Still Point ✓

03 | hard boy

SOMETIMES, WHEN HE was careless, Wesley thought that survival was easy.

Not easy per se, but something with an undeniable set of formulas, laid down rules and regulations that if you learned to work with, everything would be fine. Like one plus one equal two.

But then he remembered that he couldn't hear out of his left ear and at seventeen, he had been in a total of five foster homes since he turned fifteen. Also, he was pretty sure he didn't chain-smoke Red Marlboro's because he liked them, but rather, because he was addicted. So life was shit and everyone got fucked, and if there was a God, They were either dead or didn't care.

He wrote haikus when the edges of his brain turned fuzzy and things began to look bleak. Sometimes on his phone, and if not, the leather bound journal he'd purchased from the bodega in his first few days here. He'd have to get a new one soon though, as his current one was almost completely used up. They usually went something like this:

there is blood on my

hands and i cry by the stairs

while your ghost sings hymns

And if you weren't the least bit put off by his six-four frame, the tattoo at the side of his face, and his hair which was shaved almost completely down to his scalp, you could ask what it meant and he would tell you to fuck off, because he was always in a bad mood. But if he wasn't, his explanation would go along the lines of art sometimes being as literal as it looked, and how everything didn't have to have some profound, deeper meaning.

He wasn't being pretentious; it was just the way his mind worked.

So he was as surprised as anyone else would've been when he used a cut of the money he'd swiped from Emoni's bag as she hand-washed her scrubs in the bathroom while humming the tune to a Stevie Nicks song, to pay for a pass into an art gallery in Harlem, on one of the many long walks he took to clear his head.

Emoni was cool he guessed, early forties, thick, and pretty even though she always looked like she would drop from exhaustion with all the night shifts she pulled cleaning at the hospital. She always wore a wig because she claimed her hair was a mess, and could be so damn funny at times he would laugh till it felt like his ribs were cracked in half.

She was also no nonsense, insisting he did his homework, always coming up with suggestions for which colleges he could apply to that had the best financial aid plans. But Wesley had no plans of going to college, and even if he did, his grades were shit so scholarships were out of the question.

But yeah she was cool, and it was a testament to his fondness of her that he felt even a twinge of guilt when he reached into her faux leather purse and pulled out three twenties before quietly ducking out of their cramped apartment.

Now, watching people shuffle around the well-lit space, clusters forming around abstract paintings in overlarge frames, and blown up black and white photographs of trailer parks like the one he'd grown up in: a black man getting his hair braided into cornrows; kids from the Bronx playing hopscotch; Wesley at once felt his skin break into goose bumps, thrown between a spectrum of emotions along the line of fascination.

He stuck his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and walked around; pretending not to notice the way people took one look at him and stepped away, forming a large berth. Sometimes they'd abandon whatever art piece they were in the middle of appreciating and walk away when they noticed him approaching.

The overhead speakers crackled briefly, one tap, two, and then a voice came through them, announcing:

If you're interested in performing a poem or a song, please meet Matthew Seinfeld―a skinny, white, college-type kid in glasses, with messy brown hair, waved shyly from a corner of the room before dropping his hand as soon as he'd risen it―and sign up, for a very small fee. Tonight's gonna be huge, people. You never know, there may be talent scouts and agents looking for the next big thing here.

They fell silent after that, and it took a few moments for people to realize that that was all as life slowly filtered back into the group, some even trickling towards where Matthew stood with a clip board in hand.

A part of Wesley itched to put down his name and perform something, but he hardly ever read his poems after writing them down. The words may have come from his mind, but failing to commit them to memory meant that he had nothing to perform.

Besides, a small fee probably meant ten dollars above, which wasn't money he had to spend. He'd already blown twenty-five bucks on a pass, and he needed the rest for cigarettes, which he'd began to chain-smoke harder than he ever had lately.

Shrugging to himself, he wove through the gallery doing what he'd come for―or stumbled into, more accurately.