Post by theodore galis on Feb 22, 2011 23:14:44 GMT -7
[/size][/i] strange how things never play out the way you expect them to. when i went out on my first call as an official member of the NYFD, i expected the night's events to follow the script i'd had stored in the canals of my memory since childhood. as a boy i'd seen myself, a larger, braver version of myself, rushing into burning buildings and carrying out four, five people at a time, barely even breaking a sweat. i imagined all the pats on the back i'd get from my impressed peers, the swooning gratitude from the beautiful girls i was bound to rescue. the fire would feel like a warm breeze against my face, the kind of warm breeze that reminded me of my childhood spent on beaches with my cousins. i'd receive medals, and everywhere i'd go people would applaud me, and - most importantly, in my young eyes - i could have free ice-cream whenever i wanted.------it's
----but things are never the way you imagine them to be. though i boarded the truck with the same skittish excitement i'd felt as a child, the very moment we pulled up outside the address i became sick as a dog. the smoke billowing out of the house was densely black, a denser black than any smoke i'd ever seen or even pictured-- so dense i thought it was going to block out the stars, pollute the whole sky. the building was charred black too, the white paintwork slowly being devoured by flames, brilliantly orange flames, so beautiful and so sinister that i couldn't look away, though i desperately wanted to turn my back. just standing on the sidewalk the heat was unbearable, hotter even than the time all those years ago that my brother had cranked the heat on the sauna up to maximum level, and i felt as though my feet had melted into the ground, that i was stuck there, that my hesitation had sealed my fate. i was simultaneously seduced and stunted by the flames, knowing i should be doing something to counter them but also revering them, in a sense, as an enemy i had mistakenly underestimated.
----and then, much more quickly than i had ever thought it could be, it was all over. the more experienced members of the team had easily handled what i eventually came to consider a relatively low-level blaze, all whilst i had stood dumbstruck on the safety of the sidewalk. it was then that i noticed i was not the only spectator, that all the while members of the public had been standing by much as i was, and my shame intensified. as a man possessed with the mission of fictionalizing my own life, i felt that i had suddenly had my narrative snatched away from me, that i'd had an external narrator all along and that he had finally decided to renounce my version of events. pitying myself immensely, i accepted a few consoling words from another member of the team before heading back to the truck, about to clamber aboard when i caught sight of someone in amongst the crowd. it was with this observation, this minor observation, that the events of the night repeated themselves.
----for in amongst the crowd was a girl, a girl with the same dangerously alluring appeal as the now defunct fire had once had. it was as if all that energy hadn't been put out but had been transferred to a person, to this one person, to this beautiful blonde who managed to be both part of the crowd and completely individual. whilst others around her were gripped in the throes of excitement or shock, she was isolated in her apathy, a cigarette hanging idly from her perfect red lips. involuntarily taking a few steps closer to her, i couldn't help but watch as she took a deep inhale and followed it with an exhale, the smoke curling round her upper lip and into the humid air. she made something as simple as breathing seem like performance art, and in the grip of that moment, a moment lasting no more than seven or eight seconds, i could understand what people saw in art, why people spent such huge sums of money in an attempt to own it, to possess it, to have it all to themselves. it was as if all the lust i'd ever felt had been personified, and i was whole-heartedly convinced that if i managed to touch her, to have any sort of tangible connection with her, that it would undo all the previous failures of the night.
----and for a minute - just a minute - after i had drawn out a phone number from those ruby red lips, i was sure that it had. of course i had no way of knowing that annie abagnale would wind up being the worst thing that ever happened to me, that she would wind up being the only fire i could never put out.[/blockquote][/blockquote][/sub]
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