Transfix – cause (someone) to become motionless with horror, wonder or astonishment.
In the movie Black Butterfly, Antonio Banderas' character is a struggling writer living by himself in an isolated part of town – he has lost his writing edge and can't seem to string together anything good; all of a sudden a series of weird and interesting things start to happen to and around him, he meets this mysterious guy who starts living with him which leads to a cascading shit-storm of events that leave his life permanently altered, with lots to write about; so he starts, to write about what had just happened to him – except they didn't happen, he dreamt about the whole thing...now he's awake, shocked and excited, he finally has something to write about – something raw and riveting, so he gets to his typewriter...and begins.
I know what I'm supposed to type as if I had just dreamed about it – I remember certain details to a degree that frankly scares me – like a Kenyan friend of mine once said to me;
" ...Your memory scares me Cyrus".
Settle in.
It was a weekday in early November or late October 2013. Early in the day I had to go pick up a generator from the repair man's place – I parked the car close to a restaurant not too far from his place and I walked to meet him – I was wearing a long-sleeve purple sweat-shirt and shorts. The weather was nice even though the sun was out. I picked up the generator and carried it to the car with the repairman, I opened the boot, we lifted it and began trying to fit it in – you see, all this time I had my back to the road which I remember had a bit of traffic; after which I probably shook the repairman's hand, turned for a few seconds and got into the car – and that's when Jay sent the text, which I didn't yet receive, as the phone she sent it to was off at that point.
" Hi, I think I just saw you put something into a car, not sure it was you though, and it seems you have gotten bigger",
The day was pretty uneventful after that – until around 7pm when I turned on my phone (the one that was off earlier in the day, I'd usually forget to charge it) and got the text. My reply went something along the lines of "Oh hey, how have you been? Blah blah, we should totally hang out..." She said yes, that I could come over to her place if I wanted to – funny thing is that at this point I had very little expectations and even though I was happy that I had found something to numb the boredom, I didn't expect much to come out of it.
If you're puzzled as to why, unbeknown to her, she sent that message incognita, well it's because she thought I still had her number from one year ago, which was actually when we started speaking. One year ago, when I went to see Jay it was.... well, simply put it was a disaster – there was no connection, she was very uppity and cranky (maybe it was hormones), I got angry at some point and decided to drop her off somewhere – later on I'd delete her number from my phone; yes, it was that bad. It was one of those things I just wanted to forget about quickly, it was so bad that I completely forgot about her.
This time, the contrast couldn't have been starker.
Swoonworthy.
Shower, clothes, perfume, comb, and I drove to her house; I'm in a green Honda Accord that I park about 20 meters from her house then I send her a text. It was dark already so I couldn't see what she was wearing as she walked towards the car – then she got close – what I saw was absolutely stunning.
I stepped out of the car and I remember thinking that I hadn't seen anything as perfect as her – her eyes, her lips, that stare, oh my God that stare – that Lana Del Rey stare that says I'm going to take you for all that you've got – it was like watching your favourite movie in 4k, except this was much better, as she was actually there, right in front of me.
