The Metaphysicist (Kill Your Darlings) | Featured

cue erotica intro

The chatter of the restaurant guests is all that I can imbibe, as Lucien's metaphysical backwash is now silent in the bathroom, and I'm not really sure when he'll be back to fill the empty gaps again, so for the time being, I'm learning a lot by eavesdropping on the other guests. For example, one family is preparing to sell their house to buy another one, even though they don't need it with their healthy neighborhood and fulfilled needs. Another family is discussing the poor grades of their youngest child as said youngest child complains that they're being unfair and misinformed and that if they confiscate his baseball bat then he'll hit them with it before they can. And then there's a couple much like Lucien and me, eyes bright yet shadowed in the eaves, smiles hugging their lips to try and cover the manufacturing of melancholy gearing in their muted souls, because a dinner date is supposed to be an escape from the underworld in which they've been residing, but depression is perpetual, unwilling to be hushed by people who just want to experience neutrality again at the least.

I sip my champagne quietly as I continue to listen to the conversations around me, reserved in a web of solitude now that Lucien is partying in the bathroom and has been in there for not much longer than a minute, and it feels odd to be without company now that Lucien has always been by my side for a week or so, and that odd feeling shoves me into a cramped box and orders me to curl smaller than the box actually is, with the anxiety poking nails into the steel with a robust force spun by years of practice in the dictatorship of my mind, and I'm not sure if I will be free before Lucien returns.

The lighting stacked against the restaurant's walls is as dim as a premonition floating through my head in the current moment, a premonition that I wish to neglect but a premonition that I cannot neglect, no matter how arduously I labor to, and Lucien isn't here to save me from it, because Lucien is affiliated with that premonition, and now there's only one thing to aid me in distracting myself from it, and the thing is now entering in through the front door as if a guest, though they've been tasked with the job of entertaining the guests.

The restaurant apparently has hired a smooth jazz band for the evening, and about two minutes after Lucien leaves for the bathroom, that's when they appear seemingly out of nowhere, their instruments toted faithfully in the musicians' arms as they carry them towards the stage, where they then assemble their setup for a convivial show.

They're joyful men, always smiling whenever they do anything, which would certainly be an amazing prospect to reach, but it's just not logical from the standpoint of a metaphysical writer, as I thrive off of my darkness while simultaneously endeavoring to fortify myself against it enough so that it won't consume me, a tricky game for both a writer and the writer's visual proteges. Even so, happiness is the final paradise for someone like me, and most people would relinquish their writing ability to obtain it, but the musicians already have, for they're wallowing in the opportunity to enact what they love and be jovial while doing it, in addition to being able to woo others with their music, when all I do for people is propel them towards an urge to hire a psychiatrist for me.

The musicians, once they have arranged all that they need for a spectacular show, wield their instruments and puff out smoke rings of sound, a river for the ears, a tonic for the restless soul, and I find myself entranced in its steady flow of only minor fluctuations, forgetting all about Lucien and about our dinner and about life in general.

But good things can't last forever, and they usually don't even last for longer than a minute when they're the best things, so when the song closes, I am reminded that Lucien has been in the bathroom for far too long to being performing the bodily functions, far too long to be performing anything, and his goal of celebrating my blog's success in his perspective has been annihilated, as he's deserted me in the open space of the restaurant to sit there all alone like my date has either abandoned me prematurely after finding me a bore or has never bothered to show up at all, and the former may be correct based on the common location to claim they're going to, the bathroom.