The Metaphysicist (Kill Your Darlings) | Featured

damn he thicc

Lucien may or may not have clocked out of his shift earlier than his shift actually ended, but I assure anyone who will listen that this was not my fault, and will just tell them the more likely truth that Lucien isn't a big fan of his job. Therefore, I didn't make Lucien do it directly, but I may have provided Lucien with an extra motive to leave prematurely, and that motive is our lunch excursion, which I wouldn't really call a date yet, because dates progress to relationships of inexorable madness and the inevitable shitstorm of a breakup.

And despite my opposition towards this for fear of what could happen to us if we were to ever engage in such a relationship, Lucien walked to the retro diner with his arm slung around my back, and that may be more friendly than flirtatious, but it's anyway suggestive of something I cannot yet decipher. He's a trickster, twirling lies like a circus performer may twirl a baton, amazing the crowd as they wonder in awe how the magician could've done it, and I seem to be a part of that clueless audience.

Now that we're seated at a table, Lucien hasn't been able to rip his eyes from me, although I'm not that interesting, just some twenty-three year-old writer with glasses that are regularly skewed, and a whole lot of opinions bubbling inside of this short figure whom no one would suspect is a pot of annoyance.

The various sounds of the 50s hum in the background, replicated by aesthetic bloggers searching for the pastel grunge shit or whatever it is that they like while simultaneously ignoring the blatant racism and homophobia of that age because the vintage style is too much to deny. I find myself paying close attention to each beat, to each sound, to each nuance in the singer's voice, picking apart the instruments one by one and listening solely to them for a few seconds before transitioning to another one.

I've attempted to eat the meal of a salad placed before me by the kind waitress who not once messed up the order despite being utterly baffled by the indecipherable things Lucien is doing, but Lucien's heavy gaze weighs the world down until the fork is either lead or I'm now extremely weak. He doesn't say anything, which makes this all the more unnerving, only his ocean eyes washing bitter saltwater over me with the hope that I'll drown in it so that I will be claimed as his. He probably needs a test subject or something.

Even as he layers the lettuce leaves onto his fork, dotted by growths of ranch dressing, Lucien's gaze never departs from me, though I'm not doing anything worthy of note. I'm just trying to enjoy the meal that demanded a hell of a lot of courage to bring about, but it's being spoiled by Lucien's ambiguous, unceasing stare.

"Are you going to say something, or are you just going to drill me with discomfort?"

Lucien perpetuates his obnoxious game, except now an arrogant smile sloshes around his face as he chews a paltry serving of lettuce.

"Is this how you acquaint yourself with people? Because it sure as hell isn't effective. You're just creepy."

Lucien, rolling his eyes, plunges his fork into the jungle of lettuce heaped on his plate, a surrender by my inability to play along. "I was testing how long you could sustain your sanity when I was presenting you with an unspecified expression over an expansive period of time. You know, what every friend should do before diving too deep."

I'm a bit disappointed, because I couldn't endure the entirety of the meal without cracking and commanding Lucien to tell me why it is that he's been staring at me for the past seven and a half minutes with that ghost of cockiness faded into his countenance, and that surely means that Lucien isn't looking for someone like me, someone who couldn't pass his test.

I call my mind perpetually partial. I'm both terrified of digging deeper with Lucien, as well as enthusiastic to do just that. I review both sides and stick with one side at certain points and the opposite side at others. I'm not nearly as much as an enigma as Lucien is, but I do seem hypocritical or lacking in sense or all over the board.