, really. So uh, I don’t really, uh, I don’t mind much. But uh, don’t forget, I mean, remember what we talked about, okay? I mean, it may not seem really important, but like, it is. It’s super important. All of it, even the silly stuff.
“Because, you know, you haven’t met yourself yet, really. But, uh, the point of meeting others first, is that, like, one of them, or, us, really, could lead you to, uh, well, it could lead you to meeting yourself. So think about what I said, think about it, man. You don’t want to lose your passion in living, and, uh-” I cupped my hand over her mouth and placed a dollar in her hand. She gave me a tight, long hug. “I guess you get the, uh, you get the point, then. Maybe we’ll uh, meet again someday.” I started to walk away from her, and she yelled out to me. “Super perfundo on the early eve of your day, man!”
I have no idea what that last bit means.
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