Falling and Flying
Author's note:
Thanks to Randi for inviting me to participate in her, "
The Art of Falling
" event. I was very flattered. This was a new experience for me. Having to write a story with a theme from scratch and a deadline was un-nerving. I hope you enjoy it.
It's funny how falling feels like flying,
For a little while,
"Fallin and Flyin" Performed by Jeff Bridges
Written by Stephen Bruton & Gary Nicholson
Story:
It was one of those beautiful warm late spring afternoons when the blooms were still fresh and not yet dulled by the punishing summer's heat. David was seated in one of the ubiquitous mass event PVC folding chairs designed to punish its user for their inability to find a way out of attending the event. His powder-white and inadequately padded device was only one of over three thousand meticulously orchestrated in seemingly endless rows on the freshly mown lawn of Central College's football field.
He closed his eyes and gazed skyward to better feel the warmth of the sun's rays on his face. He always found the heat from the spring sun a refreshing validation of the continuous cycle of life. That gave him comfort even in the most troubling times.
His melancholy mood fit perfectly with the emotions of the day. His youngest child, Britton, would be the last of his four children to leave home. Her career path already chosen, she had a job waiting for her out of state.
Her matriculation gave him a sense of pride and accomplishment but also made him doleful. He did not view it as a failure, but rather a tremendous success that all of his kids had chosen to spread their wings and move out of state to build their professional and family lives. After all, isn't that the fundamental parental responsibility, to make sure your children can prosper without you? Still, it made him downcast to think he would be alone now.
David was no longer a young man. Although his icy blue eyes still had a little sparkle left in them, he felt the burden of raising a family and the hard-earned worry lines shown prominently on his face. He was fifty, tired, and unsure of what the future held for him. He thought that many of his fellow attendees must be feeling similar sentiments and grappling with the same uncertainties that burdened his heart.
What was next for him? He sighed and let his mind drift back to the nearly thirty years ago when his odyssey began.
David Christian Broward was in love. He had to be because he never felt anything like this before. He alternately felt euphoria and nausea. The mere sound of her voice made his heart rate jump thirty points. He became a clumsy oaf, always stumbling over things. His grades suffered, but he didn't care.
When he thought about her, and that was pretty much every waking minute, he had trouble breathing. He often found himself sucking in short sharp breaths that never provided enough oxygen for his brain to function critically.
It reminded him of his childhood after having been in a car accident. He had broken two ribs and it hurt to breathe so he would take quick short breaths. That same accident killed his mother. His father was so despondent he slowly drank himself to death when David was only sixteen.
He moved in with his aunt but left home the day after his high school graduation and never looked back. He had enough money from his parents' estate and the accident settlement to get him into college to study engineering. He didn't really love it, but he was always analytical and the work tended to be done in isolation, which he was very comfortable with.
Here he was a twenty-year-old college junior and up until a month ago, he had only been on one date in his entire life. That was two years ago as a freshman. The date was a complete disaster. At the end of their evening, the young lady that he was infatuated with for months before working up the courage to ask out was very polite about it, but told him to never contact her again. It might have had something to do with the fact that he was so anxious that he sweated profusely throughout their uncomfortable dinner. He went through several napkins trying to keep up with it.
David was never a great conversationalist in the first place, and he judged that by his date's fascination with the various shapes of the pasta on her plate, he was doing less than satisfactory in that arena. Of course, she could have just been looking for bugs, but he doubted it. They were able to converse for about thirty seconds on the current state of the weather but not much beyond that
It didn't get any better during the movie. Because of his trepidation in doing something to embarrass himself he got so tense it caused him to have hiccups throughout it. He felt like he was back in fourth grade when he would get the hiccups if called upon to speak during class.
Mercifully the date ended, David felt relief because he knew he would never put himself in that position again. He resigned himself to a lifetime of bachelorhood and callused palms.
He started developing his calluses back in high school. If there was one thing David Broward was good at it was masturbation. He had started to perfect that particular skill back when he was a freshman in high school. He had Ms. Elkins, his grammar class teacher to thank for that.
Ms. Elkins was a goddess. She was an older woman, of course, probably twenty-four or so. And, well she had huge breasts. They were assuredly held in place by a 50's style bullet bra and were highlighted to perfection by the tight sweaters she religiously wore, even when it was ninety-five degrees outside. By his estimation, David had consummated his marriage to her over five hundred times during that school year.
There was a familiar but unusual pattern to Ms. Elkins's class. Her class was the only one that all the boys showed up early for. At the end of the class, the boys all stayed in their seats. They were hunched over their desks with their jackets in their laps, trying to mentally recite the elements in the Periodic Table. The girls were always snickering as they left to head to their next classroom. Fortunately for David and his brethren, their class was right before the morning nutrition break so they had a little more time to gather their wits.
At the time David was sure that Ms. Elkins was oblivious to the effect she was having on the males of the school. She was always very attentive and would walk up and down the aisles closely examining everyone's progress on what ever punctuation exercise would be taking place at the time. She always smelled wonderful and she did seem to pause at the boys' desks more frequently but that was probably because they had more trouble with the intricacies of understanding the rules regarding when to use 'affect' vs.'effect' in a sentence than the young ladies did?
One time, Ms Elkins stopped at David's desk to help him with a particular problem. As she bent over his desk to point out an error in his work, David turned his head in her direction. The view that met his fifteen-year-old pubescent eyes was indescribable. He spontaneously ejaculated into his 501's. His eyes rolled up in his head and he let out a low slow moan, almost a growl really. Two girls in the adjacent aisle snickered.
Ms. Elkins had been saying something which of course he couldn't decipher because his brain was focused elsewhere. When he regained consciousness she patted him on the shoulder and said, "There Davie now isn't that better?" Seemingly ignorant to her effect on poor David, she continued her stroll down the aisle.
"Yes ma'am." He croaked out and the girls snickering turned to raucous laughter. David's face was beet red but he didn't care. He was in an endorphin overload, with every nerve ending in his body on fire. And it was a sensational feeling, not unlike his first encounter with Bristol Calloway shortly after this fall semester began. Only this time with Bristol it was even better, or was it worse?
He was sitting alone, as was usual, on the lawn outside his dorm room typing away on his laptop when a shadow settled on him. He looked up and there she was. And she was perfect. All thoughts of having committed himself to bachelorhood evaporated in an instant. She was looking at him intently.
Maybe she feels it too?
Then she smiled and continued on her way.
It was a moment of truth for David Broward. His destiny was walking away from him and he sat there paralyzed with fear and feelings of doubt. She kept walking.