WORKS ON DIGITAL PAPER

Tea in a Jar

There are a few distinct characters that repeatedly inhabit my morning commute. There is the guy who looks like Sean Penn from Falcon and the Snowman, there is the pretty but loopy illustrator Kevin introduced me to in Ashland fifteen years ago and there are two women who actually work in the same building as myself, and if I am not mistaken, with each other for the same art book publishing company. The picture above is an oblique view one of these women. On the short side, of studious countenance, she could be described with the insidiously overused descriptor, mousy. She is precisely the sort of cute, understated academic girl you fancied in high school (opposite your fancy of the gothpunk rebel girl, alternate the ditzybubbly cheerleader or the leanmasculine athlete.) At some point, back when, you made eye contact with her with designs to ask her out on a date, only to instantly wither in intention due to fear that your friends would make fun. She reads books and eats in the cafeteria. She doesn't do the kinds of drugs you do, they'd sneer. You realized you'd be stuck with the cute quiet type whom you'd love to turn to the dark side but are scared you're insufficiently endowed to do so. Eventually a nerdy boy turns up, one that on the face of it (for, in fact, you actually do secretly read books) is a much better fit and you see them holding hands and studying on the lawn and dancing at the prom in positively nerdy embrace. Later, you always wonder what happened to her. You always wonder if she blossomed into the hot librarian (exactly the same fantasy you have for the rebel, the athlete and the cheerleader) and you always wonder if she really liked you best and thinks of you still (exactly the same wonder held of the rebel, athlete and cheerleader.) Then you see her on your morning commute (or, really, someone else's her) and she is carrying black tea with milk in a mason jar with a book bag slung over her shoulder, wearing the same slightly horn-rimmed glasses with the same opaque stockings and boxy shoes. She travels up the elevator with you and slides past into her job copy-editing art books and you marvel at how cute she has remained and how long ago you had a crush on her (or your her, that is.)