Lifeguard Jeon

° F O U R T E E N °

I'm glad Irene isn't home. I want to sleep, not talk to anyone. What I feel is too complicated for words. I get into bed, only I dream about bicycles and accidents. I fall and I'm trapped under something, something heavy, and I can't get away. My body startles and I wake up.

To get my mind off Tae, I take out my sketchbook and sit on the bay window. I turn on my phone and there he is, straddling the motorcycle, his face serene and composed, his chocolate brown hair blown away from his face.

Jungkook.

I wouldn't say his name outside, out loud, but here in my room with no one around.

Jungkook. Jungkook. Jungkook.

I say it again and again to see what it sounds like to my ear, to try it on my tongue - Jungkook. Jungkook - as if the more I say it, the more he becomes mine. It suits him, but why? I brainstorm with myself. Associations? Guide. Golden. Leader. Driver. Explorer. Initiator. Independent. It works. It's perfect for him. The alternatives are laughing out loud. Boring names. Common ones. Seoyoon, Yoona, Minwoo, Donghyuk, Jiwoo, Seohyeon, Jinyoung, Youngjae. He wouldn't have any of those names. He couldn't.

He isn't like anyone else.

It work at transferring the face in front of me to paper, never mind that his eye are hidden behind sunglasses, as if he doesn't want me to see or know his eyes and his soul. The shape of the head first, then the mouth, which is easier because he the 'ideal' lip shape, has a defined cupid bow with a thin upper lip.

How would he kiss?

I put the pencil down. how much of himself would he put into it? I dream of kissing him for hours, feeling him next to my skin and burying myself against his warmth, inhaling his sweetness like a drug I can't take enough of. I think about seeing his eyes flood with longing and watching his face come alive as we kiss harder and harder. We'd spend the night on the beach inside a tent, zipped into a sleeping bag. My initiation. My innocence offered up to him and no one else.

A saying: la petite mort, the little death.

When we read about la petite mort in a book about literature, Sulli and I  laughed so hard we were in pain. it's the euphoria, or altered state, you're left with after reading something astounding, it quoted. Then we looked it up. We saw what it really meant: the spiritual release after organsm.

"Omo omo omo omo!" Sulli burst out laughing.

° ° ° ° ° 

Now I sit staring at the waters, hugging my sketchbook, my eyes burning, my throat dry with longing thoughts. Thoughts of him flood my mind, taking over. I'm like his robotic toy, remote controlled.

A car beeped brings me back to reality.

Focus, I tell myself. I keep on drawing. The aviator glasses on the bridge of his nose. That impenetrable, unstartled coolness. His body armor.

The harder I try try to sketch him, the worse it looks, as if hard work is at odds with inspiration and creativity. Everything is wrong. it looks nothing like him. It's awful, terribly, stupid, and embarrassing. I'm not an artist, I'm a kindergartner and a fake. I have no talent, so why am I pretending?

You have to struggle to make art, Suzy.

But Yoongi isn't twenty, he's eighty. Will I have to struggle that long? Seokjin, an handsome Calico, sidles up and sits next to me. he looks at the picture and yawns.

"You're being kind."

Trust your eyes, they tell you, only mine aren't seeing. It doesn't help that the picture in the camera is tiny and hazy, worse than a fleeting image on a surveillance video. For some freaky reason I wonder if the problem isn't the cell phone picture, it's that some elusive quality of his can't be captured, which makes no sense, but maybe it comes with living in a house with ghosts and suspecting that everyone in the world may have a supernatural presence.