Writings » Apartment 3A

Apartment 3A

By Buttermilk Baby at 2007-12-09 | Ridiculous!, Comedy, Romance | Printable version

Apartment 4A »

            "My life is anguish, my life is blood, I am Weeping Willow," or so his MyFace profile proclaimed.  He frequented the online friends forum so much he had lost all use for a social life.  In his opinion it wasn't gone, it was just digital, like everything else is in this day and age.  But the truth was with the exception of school and an occasional AFI concert, he only left his apartment for six hours in the last two months.  And that was when he was performing his time behind the wheel getting his learner's permit.  And that was despite the fact history dictated he wouldn't drive anywhere even when he had a license.

            Blaine Jacobsen was tall for his age but skinny, more accurately put, sickly; unhealthily so.  Pale, most likely due to his lacking relationship with the sun.  Lurching and awkward with a long matted, dyed, ebony crop of hair that grew down over one eye.  Those same eyes were in a constant state of shadow, more commonly know as eye liner.  With a pair of popping pink lips that to this day he swears are only the byproduct of "chap stick."  To anyone else that same "chap stick" would be called Ginger Rose Revlon.  Frankly put, he looked ridiculous.  But in his words, he was "emo."

            Day in and day out he logged into the site which had gained tremendous popularity in the last year and a half.  Along with a few others, Namebook, GalPals, and the infamous "Iamlegion," MyFace was all the rage.  Everybody from your teacher to your grandmother had a profile, swapping cell phone pictures like a school of piranhas on a misplaced toddler's meaty thigh.  Blaine had mastered all its ins and outs.  The up-angle pic, the down, the mirror reflection shot, the sad face, the cocked eyebrow, and the always popular pouty-lip special.  He was a regular MyFace-Whore, and he ate it up.  He had almost 12,000 friends on his profile, too bad none of them were real.

            It was just pictures of teens who looked exactly the same.  A sea of bad haircuts and zip-up sweatshirts, pathetic lip rings, and dark eye makeup.  Gender was gone, individuality was gone, humanity, was gone...  All in the sake of being "emotive."  It was funny really, because the only thing they were emoting was the urge of people around them to smack them in the face.  But trends come and go, and Blaine's mother hoped this one would soon pass.

She was an attractive woman in her own right, caring, intelligent, simple, just didn't have the best of luck with men.  Divorced for almost thirteen years now, forcing Blaine to grow up without a father, thus the inevitable reason for his mini emotional rebellion.  She tried a few more times, was engaged twice, but things had a way of just ending.  Grudgingly enough, the last time was because of Blaine.

"Get off that Goddamn computer and go meet a girl already," she offered.  "I'll drive you to the mall myself."

"I already met a girl, ma," he smirkingly announced.

"You did?" She was stunned, "Where, at school?"

"Hell no, online."

"Dammit Blaine, a real girl," she despaired through her exhale, lowering her head slightly in subtle frustration.

"I told you not to call me that when I'm logged on!"

"Sorry," she proclaimed sarcastically, "Weeping Willow."

"Thank you.  And she is real, her name's Angel, and she's gorgeous," he fought back at her, trying to make his presence as a lady's man known.

"Alright, let's see a picture of her."  She leaned in next to Blaine to get a better look at the screen.  He pulled up her profile which was met with another long, acted exhale of disapproval.

"Blaine!"

"Willow," he paused and lowered his voice, "Weeping Willow."

"Willow," she adjusted, "you can't even tell if that's a boy or a girl."  And the sad fact was that she was right.  Angel's pictures looked just like her own son's.  Skinny, long hair over one eye, all dyed black, and eye makeup.

"What!?! Of course you can."  They both sat there in silence for a good half of a minute staring into the monitor.  Blaine with a content, heartfelt smile, and his mother, one Anne Jacobsen with a look of uneasy confusion, trying desperately to decipher this asexual riddle of a person.  The moment broke.

"Well, when is your first date?" she dropped on him with some intention of reverse-psychology, but much to her surprise a date had been set.

"Tonight.  We're going to dinner at Starbucks," he declared.

"You can't get a dinner at Starbucks."

"You can get a buttered roll, or a muffin. Besides, we're both trying to lose some weight."

"Blaine, you don't even weigh a hundred pounds, this isn't healthy, you-"

Interrupting, "Willow, Mom. How many times do I have to say it?"

She cut back in with force, "Look, I put up with a lot.  The hair, the lipstick..."

"I told you, it's chap stick!"

"The clothes, the eye makeup, but you're unhealthy, I should take you to see a doctor," she said pawing at his face trying to get a better look at his sunken cheeks.  He slapped her hand away and shut off the monitor.

"I'm fine, okay," he got up, walked away, and pulled his bedroom door closed behind him.  All the "A" apartments were lucky enough to have two bedrooms instead of just the one, like in the B's through E's.  She stood there for a moment, partly worried, partly aggravated, wanting so much more for her son.  But although Anne Jacobsen did the very best she could all her life, things had just turned out otherwise.  Suddenly a sliding noise shifted across the ceiling and drew her attention upwards.  Something was probably happening in the apartment above.  But before she could pay any mind to it a burst of music pumped through the thin wall.  It would have startled her if it wasn't the first time she'd been standing in the same spot, soaking in the same situation.  Blaine was blasting some punk CD getting ready for his "date."

 

"Fifteen minutes until my lady arrives," Blaine thought aloud, "She's got the driver's license, but I got the license to thrill."  His smirk was so wide it could be seen from space.  He looked over his shoulder to check that the door was still closed.  With that confirmation he pulled out his ruby stick of Revlon and slowly pulled it across his lips.  He puckered, popped the cap back on, and threw it back into the drawer.  He zipped up his hoodie and prepared to meet the girl of his dreams.

Her name was Angel, and they'd been XoXOxo'ing for a while now, and you could say things were getting pretty hot.  Perhaps if you were in the third grade, or suffered from some kind of learning disability...  But he had fallen in love with her, without ever so much as hearing her voice over the phone.  They both preferred "texting" messages back and forth opposed to verbal communication.  This evening was sure to be a wild ride; two self-proclaimed social outcasts in emo gear swaying the night away to the newest "My Chemical Ridiculous" album through an iPod.  Gather one and all...

Angel knocked on the door, and Blaine felt his heart drop a little.  Despite trying to appear collected in front of his unwarrantedly resented mother, he was excited.  His palms were sweating a little and he couldn't help from smiling as he answered the door.  His mother stared on from the kitchen with a blank, if not bored look on her face.

The door was opened, and Angel stood in the hallway, all 6 foot 1 of him...

"Weeping Willow?" Angel questioned.

"Yeah, who are you?"

"I'm Angel, we have a date tonight."

"You're a dude..." Blaine pointed out flatly.

"Yeah. Wait, you're a dude too?" he dumbly fumbled back at his online lover.

Anne couldn't help but burst into laughter.  She never expected something like this to happen to her son, but now that it had, she couldn't hold back her chuckling.

"I thought you were, a," he was cut off by Blaine.

"Girl..."  They both stared into the face of their online flame.  Hair draped across matching faces and eyes painted in mascara.  They were both teenage boys, and neither one of them knew it until now.  The real comedy came if you could have seen the things Blaine told Angel he wanted to do to "her" body.  They both stood, mouths open, searching for the words.  Up until forty seconds ago Blaine thought he was in love, but now he had only one thing to say.

            "Oh shit..."

Apartment 4A »