the hall
OK, confession time. Last year (I was 15) a friend and I got into a little trouble. Light-weight hacking you might say. It was just the challenge, you know?? *shrug* but wow, how stupid. I even had to give up my beloved unix based Mac (you can't really hack with a Windows computer).
For community service my best friend Kimberley and I "volunteered" to assist in setting up new media centers at several "underprivileged" Atlanta city schools. I LOVE anything to do with computers so the work was fun and interesting for the most part. On to the story =]
They stand in the poorly lit corridor, slack and garrulous, like actors posing. They're full of rhetoric spiked with sexist coding, gross and sharp as anger.
They’re joined in some intimate conspiracy, celebrating their appetite with implausible verbs and questionable conjunctions.
Kimberley and I, jejune and courteously bumbling, caught in embarrassments bloom, try not to look like prizes for the stealing and resist the urge to bolt back down the hall. Never show anyone you're afraid.
We pass buy them but the computer lab is LOCKED and before we can retreat they block the hall around us. The catchers and the caught.
Amid stares, glares and jokes that aren't REALLY jokes we get oxalic terms of endearment and invitations to public, shared intimacy. The tallest guy reaches out for the books I am carrying and as I pull back another guy leans in and licks Kim on the the side of her face before she can lean back! .. eeuuuwww!
For a moment longer than a moment we watch each other for reaction - caught in an orbit of chaotic attraction, revulsion, danger and control. Kim and I silently trying, like a chess problem, to improvise a route to where we want to go.
As the four continue to close in, I've calculated my chances (I'm a Black belt in Tang Soo Do). 4 of 'em - I've sparred against four guys at once a thousand times - I have no doubts.
*I smile - the tall guy smiles* (We aren't smiling about the same thing).
I step slightly back onto the toe of my right foot - the move in’t really noticeable but i'm getting ready. I need them just two feet closer.. *In my mind, I count "one, two" - A door opens across the hall and the media center teacher and a BIG cop spill into the hall.
Gentle as Sunday the cop says, "Scuse me" and cuts thru the circle to the locked door.
Fun time's over.
Comments