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.
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