literature

The Kid With The Jacket

Deviation Actions

BDancinJones's avatar
By
Published:
252 Views

Literature Text

   The door was open.  I checked my watch: 12:29; he was early.  I stumbled nervously into the room: there he was, unpacking a neat, black suit and hanging it in his closet, which already held navy blue, gray, and brown blazers and a black wool peacoat.  Next to his jackets were a half-dozen semi-casual long-sleeve button-up shirts and another three dress shirts, two pairs of slacks and three pairs of jeans.  Strewn across the bed I assumed he’d claimed as his were three ball caps, a Greek fisherman’s hat, two trilbies, and two proper fedoras.  I’d known him for all of six seconds and he was already the classiest man I’d ever met.

   This starkly contrasted, however, with what the guy was wearing: wire-rimmed aviator shades over his eyes, stubble covered his cheeks and jawline, and the top of his forehead was covered by a slight amount of wavy dirty-blonde hair, which was not covered by a hat, despite there being eight on his bed.  He had faded jeans on his legs and bright-blue converse shoes on his feet, but what caught my attention was his jacket.  Denim sleeves were sewn onto a leather body with black-denim pockets and, at the back, a strip of denim patched the left and right sides together.  To make it even more interesting, the back had the word “Dancin’” written in big fabric letters in a sort of arch, like how a name would be written on a sports jersey, and where the number would’ve been on the back was a crescent moon with the letters S-S-T written across it.

   He saw me, and turned away from his closet, with the suit now hung in it, whipped off his shades with his left hand and offered me his right.  “You must be Jack.”

   I took his hand gingerly, which he shook firmly, and replied, with a quiver in my voice, “You must be Frank.”

   “I tend to be.”  He released my hand, which suddenly felt a tad clammy.  Frank looked me up and down for a second and then asked, “I don’t think the profile said: whereabouts are you from?”

   “P-P-Portland,”  I stuttered; something about this guy made me feel nervous: not worried, but more like I was talking to a celebrity, and I imagine it showed.  It was this nervousness that delayed my recollection of where I was.  “Portland, Maine.  The one that’s a five-hour flight east of here.”

   Frank smiled.  “Ah.  I’m from Portland.  Portland, Oregon.  The one a two-hour drive north of here.”  He paused briefly before looking quizzically over me again.  “It must be cold there, in Maine.”

   I was dumbfounded for a moment.  “Yeah, it is.”  How did he know that?

   He must have had the ability to read my mind, because he answered my question.  “You’re in shorts and a t-shirt, and you’re sweating quite a bit; it must be cold where you’re from if 70-degree Eugene is that hot to you.”  I was tempted to point out I hadn’t been sweating before I stepped inside the dorm room, but I kept it to myself and instead simply chuckled.

   I threw my suitcase onto the free bed, and then unceremoniously shoved it to the end, and jumped on the bed.  Mom had told me I’d meet all sorts of interesting people at college, but I admit, I’d had the expectation that it would be over the course of four years that I’d meet one or two; I hadn’t even moved in yet and here was, far and away, the most interesting person I’d ever met.

   I sat on the bed for a couple of minutes before I got up and noticed Frank had left.  Just as well, I needed to go get my ID and dorm key, so I headed along the hall, down the stair well, and out onto the path.  I hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps along the walk when a group of three guys in jeans and various letterman jackets heading the opposite direction to me started heckling me.  “Hey, ya little hipster fag!  Where ya think you goin’?”  My prescription glasses had gotten me this sort of attention for the last two years of high school, but knowing that no teacher or hallway monitor was going to stop these thugs from mugging me, I was just about terrified out of my pants.

   They were approaching me rapidly, and I could feel myself quivering and shrinking away, when some fourth voice called out, “Hey!  Leave the man alone, scumbags.”  The voice had a ferocity and power I’d never heard in a voice before; it may have come to my rescue, but it scared me, too.

   I turned away from my hecklers, who had stopped in their tracks, and saw Frank coming my way, his face set in a very fierce look, and I realized it had been him who had called out the guys in the letterman jackets.  He marched right past me, straight towards the three, who were now retreating, with the most threatening aura I had ever seen.  I followed him with my eyes: when he was ten feet in front of me, and the bullies had scampered off, he turned to face me, and all the aggression dissipated in the blink of an eye.  “Are you ok?”  I don’t think anyone had seemed more concerned about me in my life, spare my parents, who worried for my life when I got a paper-cut.

   “Yeah,”  I whispered.  I checked my watch again: 12:34.  I’d known this guy for five minutes, and I was all ready starting to fall in love with him, which was strange on so many levels.  Two things about that thought worried and confused me.  The first was how quick it was: I once spent three months trying to ask out one girl back home, and I wasn’t even sure I liked her that much.  The other was that I was a guy renowned for being “The gayest straight man you’d ever meet.” I didn’t even swing that way!  Did I?

   Well, whichever way I “swung,” this guy had my attention.  We both needed our ID cards (Frank had obviously gotten his dorm key first, but had decided the ID could wait), so we walked together and as we did, he started talking to me.  He told me about his friends up north, about his high school, and about the city of Portland, the one I hadn’t grown up in myself.  I heard everything he said, but I found myself lost in the energy he had, in the way he described it.  If one believed every word this guy was saying, they’d believe that he had left heaven behind to come here.

   As I listened, that confusing feeling in my head became clear; I didn’t want to be with him, I wanted to be him: it was envy.  Frank was confident, strong, and interesting: I had always been shy, invisible, and boring.

   This realization dragged my mind momentarily away from what Frank had been saying, but my attention snapped back and he was talking about this one friend of his.  “Trust me, if you ever meet her, she will be the most interesting person you ever meet.”

   Before I realized it, I allowed myself a small, two-word retort.  I probably shouldn’t’ve said it, but then again, why not?  I had, in the now six minutes since I’d met the man, decided he would be the best friend I’d ever had (seeing as I had never had brilliant friends before, and he’d already come to my rescue once today), and that earned honesty from me.  Would I meet someone else as interesting as this guy?

    “Not likely.” 
Next in my series of stories dedicated to my friends. This one focuses on a jacket a friend made for me.
© 2013 - 2024 BDancinJones
Comments3
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
GuinevereToGwen's avatar
This is amazing! Everything about this was great, the story, the characters, and the voice, especially the voice. It was so easy to read, probably one of the most comfortable things I've ever read on dA. (Does that make any sense?) I honestly don't have anything to say. I can't think of one bad thing. :P

I liked how you don't figure out until a few paragraphs down that they're in a dorm room. You get a sense of Frank before the sense of the setting, which was brilliant. I liked the watch, and how Jack is always looking at it.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a thank-you critique for having critiqued my essay, but it's unfortunately lacking in constructive criticism. But hey, praise is always nice, too. :P