The Cafe of Contortions
Three plain girls sat on a couch. “Check out that girl over there,” one girl said with a cynical smile. She pointed to a chic girl dressed in a cocky attitude in her conformist skater shoes, bashing her charcoaled eyes at her male companion. They seated themselves at a table. The guy was fitted into stick-figure jeans rolled at the bottom to reveal common Converse shoes – black and white – emo in his depressingly stylish rebellion. The hands of the huge wall-clock read close to midnight in the urbanized café/bar. Around the high-ceilinged room, figures sat in organized concentration playing chess in unisex hoodies. Trendy nerds sat at the bar with their upscale laptops and espressos. A few rags—bums or tired college students—lounged on couches reading books with drooping eyelids.
A man in a long black winter coat and polished black shoes approached the girls on the couch. A calculating expression focused his eyes on the plain Jane in the middle.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“ . . . ”
“Hey kid, here’s a dollar. What’s your name?”
With a smile she slowly leaned forward, took the man’s money and returned to the couch. “Josie,” she replied with mocking amusement.
Not to be dissuaded, the man crossed his arms and situated himself on the couch across from her. “I’ve noticed you here before. Same worn tennis shoes about to bust holes for your toes,” he glanced at her fingers, “and I’m betting you bit your nails down just like the concrete underneath your shoes ripped up the bottom of your jeans.” He gave an intimate grin.
She pushed her messy black hair away from her brown eyes slowly suggesting an orange-red glow that burned like coal infused with fire. She softly replied, “What do you know about me Mister? What the hell do you want?” Her friends’ faces were guarded.
“You’re one of those street-kids. You ride the buses with the change you make off strangers. Then, when you guys get tired of making fun of the passengers, or when the bus driver kicks you off, you come to a place like this to lounge and scrounge what you can. Or, if you’re lucky you get to spend the night in some stupid college kid’s apartment.”
Her friend to the left whispered, “What the hell.”
He continued, “I have a proposition for you.”
Her eyebrows peaked.
“I propose that you work for me.”
“Are you kidding? I’m no fucking whore!” She stood up as her friends joined her.
He stood up as well, rubbing his hands and extending them, “Hold on. It’s not what you think. Think of me as your fairy godmother. I’ll give you a makeover. A pumpkin carriage in the form of cash payment. A transformation from a common nobody to royal model status. I like to consider myself an artist. I like to make ugly beautiful.”
The girl glanced over at her friends and burst forward laughing. “Man, what are you? Some crazy off the street? This is too funny. You know what? Here’s your money back. I took it as a joke. And all that shit you said earlier, it’s mighty creative of you, but you really don’t know anything about me actually, about any of us.” The girls unconsciously shifted closer in their sisterhood.
Though he was obviously a bit riled, the man continued on his mission, “No, no, no. Maybe we don’t understand one another. You see, my artwork consists of taking pieces from the world. I do imagine things from what I see. I do assume stories from the superficial layers. I watch you take steps in those dirty sneakers, and your footprints walk into a story in my mind. I can create a new world for you, and my money can make that world a reality. I can makeover your looks because you have potential. I can makeover your life and make your dreams come true. It will become a photographic storyline of your transformation!”
“You want to make me into some Cinderella? Give me some glass slippers? Be my fairy grandmother? Pick me up from my life and out of some strange artist’s vision and weird goodwill? What exactly do you expect to get out of this? You’re one of those freaks who takes young girls off the streets and pimps them, huh? Make money off them so you can get your shoes polished real shiny. Pervert.”
Undeterred, he continued, “You can be my muse. My inspiration to create beauty.”
She looked intently into his eyes and seemed to consider his strange offer. Tilting her head introspectively, she smiled a melancholy tilt of the lips. “You know, I believe you. I believe that you are offering something genuine from the depths of your heart,” the clock struck midnight. “Perhaps you can fit me into Cinderella’s slippers . . . but I don’t want it. I don’t need to be beautiful in your eyes. If you can’t appreciate me as I exist before you, no story or make-over will help you transform me into beautiful. You will transform me into an object—a distorted, contorted, fucking ugly artifact—that will bring you pleasure as my creator. A masturbatory ego stroke on your canvas,” she shook her head in released anger to pity.
His eyes pleaded for her to understand his proposition as his conceited smile faded and his hands dropped to his side. “You—you don’t understand!” Then bringing his goal to mind, he stuttered, “No, no, no. Of course you don’t understand.”
“Maybe not. But, you know what? I like my shoes just fine. Yeah, my toes might be edging out, but these shoes have lasted me a long time. I assume you didn’t notice the paint underneath my soles …from my own canvases. I love these shoes! You know what I like to paint?”
Shocked at the admission, he shook his head.
“I love painting the erosion in the world. The cracks in the walls. The bums on the streets. The dead in their caskets. The hopelessly ephemeral nature of the world.”
Gaining back some of his idealistic perspective, he haughtily shook his head in stern disagreement.
She continued, “I think for people to confront those things and choose to continue living on illustrates the exact idealism you may strive to create in your pieces. But I’m betting your outcome is some bleached fantasy. Some beautifully bleached Maxim fantasy without the entertaining humor. You do your part. I’ll stick to being a reminder for the bitter end of sweet. Maybe I’m crazy for living in this erosion. Or maybe I’m just hopeful that someone like you will see the paradoxical beauty in ugly. You know, without the Beast, I don’t think Beauty would have been as beautiful.” She reached into her pocket, “You know what, here’s my card. My name is Josie Raze. And here’s my proposition. When you find your muse? Call me, and I’ll paint you painting your muse. There’s a way of seeing.” Grabbing her friends at the elbows, the girls walked past the chic girl and her male companion, and made their grand exit out the door.
The chic girl with the charcoaled eyes held a pencil and was working through a sketch in her black book. Outlined were the figures of Josie Raze and her girlfriends sitting on a couch alongside the man in the winter coat. He was drawn with a manic clown’s smile while the girls were drawn with misanthropic frowns. Her male companion peeked over, shook his head and chuckled. |
