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It’s the end of the CD and the CD player just loops it back to the first song. You couldn’t do that with cassettes…Fucking technology these days. I’ve known Alex for as long as I can remember. We became best friends in kindergarten and have stayed that way ever since. Sure we went through different phases, but who didn’t? I strayed into different groups and so did he, but in the end it always came back to the two of us. It’s funny how cycles work, which is what brings me to the present day. We are in Alex’s house watching a special on The Weather Channel about the water cycle and how it works. Evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection don’t seem like anything new to me and quite frankly I’m a little bored. However, it’s three in the afternoon and there is currently nowhere to go. The monotone voice coming from the TV tells me that even the water sitting in the glass on my table has been around since the beginning of the earth. I hear Alex say, “Silly bastard… there is no glass of water sitting on the table.” I tell him about the ugly girl in my French class whose name is Bella and how the word “bella” in Italian means beautiful. He tells me I should inform the girl that Irony probably kicked her in the face when she was little and that’s the reason she’s not beautiful.
I ask Alex how his movie is coming along and he tells me he is uninspired. Currently enrolled in film school, Alex has been working on his film equivalent of a thesis paper for about eight months now. I’ve helped him out with what I can in terms of writing and ideas, but I really know nothing about directing. The premise of his short film is a man is given only a short amount of time to decide whether or not to take his dying father off of life support. After being pressured by both opposing sides he is forced to make a decision. Alex tells me that he has no idea how to end the film and I really can’t help him on that. The best advice I can come up with is to stop thinking about it and maybe something will come to him. With that advice I realize he is still thinking intently about how to end his movie, so I go and get a glass of water. As I open the freezer to get some ice, I am momentarily blinded by the reflection of sunlight off of the ice cubes. I reach in and pick up four ice cubes. Before I can put the ice in my cup something stops me dead in my tracks. One of the ice cubes is crystal clear, while all the others are cloudy and hazy. As I stare down into the depths of the claw, (holding four ice cubes, your hand inevitably takes the shape of a claw) I am mystified by the lucidity of that single ice cube. I’m not sure if it’s the contrast to the other three, but there is something about it. I decide it best to stop dwelling on things and I throw all four cubes into the room temperature water where they all just crack anyway.
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We are at the beach now, in the water. Alex and I are both swimming as fast as we can. I feel panic inside me and I know that he is going through the same thing. If we don’t get there in time it will be too late. We have to swim faster. Water splashes in my eyes as my muscles become more and more fatigued. Just the thought of what we are swimming for sends adrenaline coursing through my veins. As, we approach our destiny, I hear a voice yell “45 minutes late” and relief submerges me as I realize that our punanny is still there. Still there, in the small alcove that can only be reached by swimming around giant rocks or climbing down what seems like one hundred stories of even more treacherous rock, a.k.a. the set of stairs leading there, a.k.a. the ones that the girls we are meeting climbed down. Alex and I high five after I come up from under the water. Our excuse to the girls is that we weren’t going to come because we were double teaming this old Jewish woman, but she started complaining that her goiter was hurting and she was tired, so we left. The girls are accustomed to our humor, so this particular excuse serves its purpose. I take one of the girls to a different part of the beach and fuck her. We talk for a little while but she bores me. A while later we are all back together laying in the sand facing the ocean. It’s a beautiful day. The wind is blowing a slight warm breeze that surrounds us. The sun shines down on the glistening white sand, making it seem almost surreal. As I follow the sand to where it meets the water I notice the dramatic change in color. The ocean is such a dark shade of blue that it almost looks black as it stretches out further and further. I can see the beginning where the sand stops, but the water just stretches on. I can’t see where it stops, but I imagine little Chinese kids running around dancing like idiots; celebrating life and what not. Just as a tiny Asian child hands me two pennies, Alex cuts off my imagination. What’s a kid in China doing with pennies anyway? “I’ve got it,” he says. “The short film will end with the man’s wife putting an hourglass on the table and demanding that he choose before the time is up. Then, the hourglass will run out. As you see the last grain of sand pass through the center, the movie will end.” I’ve never quite understood Alex’s artistic side, but he always has something. If it’s not an hourglass instead of just a normal clock, then it’s a typewriter instead of a computer. It doesn’t all add up to me, but I’m sure someone gets it.
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We’re at a party and three provocatively dressed girls walk past us. We follow. “How are you ladies doing tonight?” I ask with an utterly superficial sense of morbid curiosity. “We’re good… We are just waiting for our boyfriends,” they say. Clearly a dead end, I decide it best to take a different approach.
“No, they said they’re not coming. Yep, turned gay and went to a gay orgy… I don’t know, it was weird”
“Oh really, because we think that maybe you’re the gay ones.”
“OOO, you see what she did there? She took my gay comment and she turned it around and used it on me. She gave it the ole one-eighty. Now, instead of her boyfriend being gay, it is us. We are the gay ones. It’s very clever, I must say, very clever”
“Assholes”
“Whores”
Before I can find the time to look for new girls, something catches my eye in the backyard. It’s a it’s a long rectangular shaped hot tub, made of what looks to be an expensive wood; maybe cherry or walnut. There are lights on the ground pointing up at the rim of the hot tub and surrounding it from all sides. What really gets my attention, though, is the steam. The way it seems to rise off the water so gently. The lights from the ground pass through it, but seem to get stuck in the middle. They look as if they want to escape through the other side of the mist, but are unable to. No one is in the hot tub yet, but I can’t stop looking at it. I walk closer to it and realize that it isn’t made of wood at all, it’s aluminum. It doesn’t matter because I am still enthralled by the way the steam lifts up off the water, so peaceful and serene. My thoughts are ended, when I hear the breaking of glass. I look to the side of the hot tub and see that someone has dropped a bottle on the concrete. It didn’t break as one would expect a glass bottle to, though. It completely shattered into what looks like millions of tiny shards. All of them scattered there next to the steam; light hits the broken glass and it almost seems like they are connected.
Hourglass~page 2
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