𝗧𝗪𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗬 𝗦𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦

ch.vi:the photographer

CHPATER SIX 🐛

VON:
[one year ago]
This one time I opened a can of paint and inhaled at the wrong time causing me to breathe in the fumes and it went straight down my throat. I gagged trying to catch my breath and I accidentally kicked the bucket. Not like I died, I kicked the actual bucket and it rocked a little bit splattering paint on my brand new 1's and on my granny's carpet. That panic I felt that day as a fourteen year old kid is the same panic I felt last summer when I woke up, naked, in the bed of some guy I had never seen before.

My head ached. It really was ponding like I had been hit by three hundred mack truck deluxe. I had been partying with these guys I had met at another party in the Ville from what I could remember. Since Laya was up north, I ain't really have nobody to chill with so I agreed to meet up with some people from high school who I hadn't really seen since we graduated.

One of them was Rodney Calhoun. Most of our time in high school was spent in Ms.Corey's studio learning how to work all the photography equipment. We were both in a program that put us on the track to getting full rides to film school. Long story short, some things happened, he went and I didn't.

I'm not gonna lie... I haven't picked up a camera since. I barely even use my phone camera. Dramatic? Maybe. But I really had convinced myself that It just wasn't meant to be so when Rodney hit me up about a project he was doing in the city, I was hesitant. Suddenly, someone was expecting me to be able to do something I had convinced myself I wasn't good enough to do, so naturally I self sabotaged. I went to a party, got white girl wasted and woke up in the bed of some nigga who tried to fuck again when I woke up. Disgust isn't even a word to describe the feeling I felt towards myself in that moment.

Rodney told me to meet him at the location at 6 am. That night before, I was sure I was gonna leave him hanging and say I got caught up, but post said catch up, and two hours later than the agreed upon time, I truly felt like an ass. It was this moment that my life flashed before my eyes. As I picked my clothes up off of the floor, pulled on my pants, squeezed my big head into the neck hole of my hoodie, I knew that if I didn't make the decision right then not to fuck up my future, that I wouldn't have one much different from what my present was looking like.

He didn't text. He didn't call. But, when I arrived, three hours after our set time... he was there - standing up against the brick wall. He looked my way and gave me a sympathetic look that was nothing like someone who pitied me, but like a grandmother who's been where you are once or twice and wants nothing more than to help get over the hill.

"I was wondering when you would come to your senses."

"Where's everyone else?"

"Before you can start a project, you gotta scope it out. Envision it. Plan it."

I can't say what I was thinking in that exact moment. Rodney stood tall, freeform locs falling just below his jawline, eyes serious yet soft — a camera bag in one hand and a notepad in the other, I knew he meant business. Whatever he had planned, it included me and that was the only thing that pushed me. I couldn't let him down.

All of my friends have gone to college, graduated or are getting ready to—some have even started serious careers and have invited me to their award ceremonies and graduations; so this feeling of lesser than or mediocrity in the presence of my peers is nothing new to me. Even in the most mundane of scenarios such as now— the both of us eating the same cheap ass greasy burgers and fries with a side of fruit punch loaded with chemicals that really should be illegal— I still feel as though he's eating the burger more delicately with more finesse than I am. When a city boy leaves the city and returns a little more refined with a wallet that carries more weight than it ever has before, it reminds me that I am still the same city boy I had been all my life. I haven't grown, I haven't changed, I haven't experienced anything outside of the simple life I've been provided by parents. The only difference with this feeling is that this particular peer wants to bring me with him. That hits different.

"I was thinking." Rodney started. He looked out the windshield as if he were still in deep thought at the moment. "Okay. I have a proposition for you. Come stay with me."

"Okay."

"What?"

"Yeah, I'll go."

"Oh. I had a whole thing ready to convince you."

"Oh, my bad. Go ahead." I mumbled. I watched him begin his presentation while falling into deep thought about the last few days — these past few days has been filled with nothing but tidal waves and I could feel an even bigger one coming. I feel as though I am on the verge of something. In my dreams God has been trying to show me something but I keep pushing these feelings away. I don't know if it's fear or nervoso or anxiety of if there really is something happening.

"Are you even listening?"

"How have you felt the past few days? Weird at all? By any chance?" He shook his head no and continued to make his point. This could be it, I thought. "Okay, you're definitely not listening."
He said with a smirk half covered by his mustache overdue for a trim. "Well..." he looked down at the steering wheel, "you've made your choice. Are you sure? I mean, we haven't even talked since graduation."

Graduation. The first time I'd realized that my future was in my own hands and I had never cooked anything from scratch a day in my life. I didn't know it then, but I'd lost most of my friends the moment we'd cross the stage. School friends aren't real friends. Rodney was one of those.

"I always wondered what you were up to though." He smiled, looking at me through thinly opened eyelids. "You're so weird. Like every fucking body has social media except for you. How the hell is anyone supposed to snoop on you when you cross their minds at random moments within the dark hours?"

"Yet, somehow you did manage to, Roddy."

"Yo, I legit haven't heard that one in so long."

"That's cuz I'm the only one who ever called you that."

"Yeah, you and your friend Laya. How she doing by the way?"

"She got socials, why not just stalk her on there?" I laughed harder than I intended to.

twenty somethings
ch06 [nov.21.2022]

a/n: just wanted something to move us along.

- some times i sit, seething my existence. then, i realize i have created more many existences than i could ever count— one, two, three— merry do they sit in my note pads and in my dreams, congregating; gushing over me. like God, created. created images in whole of me. do i dare feel i've been in his image and in his likeness regretfully?