On August 22nd 2006, at about 11:30 P.M, I met an extraordinary girl whose memory is forever sanctified within my mind.
Looking back, I can scarcely believe all that occurred that sultry night – thus I have decided to put it all down in writing, and so preserve it all for my own solace.
I'd been living in the city for four and a half months and was just getting used to it. I moved there for university and shared an apartment with two other young men – Koreans – whose speech I could barely understand.
Though they sometimes cooked for me, for which I was grateful, they were lazy, bad-mannered and obtrusive characters. I don't remember them even once washing the dishes or doing the laundry.
As I did not exactly like being in their company, I somehow got in the habit of taking late night walks.
I worked part time four days a week at a lousy retail store, where the manager hated me and my co-workers detested me like the devil.
I don't think I am really a hateable person, but all my life I have been isolated and misunderstood. I had never had any interest in people, mainly because they never ceased to offend or disgust me.
I had never been in love and I did not believe it existed. There were bestial passions, surely, but Love, as it is idealised in novels and movies, I just could not believe in.
Naturally, I had never known a girl. As a child, a girl had poked her tongue at me when I offered her some of a cheese sandwich I was eating, and I wanted nothing to do with them since.
I am a sensitive soul. An intellectual. But I could not ignore the fiery urgings that would arrest me at times. Hazy, feathery sensual urgings that possessed me to the point that I was tormented.
A mere glance from an attractive female threw me into raptures of erotic anguish. I denied it constantly to myself and my acquaintances, but I could not ignore the surging desires that wrestled with my reason and attention.
Once, when I was at a cafe, I kept thinking of beautiful women and wondering what it would be like to penetrate one in the brutal manner I used to imagine. Was it really so good? This pathetic world is renowned for overrating things, perhaps it was no different in this case.
Still, that sacred part of me, wherein the desires congregated, like starved, migrating birds, began to throb and expand. I put my coffee down on the stained wooden table and rushed to the men's room.
Bursting into one of the stalls, I withdrew my prick, frigged it for five furious minutes and discharged all over the wall.
Exiting the stall, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a flushed, dishevelled, insolent reflection staring back.
These bouts of madness took hold of me more often as the weeks flew by, and I cursed by lack of self-esteem, my shyness, and my adamant cynicism in general.
Then that night came. I shall never forget it.
I had been on an exceptionally long stroll at night and sat down on a bench near a convenience store.
I saw a girl – perhaps a year or two my senior – standing by a stop sign. I looked at her nonchalantly for a second, met her gaze, and quickly looked somewhere else.
I pretended to be searching in my pocket for something, and then, taking out my phone, made as if I were reading a text.
I heard footsteps on the grimy pavement and before I knew what happened, the girl had sat next to me.
It wasn't at a comfortable distance, like when you're at a train station and someone takes the furthest seat from you: she sat so close we touched.
I didn't know what to do, I distinctly recall being very insulted by her audacity, but this only lasted till she spoke:
"Hey, I'm Rachel."
Instantly I loved her. Her voice was high, but not sickeningly so. I raised my eyes and beheld her face.
She was not beautiful. Her nose was too thick, her eyes too bleary, her lips not shapely enough, her hair too frazzled. But her face beamed with something that towered over abstract notions of beauty. I don't know what it was.
"What're ya doing?" she asked, genuinely interested.
Her question startled me, for I did not know myself what I was doing.
"Um, just reading a te – um, a message," I replied, trying to gather my senses.
"Do you wanna know something?" she asked.
"What?"
"I'm gonna die."
"What?" I was alarmed.
"Doctor said I'm gonna die soon. Maybe tomorrow, or I dunno, soon. Something like that, he said."
I wasn't stupid. No one does such things. I didn't believe her.
"You're not going to die," I said, "why are you here? Why did you sit next to me?"
"I AM gonna die, it's a sickness, you know? Like cancer. What the fuck, man! I'm not fuckin' lying! I'm not fuckin' lying, man!"
Each time she swore she struck my thigh with her little clenched fist. I thought she was drunk, or high, but she looked clean enough – though my disgust for her had begun to mount. She was too unrefined for my taste, though some inflexible part of me kept me glued to the seat.
"Whatever. What do you want?" I said, coolly.
"I don't know. I'm cold," she said, sniffing, "I don't wanna die."
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Want me to take you to a hospital or something?"
"No!" she cried, militantly.
"Well, what then?"
"I can't say it."
"What. You want me to buy you something? You hungry?"
"Yeah. A bit."
We bought some hamburgers and ate them on some steps. When she'd finished she laughed and put her hand on my shoulder.
"You know what I wanted to ask you before was, um, I dunno, too embarrassing," she said.
"So you were hungry, what's wrong with that?"
"No, it wasn't that," she said.
It was only now that we began to really consider each other. I looked deep in her watery eyes and saw a passion that, I think, resembled mine. The light all around was dim, and my memory fails me in many details, but I will attempt to paint as accurate picture of her in words as I'm able.
She was not tall, the top of her head reaching only my shoulders. Her complexion was extremely pale, and one might suppose that – being exposed to the sun, she would melt like a snowman.
Her face, I've mentioned, was not exactly pretty – but what did I care? I don't know what I was thinking then, it was all delirium, a whirring, dreamy state – like when you're about to drift off to sleep, and when none of your many troubles seem to matter. Her teeth were almost perfect, her ears delightfully shaped, and her neck elegant and delicately smooth.
She was wearing a tattered yellow cardigan, too big for her, and a black, 'Gothic' skirt. She wore no makeup.
"You've been really kind, man," she said, after a wistful silence, "sorry for botherin' you. I'm a bit crazy, you know?"
"Yeah," I said, with a nervous laugh, not really knowing what the hell was going on, or what I was even saying.
I thought things were going to go really slow, however, and that we'd exchange numbers or something, meet her in a few days, and everything when out of nowhere she said:
"So, do you wanna have sex?"
The question hit me like a hammer, though she asked it as easily, and I didn't know what to answer.
"What? What d'you mean?" I said, very uncomfortable, and feeling dizzy.
"I've never done it, and I might die soon, and you look pretty nice – and yeah."
The last word was uttered as if it were the most convincing, undeniable close to an argument ever given.
"What – just like that? Fine," I said, again, hardly believing my ears and feeling somehow drunk.
"I know I'm pretty crazy, but I saw you," she said – in a tender voice, "and I thought, like, yeah – he looks pretty good, you know? I'm sorry if I'm kind of freakin' you out a bit? Are you OK? I mean, it's OK if you wanna, like, leave and shit. But, you know – I just wanna..."
My limited experience with the female sex told me that they can blabber on for hours on end , and so I shut her up by kissing her on the cheek, then, after she recovered from my bold assault, on her lips.
She lifted her hand and placed on the right side of my face, as I kissed her all over her face: much surprised at my confidence and creativity in this feat.
