Thoughts About Trying Different Things.
I am a horrible fiction writer, I have often reiterated that.
I am full of ideas and my fantasy can run wild at times but still, it is extremely difficult for me to make up a story and run with it without having experienced it first hand. It just doesn’t feel right; the plot is often bland and cliché.
But as I have been reading Stephen King’s — the king of fiction — memoir “On Writing: A Memoir On The Craft” and have been rigorously following his instruction on how to become a great writer, I was inspired to try something different. Why not, after all?
Most fiction is just distorted reality manipulated to the writer’s liking.
Mario Puzo had no ties to the mafia, yet he wrote the best mafia book (and movie) of all times; with details and rituals that were mimicked what went on in real life.
My life is filled with unbelievable anecdotes anyways, so this week, as I sat down to imprint my thoughts on a blank sheet of paper, I remembered that I had took a stab at fiction at the beginning of the pandemic.
Back in early 2020, encouraged by the silence of my living room and the dullness of life, I decided to start on a collection of essays called “Love Finds Its Way: A series of fictional stories about unexpected love”.
This series had little success. It did not leave the folder on the upper left corner of my laptop and it stopped at three stories, but I recall having fun manufacturing it.
So I decided to unearth it, and serve it as this week’s literary compendium with the hope that putting it out there will push me to try new things over and over again.
001 - SOUL TIES ARE FOREVER
We met approximately ten years ago. It was a casualty. I was a curious college sophomore with a clumsy demeanor, always ready to party. Looking back, the current me would not approve of myself back then, though it was a fun ride.
I remember the day I came across him so vividly, it almost feels like I dreamed of this encounter last night. It was a gloomy day in San Francisco, where I lived at the time.
I had moved to the Bay from New York City, after spending my childhood between France and Iceland due to my father’s profession. He was a dedicated geologist with a degree from Yale.
I chose San Francisco not so much for the academic excellence the city provides but because it reminded me of Europe with its colourful Victorian buildings.
For some reason, its alluring, bohemian characteristics attracted me big time, to the point I selected the obnoxious, hilly metropolis as my new home after parting ways with my birthplace: Brooklyn.
My bizarre interest for the effects of psychedelic drugs on the human brain and their widespread use in the valley of tech geniuses probably played a part too.
The hippy charisma of Northern California was the perfect place to foster my cloud-headed, vibrant, art school student personality.
San Francisco had always given me Parisian vibes without having anything in common with the French capital.
Maybe it was the few patisseries around the city, maybe a disparate association between clam chowder and soup d’oignon.
Regardless of the motive behind my choice, the day I stepped foot into what would then become my bright, corner apartment with black hardwood floors and a fully equipped kitchen-living room area, I knew that Silicon Valley was the place for me. At least while I sought to establish my place in the world.
If you have never had the chance to step foot in San Francisco, the geographic placement of the peninsular city offers unpredictable, harsh weather.
September is particularly puzzling. Looking through a shut window at sunrise, you might be tricked into believing that the day ahead will offer sizzling hot temperatures only to be surprised by sturdy, unapologetic gusts of air while wearing a flimsy tank top.
Sometimes the wind is so sharp and forceful it feels like a million tiny, invisible needles penetrating your face in the same obnoxious way a cactus with thin spikes may feel if grazed by mistake.
Not even my then plump cheeks were able to protect me from the wrath of those malignant breaths of air on that particular Tuesday morning.
The glistening reflection of the sun on the typically rippled surface of the ocean I was able to glimpse at from my apartment, bamboozled me into picking a tartan skirt out of my cramped wardrobe. A choice I would have never made if aware of the energetic breeze I was about to face.
At that time, during my early years of college, my style used to be awfully daring and fairly unhinged.
You’d often find me paring camo print with floral patterns, kaleidoscopic stockings with striped dresses and I had a thing for Dr Martens boots I’d draw on with white and neon pink markers. Back then I was also rarely on time.
My goofy demeanor and poor time management skills often pushed me on manic sprints down the four flights of stairs that divided my flat from the street in a rush to catch the trolley that would bring me to California College of The Art, my alma mater.
Class had just started back up after what seemed like the shortest summer break ever. I had spent it doing a deep dive into Assemblage Sculpture and its derivates in the desert between Joshua Tree Park and Palm Springs, studying the work of Noah Purifoy and Andrea Zittel.
If the Bay was unpredictably moody in the weather department, the climate conditions of the Coachella Valley were brutally clear.
The thermometer didn’t fall under 96 degrees for the whole 20 days I spent photographing and analyzing the scrappy sculptures at the Purifoy foundation.
As somebody who despises heat and experiences heightened bodily discomfort whenever summer hits, my experience in what I would otherwise have considered paradise on Earth wasn’t very pleasant.
My desire to peel off every layer of clothing possible and the first layer of my own flesh grew so strong that in the five days before my departure from Pioneertown, I made the impulsive decision to shave my head off with second hand clippers I had found in one of the popular junk shops in the area a few days prior to the irrational gesture.
Fast forwarding back to that breezy morning of mid September, for some divine reason, I was not late, so I decided to stroll to school and stop at Whole Foods to grab a very unsustainable cup of chopped fruit from the produce aisle.
As I shuffled through the people loitering in the corridors of the supermarket, I noticed the hem of my knee-length kilt was unravelling. I stopped to tear the wild thread off. My already shattered iPhone fell out of my chest pocket as I bent down to reach the edge of the skirt. My immediate reaction at the sight of my mobile device was to fumble some cuss words but without hesitation my second urge was to unlock the phone and open my favorite app, Twitter. I was fairly addicted.
At the zenith of my social media days, before my brain fully developed, I would often use Twitter as a public diary.
A place were I would share my darkest thoughts but also what I felt like eating for breakfast on the day before Christmas. So anybody jumping on my timeline without knowing me could have easily mistook me for somebody with bipolar disease or an acute form of ADD.
Hence my digital persona wasn’t exactly whom I wished people first saw when getting to know me, however due to some weird moon-to-planet alignment which influenced me to pick that questionable skirt out of my closet and consequently required me to stop amongst the walls of industrially packaged dry foods to fix its loose ends and collect my phone from the ground then jump straight into social media, Twitter was the place where I first encountered him.
A stranger, one in a million active online users. The person who would go on to become my best friend.
He was interacting with a friend of mine, correcting his typo. I later found out being this analytical was a huge part of his character. He was speaking my language in a sea of useless digital words typed by hundreds of acquaintances that had no idea what they were talking about.
A voice inside my head told me “reply to his tweet, let him know you speak French too”. And so I did, naively, with no apparent purpose other than to trigger a life long soul tie.
I am not entirely sure how I can remember the morning of our first exchange so vividly. Usually my memory is very scant, like a toddler. Things happens and I let them go after a week, sometimes it’s a matter of few days.
I have tried to understand why this memory is calcified in my brain yet I can’t remember what I ate for lunch two days ago, but I have come to terms with the fact that I apparently am just meant to remember it for the rest of my life.
Malek was his name. After a brief back and forth, I found out he was Moroccan. He had immigrated to America as a child due to the indigent economic conditions of his home country.
At that time he was residing in Texas, a place he learned to call home as a teenager but had to leave briefly when his parents decided Connecticut would be a better option for their family.
More work was available in the North apparently, but Malek didn’t appreciate the decision.
His newly found friends, the ones he was able to make despite the poor control of a language so far away from his native one, were all living in Austin and he missed them.
So, as soon as he could travel and live alone legally, he settled back in the city that first welcomed him as a pre-pubescent boy.
We bonded over our love for poetry and medieval art. Finding somebody who loved the lavishly rotten aesthetic of the Middle Ages as much as me had never been easy.
Specifically because I was attracted to the intricate mosaics and stained glass of the Roman Catholic Churches found in the North of France. Incredibly peculiar, right?
He preferred to discuss Gothic style but was very knowledgable about the techniques used to paste the little golden tiles depicting a brunette Jesus Christ. I was an art history and visual arts major, he was just a nerd who spent his childhood reading the books his aunt, a local ceramist, tossed him after school.
I don’t really know for what cosmic, karmic link we were connected that cold day of mid September but I knew on the spot I had just met my soul mate.
He was tall - at least I assumed from the pictures he showed me then - with rusty blonde, curly hair; his brown sugar tan complemented by a pair of bright eyes the color of pickled olives.
As our bond evolved, he introduced me to his life story.
His mom was berber and his dad had migrated to Morocco from Angola looking to travel across the Mediterranean Sea and reach Portugal. The journey ended prematurely when he got injured in a fight with a thief. A man had tried to steal his wallet as he shopped for bread and mint at the street Baazar.
The father latched onto his belongings so strongly, the pickpocket dislocated his shoulder while grabbing and pulling the leather object from his already scarred hands.
With no funds for medical treatment, the man had to seek help within the locals. The mistreated injury left him crippled from his left arm but led him to encounter the love of his life, Malek’s mother, Nadira.
Years later, after saving enough money for a one way ticket to the USA, they picked Austin as their new base. Shortly after, the couple was able to set up a small spice shop which doubled as an import export business for the local Arab community.
I was attracted by Malek’s mysterious character. He never finished a tale when he called me on the phone, “This will give me a reason to call you again tomorrow” he said.
He knew this behavior bothered me but it was also what kept our friendship thriving.
I picked up the tradition of sending him a book by a different poet every two months, I used to hide secret messages inside the pages, towards the end, so he couldn’t lie about reading them.
Finally, after two years of chatting, calling and skyping we had the chance to meet.
The independent bookshop I was working for at the time had decided to go on a tour and host cultural pop up experiences across America connecting with local authors and artist in each city.
Austin, due to its ties with tech scene and innovation, was one of the stops.
Given my passion for photography and visual arts, they asked me to come along and document the journey. The commission would also award me extracurricular school credit. Win, Win.
How could I say no? At last, I was finally meeting my friend after months of communicating non-stop through whatever channels were available back then.
Malek was taller than I expected, with defined collar bones and broad shoulders. His lean physique was kept sculpted by the soccer pick up games he played in the weekend when he wasn’t attending his family’s bodega - which he restored upon moving back - or taking large orders from the usual restaurant customers. His smile was warm, charming, I felt safe around him.
I learned his name meant “king, owner”. A title he was totally worth of. His demeanour was soothing, almost hypnotizing.
During my short stay, he showed me around, took me to his favorite restaurants and waited for me outside the location of the pop up while I photographed the set up or the local authors who’s book we highlighted - he was curious about my cameras.
I only used old analog machinery and Malek was puzzled by my utter confidence towards the cryptic outcome.
The mechanic of the tour was interesting. For each city visited, we’d also collaborate with an artist native of the city for the decor and art on display.
Malek’s cousin Fatima, his mother’s niece, had recently joined him from Morocco after a stint in Connecticut, where his parents still resided.
She had enrolled into University upon arrival to acquire a long term visa. To make ends meet, she was working as a calligrapher at a local gift shop. On the side, she sold custom art pieces. Her main commissioners were wedding guests looking to offer unique plates to the couples as a present, but her penmanship and creative application of the inky strokes deserved much more acclaim.
So I pulled the strings to get her pieces up on the walls of the temporary bookshop and she was able to sell most of them.
Our time together was brief. Sooner than I had anticipated, I had to pack my bags and leave to the next city. I didn’t know when I would be able to see Malek again, but the five days we spent together were enough to cement our fellowship.
Everything we speculated on happening prior to meeting in real life, turned out to be hyper-realistic. As I entered the back of the cab that would bring me to the airport, he greeted me goodbye with a firm, authoritative yet affectionate hug. “I should have told you I am clairvoyant”, he smirked as I smashed the door close.
Years went by, I graduated and I became a published researcher and writer in the field of art history. My nomadic conduct led me to change multiple cities and eventually move to Europe after signing a big book deal with an independent publishing agency that paid me to research and write about the relationship between Romanic Art sites, cultural circles and tourism. Who would read that? Not sure, but I sold over 200.000 copies internationally.
My relocation, though, also marked the start of a deeply dark time period in my life. It was like my obsession for the Middle Ages found a way to pervade me internally and put me through the same depressive state Europe was in between the 5th and the 15th century.
My mental health had extremely deteriorated, my boyfriend of the time was a prick and for some unknown reason I decided to disappear from Malek’s life.
To this day, almost a decade later, I have yet to decipher what made me act this way, but I think it was mostly a reaction to not wanting to subject him to my decadence and misery, despite knowing he’d be the only person to help me through it.
Three and a half years went by. My literary research kept on thriving while my personal life was crumbling.
My boyfriend was an acclaimed independent film maker who’s latest short documentary about Scandinavian prisons and their experimental methods in reforming inmates won a couple of prizes from those hipster festivals only fake intellectuals enjoy going to.
Sounds like a cool man? Well, like most artists he was also deeply corrupted internally and coped with his self insecurity by drinking way more than advised by health experts.
His temper was short, his behavior questionable and he clearly did not care about my well being or own mental state. His ego-trip filled his time.
I started asking myself why did I even like him. If Malek was around, he would have clowned me for falling trap to this man and found ways to wake me up out of this toxic daze.
I soon realized part of my disappearance from his life was due to the fact that I was ashamed of this relationship.
I was ashamed that I had allowed myself to become enamoured with a scenario of the supposedly perfect elitist life, the published author and the independent film maker. Possibly I did not want my bestfriend and soulmate to see me like this.
I had an epiphany. I started flirting with the fact that maybe Malek was not only my soulmate in a platonic manner, maybe he was actually who I should have been in love with.
One morning, peeking at the dull, grey, winter sky from my West London apartment - even during my time in Europe I found ways to stay connected with San Francisco, my choice of housing wasn’t accidental - at 7AM, my boyfriend not yet returned from his usual night benders, I decided it was time to get myself out of this state of detrimental self-pity, pack most of my possessions, book the first flight back to my home town and piece myself back together.
It was time for me to put an end to the distress Europe had put on my personality and get back to being me, away from the grimy emotions this era had come with.
As I boarded the plane to freedom that afternoon, costly ticket in one hand and my phone in the other, I found the courage to text Malek, hoping his number had stayed the same. “I am coming home, sorry if I was MIA. I miss you” the quick message read.
All of a sudden I felt blood pumping back into my frozen heart, it was beating fast. I switched off the phone, the flight took off.
The thought of settling back in my childhood bedroom while I figured out what to do with my new life didn’t exactly provide a glamorous feeling. However, it gave me time to sort things out and reconnect with the things I had left to perish over the course of the last four years.
It felt nice to be able to grieve the death of my failed relationship and now buried life as a temporary Londoner with the support of my family. I even tapped in with some old time friends I hadn’t been able to catch up with in over a decade.
I realized I missed New York but I was yearning for my San Francisco life.
Three days into my old-new lifestyle, I realized Malek hadn’t gotten back to me. After brief discomfort, I took a chance and booked a flight to Austin for the following weekend and messaged him on Twitter - we had never unfollowed each other and maybe he didn’t have my number anymore. If all else failed, I was in for a refreshing solo trip.
I often wondered what he might be doing, if he pursued his dream to open a small café next to the bodega. I was digitally connected to him but the thick bubble I had been living in had kept me separated from any updates.
A notification popped up on my screen. My heart sunk. It was him.
I could feel his forward conduct through the screen of my phone. Simple, direct, ironic like he had always been. “I thought the British had held you hostage. Glad you are back kid, message me when you land, I locked your number in now”.
The dramatic excitement that pervaded me as I texted him ahead of my return to the United States, overtook reason and erased the fact that Malek could not possibly have my digits as it changed over time.
Needless to say the anticipation for this trip was eating me alive. What would it be like to meet Malek again after all this time? We went from talking all day, everyday to not talking for almost four years. I was ecstatic, looking forward to rekindling with a time I thought would never come again.
The weekend approached fast. I borrowed my mom’s luggage and tried to piece together some of my best outfits. Not entirely sure why given that I was aware my clothing wouldn’t be what would impress my long lost friend.
I was back home only for a week and I was already feeling better than any day I had spent living in London fulfilling my literary dreams.
This time, the electric sentiment I was undergoing was one of a kind. It was mystifying, like recovering an old pair of expensive sunglasses you have given up on finding inside the pocket of jacket you haven’t worn in ages.
I spent the days prior to my departure fantasizing about how this encounter would play out. I speculated on various scenarios. Nefarious ones too.
I landed in Austin at 10.05 AM.
My visual memory helped this time. I was awaken from my high slump by the fuzzy words of the captain. “The weather is good, light breeze and the sun is shining”. It reminded me of that day, 11 years prior, when I first came across Malek. I was not a university kid trying to find my place in the world anymore.
I had my place in the world now and a seemingly successful career in the field I had long dreamed about.
However I felt like what I had been so sure about had slowly proved me wrong, creeping up on me all at once the day I finally decided to break with my present and reconnect with my abruptly discharged past. Somehow I felt like I had just woken up from a deep, heavy sleep and that my trip to Austin wasn’t happening years after breaking up with my friend.
I couldn’t wait to see Malek. I wondered if he had allowed his hair to grown back since he had cut it years before, if age had started to show on his perfectly smooth skin and more than anything, I was dying to know if we could patch our relationship back up.
I owed him an apology for vanishing with no explanation yet I knew that if I brought it up it would have just made things worse.
I settled in my hotel room and immediately texted him. “I am here”.
We decided to meet for a late lunch at 2PM, he sent me the address to a new Persian restaurant one of his clients from the bodega had recently opened. I arrived early and got a table on the patio. The smell of zataar and saffron filled the air, my excitement was being overtaken by a sudden sense of inadequacy.
Then I was him walk in and my perception of time stopped for a second. The loud voices coming from the surrounding tables went silent for a second as if my eardrums turned off.
His smile was still warm, his hair was back to a full curly head. Finally, I realized how much I missed his presence in my life.
Malek walked towards me with his arms open, reaching for a hug.
I got up, sighed, and cinched him, full of gratitude for the moment.
He sat down next to me, his eyes never moving away from mine, as if he was challenging me to a staring contest. “Glad to have you back, kid” he said.
***
The End.