April - A Modern Hypatia?

Chapter One - The Lounge in Lavender

Theme: Within by Daft Punk

The beauty of the art was in the misinterpretation of it. In my eyes, at the least.

For someone who played music, but never wrote it, who wrote novels but never finished them, and whose greatest accomplishments would be graduating college twenty grand in the hole, I suppose I fit the stereotype. But I am still not a tortured artist, and my willingness to open up this completely and, to a degree, unabashedly might well reinforce that. At first, this assignment to compose a written account of a semester-in-the-life would be cut and hung out to dry faster than the morning laundry. This was exactly what I endeavored to avoid. How many other such testaments would be composed by previous scholars? Nuclear engineering, young woman with a completionist complex, to an extent obsessive-compulsive... That sounds as bland as the textbook collection I have awaiting sale. Maybe the truth would do better, and that is what I aim to provide.

They don't want to know about the As, the Bs, the rushing to class in the freezing Massachusetts wintertime. No, they want to hear about that one goddam C and the B-cups that unavoidably froze over in winter, giving nip through every sweater in my wardrobe. By the beginning of this, my second semester of Junior year, I was spinning my wheels as hard as a rear-wheel-drive car in an ice rink. And that wasn't too bad, if it wasn't for my employment. Changing my pace of life between morning and late nights, where the only homework I was getting done was underneath a lavender neon lamp in the arm of a faux purple leather wingback. Which, if it matters, is where this is being penned from.

There were really only three other characters to this setting, and all but one seemed forever tied to the so-called "Lavender Lounge". Lexia Troy, Terri Raven, and Zander "Jazz" Levine were their names, and only Zander's was real. He was our bouncer, but claimed ownership of the whole joint. If he wasn't twenty-three and sporting something akin to a modern variation of the mullet, we might have believed him. Lexia and Terri, like me, went by their stage names, but I knew for a fact that those weren't their real first names. Personally, I went as April Bowers, which was a combination of my real given name and a rather silly play on the "April showers" phrase. A bower, in literature especially, is typically a women's quarters, and sounded rather sexy when I first tried out the name. Now, like many things I'd taken for a test drive, it had metamorphosized into the collage of my world.

"What are you writing?"

Removing my gaze from the page, I caught sight of Lexia spinning around on the obligatorily placed steel pole, towards the rear of the intimately sized rectangular room. It was rather a sight, watching her slip down it like a firefighter. Completely disrobed, naturally.

"I'm just getting something down for English." It was the truth, and I was struggling for a segway in any case, since I had too much narration without action. Now, with this naturally endowed babe striding towards me, I cracked a smile. I'd found my transition.

"Cuuute!" Terri, whose use of an "i" on her name as opposed to a "y" seemed all but to seal her fate as a rather endearing flirt, also strode over. The place was completely bare, and I don't just mean in what we were wearing. Besides Jazz standing sentry at the door, dressed like a 90s punk rocker and clearly trying not to stare at us, there was no one else in sight.

"It's nothing much, just a life journal. I figured I'd write it about this, since nothing else in my life packs a punch." I closed the notebook on my lap, cradling the graphite grey affair against the place where the black bikini cut of the bodysuit met my embarrassingly pale skin.

"That's nice..." Lexia trailed off as she took a load off on a nearby sofa, making a sweet squeak as her bare bottom caught on the cheap leatherette. Covering with a giggle, she proceeded to flash everyone her girly bits without an ounce of remorse. She was a beauty, but the beach blonde thing went a little too far for my taste. Lexia could do with a little bit less Valley Girl.