Jot Down

Felix was guzzling red wine nonstop. He was sitting on a gainsboro Camelot plastic chair, the kind of cheap, plastic chairs used in cheap, plastic events fiddling absentmindedly with his necktie.

He was staring at an ocean of wild arms, swinging madly at the beat of an insipid, uninspired keyboard-driven South Korean electropop song. It was his college graduation party.

 I shouldn't be here, Felix kept thinking. I thought I should, but I shouldn't. It would have been rude to reject those tickets, but still...

His friends were somewhere out there amidst the tide, screaming, laughing, losing their individual aspects and gaining a blunt consciousness in return. A hollow personality which in that precise moment really appeared to make certain things easier. For a split second, Felix secretly wished he could experience the void -the thrill of the freefall, no thought gravity.

He had stopped smoking exactly nineteen days ago but right there he could really have used a cigarette. He thought about going outside and asking some random individual for a smoke, but immediately erased the idea of his mind, switching to his previous dilemma.

Everyone seems to be having a nice time. Why can't I? I mean, they're all celebrating with their families, that could be one of the reasons. But still, even though mom and grandpa and grandma weren't such intolerant, class conscious people, I wouldn't be comfortable. It would've felt kind of fake. Like a staged scene. Sure, it looks pretty but what's underneath? What's behind all the fancy wooden scenery? Maybe nothing but a dusty corner.

He then thought of Lina. She had left only 45 minutes ago, but felt already like an eternity. They had argued right before the waiters brought the first dish -a steamy, mushroom soup with a sprig of parsley which emitted a strong cheese-like aroma. The discussion had heated up by the time the main dish -spaghetti and lamb steak- arrived. Lina commented she actually didn't want to come to the party. Felix thought about the irony of it all, and grinned. All the petty, trifling details about how the argument rose to colossal proportions seemed so distant now. He wished the opposite of Pink Floyd's masterpiece. He wished Lina weren't here (there) but in bed, sleeping, resting. It had been a rough day for both of them. 

He got up of the gainsboro Camelot plastic chair and rushed for his jacket, which hanged in a lonely chair on a surrounding table. Felix looked for a pen and paper. He felt like writing. He felt like saying I'm sorry.

When Felix could not obtain somewhere to write, he reached for the inside pocket of his suit, looking for his cell phone but found a pair of rectangular, sharp, paper objects instead. He pulled the party tickets out and examined them closely. A long pause emerged from the encounter. Felix remained stood up quietly for what seemed awkwardly enough and finally took out his ballpoint pen, scribbled on the reverse of the tickets, put on his jacket and exited the ballroom into the darkness of the hazy night.

Meanwhile on the dancefloor the music was blasting louder than ever. A sudden flash of multi-color lights attacked the audience mid-song. There were cheerings and laughter everywhere. The young danced on and on and on.

Hours earlier at the theater, Sally, Felix's fifteen-year old sister would have asked, minutes before the play started.

-Do you mind if I keep the tickets? I like keeping the tickets of every cool event I go to; concerts, movies, football matches, I even got some bus tickets.-

-Sure. You know, I do that too. I've got tons of movie tickets, even from crappy movies.-

-Yeah, but I prefer these ones. Movie tickets kinda suck 'cause their ink fades off real quickly. Sometimes you look at them and can't see anything. You can't even remember which movie you went to in the first place.