The look in his eyes was all together alluring. Yet he seemed, as always, rather aloof. That was the first impression of course, he didn't care to change that though. As I spoke, he would look up from his fixed stare of his Heineken bottle and glare into me, watch my lips as they moved. As if he was trying to spell out every question in his head, yet he didn't care to answer. Not in words at least. He would shake is head, or murmur something neither one of us could understand. I couldn't help but feel like a poor, obsessed fanatic on the MTV show. I wouldn't be lying if I said I thought he was thinking the same.
I was about ready to give up completely on him. I was lost, searching for away out of Daniel Johns, I don't see how though, because he never really let me in. Then, out of nowhere, which made me jump, he said, "Dan," Simply and quickly, as if a breathe should not be wasted on such a remark. I didn't know how to retort to that so I turned my eyes into a question, and in a way I think he respected that.
"You kept calling me Daniel. Ordinarily I am all right with that, I felt the need to be shallow and let you keep calling me it, but I guess its not for my satisfaction cause its making no difference. You can call me Dan." Then he spaced out.
He said it like the world was going to end and he had to be sure to be the last one to talk. To speak, make his presence known. Which was basically what he was doing, making sure I still knew he existed, that he was listening after all, being shallow had nothing to do it, he just didn't want me to know that. "Okay." I didn't want to interview him as I thought I had wanted so deeply. Staring at him was fine enough, yet he had such a front that I couldn't even see past his muted smile.
Looking around I realized I was pretty isolated, just me, him and the cars. He was staring at me, waiting for me to continue, not that it would have made a difference in the comfort level. I began to tear up the piece of paper I had been clutching since he first arrived into pieces. They were my questions, my substance, but I had realized with Daniel, substance was rather hard to achieve, even though I knew it was there, he just wouldn't allow me past the gates of his glares. He watched me, he looked at my hands, and then confusingly up into my eyes, which were watching my hands, so he sighed and took a sip from his heiniken, not knowing what else to do, without putting his mind into a comma on why I was doing what I was doing.
"Why?" I questioned abruptly. He knew what I was talking about, he knew what I was asking him, for some reason I just knew he knew, but he had to be sure, or at least had to stall the answer.
"Why what?" He said this apprehensively, not really wanting to repeat me.
"Well, I was sent here to interview you, see what you were up to, make sure you were still sane, when we know sanity left you a while back, back with rainbow colored frogs, so why, why must you keep this front up, like a brick wall, not even rain can taint you? So why, nothing in specific when you know as well as I do what why means?" I kind of lashed out at him, I never expected myself to do that. It surprised him as well. Does thee Daniel Johns dare be questioned, when its not really like that at all, or never really was supposed to end up like that. It did never the less. If only he could still be the young fruiters son filled with teenage angst once more. His eyes were telling me this, his eyes were his downfall to me, as shaded as they were, I read them quietly, as he tried his hardest to keep his head down, away from my gaze.
He lifted his Heineken and took a sip, it was one of those glass bottles, so no matter how much I wanted to hate him I couldn't because he was being cute, just like you can never yell at a five year old when cookie crumbs line there faces. I watched his eyes and he surveyed the surroundings. Daniel looked across the lake we were sitting just inches away from and then straight into me. I couldn't help but tremble, his lure seemed to be radiating, I couldn't keep my hands still.
"I've been asked many things since frogstomp," Frogstomp was referring to the colored frogs, thats how I concluded it anyways. "I've been asked who I was dating, I've been asked if I have recovered, I've been asked if I've shaved, I've been asked why I don't wash my hair, when all the answers always revolve around them, the critics, the reporters, the paparazzi. I could never date a girl unless she was as messed up as me, and then it was always my fault when it ended, I was too fucked up for her in the first place they would always say. I never washed my hair because that's what they wanted, call me a skitz, insane, no, wait, you already have," He looked at me directly at that remark. I looked down, sorry that I had said what I had said, but he took his hand and moved my face so that I was once again looking at him, for if I didn't he would he get off with complete and utter lies. "So why what? Why do I hate the world so? I don't, at least not you, or the people in the cars passing behind us, or that TRL guy, Carson Daly, as much his questions had no relevance or reason, he didn't barricade me with questions about anorexia like everyone else has, thinking they're covering new ground, with new, innovative questions, when as innovative as they could get was, 'Who was it that dragged you out of it? Ben?' Who I do hate, which should not be used so lightly dearest," Once again he gave me a look, as if he were quoting about me in an interview, and he looked in the camera for one spilt second, just to show, he hadn't forgotten me. I doubted at that time he would ever rethink me. I would just become a blurred image in his mind. "I dislike those who have corrupted me, as melodramatic as it seems, or as I come off, I only dislike those who pretend to care, when in reality they think "lunacy sells."
He wasn't pretending anymore. He was being serious. I felt like I had made a breakthrough, but I was a journalist, not a psychiatrist as I had planned. He was looking at me and awaiting a reaction. I know he was playing one off in his head, like a daydream, or a movie that he was alone in a theater watching. Instead of doing what I wanted to do, which was start crying and hug him like he was on his deathbed and it was I that was causing this poor being's life to end so suddenly, but as thought, instead I preceded in questioning him, once more, for the last time, two questions on this sheet of paper would have to do.
"Dan," My voice was shaking, as it was doing when I first shook his hand.
"Yes," He said desperately wanting me to crack.
"Are you gonna be okay?" I was not sure how he was going to take this. I was not sure where it was coming from. It covered so many vast corners of his mind, I didn't know which part was going to respond.
He smiled and drew in some air. "Yeah," And that was it.
He took one last sip from the bottle stood up from his position on the grass in a field across from the Golden Gate Bridge, and I rose with him. He touched my hand and then gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and drove away. I waited till I could see him no more, and then stood and stared at the impression he had left on the grass. I contemplated keeping the bottle but decided it was Daniels contribution to the environment, a decoration for the frogs.
About a week later I entered my apartment to find a Rolling Stones magazine opened to page 79. On that page was Daniel Johns and the quote, "If your going to be interviewed, do it with a enchanting girl, across from the Golden Gate Bridge." End of quote.
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