The Lost and Broken - Chapter 2 - Julie

Why did I always have to deal with the shitty jobs? It’s as much their band as it mine, I thought as I drove passed the entrance again. I cursed and did a ‘fuck it’ manoeuvre turning around to screeching tyres and pulled into the entrance of the sign place Gerard had given me. Already feeling like this was going to be an onerous task I sat for a minute to compose myself and prepare for the traditional male response to a girl like me.
‘Now I don’t expect you to understand all the technical terms so I’ll give it to you plain, we’ll make the (insert name here) or fix the (household appliance) using (all sorts of hard for a woman to understand parts) and it’ll cost you (a fucking shit load), love’. All said with a fatherly grin and knowing glint in there eye.
Feeling this growing pit of mixed anxiety and fear tinged with anger I headed to the main entrance, to be greeted by a kindly faced man in his mid 50’s.
‘You from that band of young Gerard’s?’
‘He… he told you I was coming?’
‘Sure, I’ve set you up with young Simeon. He’s a graphic design student, and really lovely boy’ almost as an after thought he added ‘He’s gay!’
I was in a quite state of shock as he led me down the passage way to a vacant office. Then promptly left me muttering that he’ll get Simeon to come on down.
I took a seat arranged my bag and paperwork on the table in front of me. I could feel the pressure in my chest building up, it always got worse when I was nervous or stressed. I sat myself straight backed in the chair, tilted my head back slightly and did the exercises my specialist taught me. Breathing carefully and deeply, letting the pressure subside, and my body take control of itself again. When I managed to catch it early and let the build up dissipate naturally there was no need for the drugs that left me crippled for days.
Hearing a noise in the room I opened my eyes to a guy of about my age, starring at me, mouth open and looking for all intent and purpose like a rabbit caught in the headlight. It looked as if he was trying to decide to leave, stay or just vanish into the floor.
‘You trying to catch a fly in that?’ I asked
He must have blinked at least twice before his brain engaged and he closed his mouth. Muttering some kind of apology he sat, tipping the folders he was carrying into a pile on the desk top.
‘I’m umm Simeon umm good morn... ah afternoon’ as an after thought he thrust his arm out to me and half stood up banging his knee on the edge of the desk. ‘Christ, fuck, sorry’. Red faced he looked at me with the sweetest blue-green eyes I had ever seen. He was thinner then the boys I like, but I guess that his preference was not for me either, there was something about him that made me want to know him more.
We spent the next twenty minutes talking business, getting the sign designed just right, the measurements I had taken of the front of the bass drum, it turned out, where wrong. He said that it was fine and he’d come to one of our rehearsals and measure it again. He smiled at me after saying this, not in the usual male chauvinist way but in way my friends would treat me, like it was a mistake that anybody could and would make. It was almost like he was asking me to forgive myself for the error I made.
I caught him glancing at me many times at first worried looks that I would tell on him for swearing. Sometimes he looked just like he did when he first came in the room, his eyes would linger on me, not lusting not leering, almost like he was trying to remember all of me for all time.
I couldn’t help but smile back at him, God I felt like I thirteen and the bracer filled smile of Tim O’Rourke could turn me red in a heart beat. It was not the flushed feeling of sex, just the rightness of the moment, like I could tell him the whole truth about me. Like I wanted him to come to our rehearsal and stay for the beers after, and then be there at breakfast and coffee and lunch and dinner… just to become part of my life with me. I wanted to be able to ring him up and talk about the crap the rest of the band layered on me, how my boss kept trying to look down my top, how shitty my boyfriend was.
I must have been smiling at him, starring into his soft eyes and sweet face that still held the soft trace of freckles, cause he had stoped speaking about the time frame to make the sign after he got the measurements. His stare sharpened and he bit his bottom lip just slightly.
‘I want to draw you’, his whisper was almost lost with the pounding of my heart in my chest.
His stare was so intense I couldn’t look away; I was falling into those eyes, the eyes that held so much sadness, worry and fear. The longer I looked the deeper I went til I could see hope, joy and fascination. He wanted to draw me and I knew that I would let him, let his eye take all of me see the scars on my chest; see the pain I hid form everyone else. Let him take all of me.

The Lost and Broken - Chapter 1 - Simenon

‘What do you want with me?’ Julie looked my right in the eyes.
‘Want? Why does it have to be a ‘want’? Like, I have to get something from this. Can’t we just be nice and have a conversation?’
‘Sure all you want is conversation’
‘Typical! In your head all men want is sex sex sex! Well not everyone thinks like that you know’ I turned to walk away from her.
‘No wait!’ She said ‘I’m sorry; it’s just… well… Jerry came over last night’
‘(sigh) Not the fuckwit Jerry?’
Julie sat down on the lounge near the potted plants. ‘Is that really what you call him?’
‘Well yeah… isn’t that what he is?’ I went to sit down opposite, not wanting to get in Julie’s personal space. I knew she needed a zone around her especially after a visit from Jerry. ‘Why haven’t you done something about him?’
I could see the tears in her eyes. ‘Get me a coffee, no cream!’ she said fumbling in her handbag for a tissue. I paused in the half sitting position for a second, then giving a grunt of assent I went to the counter and ordered two coffee’s, one no cream the other with caramel flavour.
Being friends with Julie was a constant battle, between love; I adored her beauty, grace and inspiring ways; and loathing; her constant pushing away and her string of bad relationships. Yet I always knew when she needed someone to talk to. I don’t know if was empathy or just that I have known her for such a long time and I pick up on the visual clues, either way I knew she needed to get something off her chest.
By the time I returned with the coffee’s she had found a tissue, wiped her eyes clear and was lighting up a cigarette. ‘You know we have to move outside to smoke that’ I said.
A glare from Julie reminded me that she was quitting, again. Grabbing her bag Julie got up and walked through the door to a vacant two seater table. Throwing herself down into an aluminium chair she looked at me. ‘Better?’
‘Much!’ I grinned back at her.
A poked out tongue was all I got as I handed over her coffee. We sat in silence for a few minutes; Julie smoked her cigarette sitting in the chair one leg folded over the other starring out at the street as the world passed us by. She looked like a movie star or a super model - graceful and confident. I do not know if it was the cigarette or the image media has always portrayed smoking women as, but Julie had The Look. I fell in love with her again that day. I wanted to be the cigarette as it moved in her fingers, as it slipped in-between her red lips.
Her changes always got me, from a school girl tease, to a helpless lost girl, to this woman of beauty and grace I saw before me. Smiling to myself I lent back in my chair and enjoyed just watching her.
‘You’re a perve’ Julie said.
‘And what are you going to do about it then?’ I smiled back
‘Nothing… Jerry’s an arse!’ Julie stamped out her cigarette ‘Why did I ever take him back? Fuck! You know I should just get you to choose my men for me’
‘Really? You like my men do you? Somehow I can’t see Luke with you… the whole breast thing’ I waved my hand over my chest.
‘I don’t mean your boyfriends, I mean you should screen my boyfriends… hey why don’t we double date with my next man?’
‘Wait a min, what the hell happened with Jerry?’ Where the hell was this going? I thought.
‘Jerry? I’m over him, I kicked him out last night’ she paused ‘I thought he was going to hit me last night…’
‘Oh fuck!’ I leaned forward towards Julie ‘Are you ok hon’?’
‘Yeah… I’m fine, I don’t want to talk about it… you know me, move on!’
‘This is not a “move on” kinda thing. Did he hurt you?’
‘No. I just thought he was going to. Look it is over, I got my keys back and he left. Ok?’
I looked her in the eyes for a second before replying. ‘You ever, and I mean ever, need to talk about this you call me ok?’
‘You know I wouldn’t’
‘Look this is serious…’
‘Move on!’
I sighed and sat back watching her as she lit another cigarette and stared out at the traffic again. Julie could be such a bitch; I knew she felt vulnerable talking about things to me as if me knowing bad things about her would make me love her any less. Women were such a mystery to me. I have had several relationships with women, some lasting just one or two nights of lust, but still when they were over I seemed to have learnt less and less each time.
Whereas with my boyfriends I always felt that we understood each other, it was almost an empathic knowledge that we either knew it was for a night, or we wanted a relationship. Like with Luke, we met at a bar, exchange numbers and planned a date for the following week. We knew that we wanted our first night together to be special and not just another one nighter, and now we are in our fourth month and loving it.
I let the moment pass and reached for my lukewarm coffee and waited until she came out of herself again. I let my mind drift back to the first time I met Julie, it seemed sometimes that I had known her for ever. I had to remind myself that it had been only a few years since she came into my life.
I was working for a design company, making advert signs for local ma and pa stores – I was basically a sign writer hidden behind the guise of an artist. It was not hard work and mostly computer based, we used stickers printed off and put on permanent backing boards then coated it all with a harden resin to protect the sign. Julie was looking for some way to make a sign for her band, a promo tool to hang in front of the drum kit or some such thing. Because I was younger then most of the other workers, and the strange gay boy of the business she was sent to talk to me.