Phantasmagoria

13-Dreon

Her face was sweet, like a child's. Who was she? "Who do you want me to be?" I hold my head down as I try to remember. When I couldn't, I call Cheese. She answers right before it goes to voicemail.

"Ey 'sup Drei, you ready for the sex?"

"Shut up, Cheese. I can't make it to breakfast."

"Oh why? You got yourself a little sexy pancake covered in butter and syrup waiting on your bed?" She moans.

"Gross. Anyway, it's my dad's birthday and we're having breakfast together. See you at school."

"Oh sure sweet munchkin, whatever you say." She laughs.

My dad towered on his seat. He is muscular, the kind of body one would mistake as a hoodlum's, a façade he tries so hard to mimic but fails. He had always been so soft, the kind of dad who kisses you good night and doesn't leave the room until he's sure you're fast asleep and snoring.

"Morning, Dad." I kiss his cheek. "Happy 41st."

"Meat pie or Calzone?" he asks, his problematic face pierces right through me.

"Calzone please, thanks." I sit across and slurped my orange juice. He is holding the tip of the steel food cover when a smile spreads across his face.

"Wrong! It's meat pie!" He declares as if announcing the winner from a football match. He rubs his palms together and inhales the seducing aroma of his waning childhood.

"Happy birthday, Love." Mom kisses his lips and I try to look away. Sure, they are sweet and all but as a child, there is nothing more embarrassing than seeing your parents show romantic affection towards each other. I fix my eyes on a statement frame hanging on the wall. Amor Fati. Nietzsche's love of fate.

"How's school, son?"

Mom and I exchange glances. "Nothing new, Dad." I smile.

"Now, now honey. Say ah." My Dad was more of a crybaby than my Mom. I silently thank her for making Dad drop the subject and watch them giggle like a teensy-weensy teenage couple. Love is a labyrinth I could never fathom, no matter how hard I try.

I gaze at them. I wonder what happens if Dad chewed a little slower or Mom laughed a little louder, would it make any difference? It seemed too trivial, but I had long realized that trivialities are not insignificant at all. Everything that is important is made up of trivialities we are too blind to see or too proud to even notice. There are things that deserved more attention than it gets.

I borrowed Mom's car to school. I go straight to Arts, carrying a box of painting materials. The Arts room had scattered canvasses, its walls painted cream and cerulean blue, like the seashore. I grab a canvass and sit on the spot near the window. A middle-aged woman glides gracefully in front. She is tall and elegant. A minimalist art.

"Valentine's day is coming up so you know what to do. You can use any style you want but make sure to use red as your base color. You have three days to finish your work and make sure you include at least one style you've learned this semester. You may start."

I smile inwardly. I never understood why people celebrate the day with chocolates and roses and hanging heart-shaped origami and cupid cut-outs as if it were the day of love. Perhaps to cover up its dark past, to romanticize felony as a saintly sacrifice.

I carefully sketch a scene that I imagine happening during the feast of Lupercalia, from which Valentine's Day was derived. The canvas reeked of animal sacrifice, violence, and sexual harassment. I brush the colors in painful intricacy, for these truths were hidden, buried upon romanticized tragedy and false honor, and therefore deserved to be known.

It was lunchtime when I finally saw them. Tony is sitting on the table, strumming his ukulele while Flynn sings with his eyes closed, almost in an overly theatrical way. Cheese had her head buried on the table. I feel a flash of sharp pain in my head, but I try to ignore it. I move closer.

"You can close your eyes it's alright. I don't know no love songs and I can't sing the blues anymore."

"What happened to her?" I eye Cheese, who did not move a single muscle.

"Turns out, Miss Mozzarella here is a fucking, emphasis on fucking fledgling." Flynn hoots. I furrow my brows.

"Apparently, Ryan cheated on Davis. With her." Tony whispers. Ryan, as far as I know, was Cheese's longest boyfriend. They had been going out for almost two months.

"I told you he's gay. You never listen." Flynn rolls his eyes and continued humming loudly. "You know who else is? Me." He laughs.

Cheese shoots him a glare and stands up. "I have a class." She walks away and I did not dare follow. Flynn's eyes are too loud.

"So, I heard you haven't gotten yourself a girlfriend yet, huh Dreon?" He plays with his scarf and looks at me with his scrutinizing eyes.

"Nope." I shrug.

"Why not?"

"Why not, not?" I sit across and clip my lips for a frown.

"Duh? Don't give me your deep-thinking bullshit honey that you don't need anybody and that love and sex are merely social constructs to preserve the human race because you're a guy. You may be smart and deep but you're a fucking guy. Again, emphasis on fucking. You need it. You need to experience what you call as the shallow pleasures in life because you have your entire sixties or eighties to worry about your goddamn philosophical bullshit."

"You only say that because you had sex with Kyle."

He rolls his eyes and gathers his things. "Oh yes darling and it's fucking awesome. See you later, crocodiles." Before he leaves, he tosses a packet of aluminium foil which I barely caught. I look at him in confusion but he only winks.

"Welp, I guess I'll see you after class, man." Tony taps my shoulders and walks away.

I peacefully gorge at my meat pie as I observe the uncannily loud rhythm of the cafeteria. It looks cliché, like that of a student crowd in movies. But I wonder if somebody out there thinks the same way as I do. Or was I the hero of this monotonous tale?