The Man Whose Eyes Never Tire

1...

    I achieved my learners-licence just one day before you contacted me.
  A physical token of maturity immortalised in a covering of immaturity; a beginner step - but a beginner step only to reach the hands of an individual surpassing the earliest teenage years; the impossibility of a nymphet’s hands grazing this card branded with the nymphet’s own name - beyond my understanding, a symbol of my changing experiences to flutter and land between my fingertips.
   In my eyes, you adored me. You needed me. You craved me like sweet candy to a child. I was your jailbait; you understood you would never be freed from the grasp of my allure; the allure you told me had followed me like a ghost - haunting, lingering, always around despite an absent, occupied mind. You were drawn to me initially; it was my admiration that followed in the path of yours. You were the initiator, and I was the cause for it all. You told me that we were the same person; a wonder we had not met sooner; an uncanny similarity in our tastes. You shifted my mindset; for a moment in time, I became you, and when you disappeared from my mentality, I had died, just as my years had turned from that of innocence to that of taintedness.

  Sipping my illegally alcoholic, brick red seabreeze as any freshly seventeen-year-old girl would do during her summer break from school, I glance back up at my father who I am attempting to ignore for the preservation of peace; he and I are on the brink of an argument once more, and understanding that I lose control of my anger during our bickering features, I recognize my need to restrain myself.
  “I just think you are far too young to be performing right now,” he carries on despite my clear reluctance to continue this conversation. “It is too dangerous for you, and especially with the way you dress…” he trailed off.
    “Dad, you realise that I perform twice per year with the studio anyway, right? This jazz club is small, local, and exactly the scene I need to be recognized in,” I countered without a sliver of a lie. I was about to be starting my third year of teaching piano with my studio, and not even two months prior, I had opened three shows back-to-back for the June concert. I was amazed that despite my maturity beyond my years, my father still thinks that I would be incapable of protecting myself. “No one is going to attack me in a restaurant.”
   “That’s not the point, honey. You get one creep there, and that is all it takes. It's just,” he hesitates and stops himself before saying anything that would brew too much anger within me. “I want you to be safe, and I don’t think you’re ready for this.”
   The restaurant up for debate at this given moment is the place I spend my lonesome nights dreaming about; the place in which I visualise myself while I close my eyes, grazing my fingers across the white and black of my little upright piano: a jazz club. I have never been to the jazz club yet, however I grew a mild obsession with the place; its beauty so close to me, a place where I may truly start my career as a jazz performer. Images I have fetched on the internet depict a beautiful, nearly smokey-looking 1930s-speakeasy-inspired jazz bar. Lights of blue and purple shine down upon the stage, illuminating the finger-print-stained Boston grand piano before a blue LED sign reading the name of the jazz club. The stage is elevated by nearly a foot, creating a hushed sense of display to the smaller bands and performers attempting to make a name in this location. Gorgeous black, wooden tables scatter the restaurant, and at the bar, the most enchanting sight; a purely vintage-esque backdrop of an orange hued wall of light shining before a chequered cage-like pattern of black metal bars, high stools waiting patiently before the bar table itself to be accompanied for the evening. I was not shy about labelling myself as a relic; an old soul; a vintage-adorer; a romantic. I needed to play in this restaurant as a jazz pianist and singer.
    My best friend was always my greatest inspiration; Arabella. It was she who inspired me to attempt improvisation on the keys when I thought I was incapable of writing any form of music, let alone on the spot.
   “Just get on top,” she would say. “You are better than you think, Juliette, and if it sounds bad, then it’s just jazz.”
    She was a level ahead of me in music, and our closeness in level allowed us constant inspiration, and our shared adoration for jazz in particular led to endless duetting and writing. We would spend hours together in front of my old, abused Maeari, writing, experimenting with improvisation, sharing drinks and sharing thoughts about boys - we always wrote about boys. The latest piece I had tackled on my own was entitled The Man In The Corner; a piece I had written about a fantasy of mine: a young, Spanish pianist performing to an audience of desiring men in a smoked out jazz bar, with one older man watching her from the back of the bar each and every show until he eventually confesses his controversial love to her. I claim the song is not about me, for that never has happened to me and never will, but I cannot deny that I crafted the character to have the same description as myself so that I could envision myself into this character; this fantasy. The piece was crafted after great inspiration from Tom Waits’ Ice Cream Man; the same dynamic of the older, lusting man to the younger, naive girl. The intro of Ice Cream Man was a lick I greatly implemented into my own piece; a sense of childhood, a sense of innocence.
  When I had first learned about the jazz club months and months prior, Arabella was the first I had contacted about it. Glowing and bursting with excitement and a drive to earn a gig at this location, Arabella met my craze with a perfectly mirrored energy. Her mindset of ‘going and getting’ whatever her heart desires pushed her so much as to attempt to visit the manager long before this moment in August, asking for an opportunity for us to play one evening and showcase our skill. She informed me that the manager spoke to her of their Tuesdays being an ‘open mic’ event, where anyone is able to show their skills. We needed a set list.
    Burdened by school work, Arabella and I had miserably missed this opportunity; by the time we were ready to play a show, the Open Mic Tuesdays were no longer being held; only proper, booked gigs were able to perform. This knowledge saddened us pianists for a mere moment, but we recognized that we still had the credentials and skills to be able to attempt to get booked as a proper, paid gig - our only block, however, was our age, and my father.