Taco Stand Connection. (just a quick write)

Apr 03, 2008

I bummed a smoke off this girl once. I was standing outside of a taco stand waiting for my quesadilla to be made. The stand was typical. On a corner and a grimy. The once bright and gleaming paint job now faded by weather into a vaguely recognizable pink. Four chairs line the right side of the stand with a counter for your food; the counter has crumbs of tortilla and droplets of salsa and guacamole sauce from careless customers from earlier that afternoon. It has its charm. I was just getting a quick bite before I went for a stroll.

I had finished my last cigarette on the walk there. The pack is sitting in my grey green canvas bag, stained and patched up, filled with a book and the laptop I’m writing this on.
The empty Parliament Lights 100 cigarette pack sags and crushes itself against the contents of my bag. There were a bunch of people in line before me and by the by a 15 minute wait for my food.

I was flustered and aggravated. My frontal lobes were beating in a, light and gentle, barely noticeable throb. My head was a dull ache. A girl is standing to the left of me. She’s very pretty. That intimidating beauty that makes you flutter a bit, makes your hips shake when you walk by, like your legs are about to buckle. As if you’re walking down stairs but are reminded by the ground you are walking on a smooth flat surface. One of those girls with those dumb smiles that make you happy without being able to put your finger on it. The kind that are dumb because when they end its irks you like no other. She lit a smoke. I stuttered if I could bum one. I fumble and pull out my pack and show how it’s empty. My insecurity drips like a tankard oil spill, it underscores my addiction, and I’m embarrassed by it. My voice trembles, I wonder if she notices it. I hope watching so many Hugh Grant films has made my voive tremble in a charming way. She doesn’t smile anymore. Her eye contact is minimal and aloof. Her thin fingers pull a cigarette deftly out. She smokes the same kind of cigarettes. I smoke 100s though but I’m bigger so my need for addicting nicotine is greater. I say ‘thank you I appreciate it.’ I linger. She is nice but unfriendly and I now thing her beauty is awkward. The hope of her being that rare friendly soul who’s soft spoken but outgoing is dashed by her quick short responses. Her fingers unconsciously close and curl inwards. I see I should walk away now and I do.

It’s hard to make a connection with people. I remember reading the comic Desolation Jones. In the beginning of the comic there are a few passages about Los Angeles and its love of super modern interior design. Where rooms become vague pastiches of creams, off whites and beige, all ‘personality’ is thrown into one or two meaningless Asian antiques. The interior design, the rooms within the populations’ houses are now transient experiences rather then barricades of who you are and what interests you. Home is a commodity rather then your singular nest in this world. He’s saying Los Angeles doesn’t want to connect in the deep down. In the guts and in the trenches for life rather friends come and go. My room is the opposite, books flood the walls, postboards are tacked with memories. Piles of possessions linger like caerns and scattered haphazardly all around me. I yearn for connection. I wallow in nostalgia of times I never lived in. There are no stream lined clean beigeness. I put clean lines on other things. Like how you should treat your child, what you do when someone says they love you and you don’t love them back. Appropriate CPR etiquette.

I take a drag of my cigarette as I walk on. I’m not thinking about the rejection, the lack of intimacy between the stranger and I. The mere pretty girl. I’m thinking about how I feel weird how I’m getting use to no friends. I’m a bit depressed by it. I go online, I cruise the Internet, I wikipedia it up a bit. I go to craigslist.com and read missed connections. There’s one written by a girl who lent a guy a smoke outside of a taco stand.