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Man Talk: Part 3

Two filmmakers struggle with their masculinity, friendship, and ethnic identity.

By Sharisse ZeroonianPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
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(Continued from Part 2)

“I would never.” David declared, though he gulped as he did.

“I still would.” Paul said, admiring her. Apparently, the wind carried Paul’s voice pretty far, because she got up and began walking towards them.

“Would you, Paul?” She challenged Paul coolly, looking him in the eye.

“Don’t know.” Paul teased. “I don’t think you’re kosher.”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you kosher?”

“I must be, cause I don’t go for pigs.”

“Oh!” Paul seemed genuinely caught off-guard, and David laughed out loud. The girl clearly found her own joke funny as well, because she also cracked a grin, and what a grin it was - even if it was sardonic.

“I’m gonna go hit the bathroom.” Paul got up and clapped David on the shoulder on his way out. When he left, David turned to Nazeli, shaking his head.

“He doesn’t really need to go.”

“I figured.” She shrugged, and to his surprise, extended her hand to him.

“Nazeli.” She said, while giving him a firm handshake.

“Nice to meet you.” He said shyly, and being the socially obtuse kid he was, retracted his hand but then put it back out again to introduce himself.

“I’m David. Friend of Paul’s.”

“Glad to know you, David.” She shook his hand again, and could tell by her eyes that she meant it. David was pleasantly surprised but wary; he couldn’t think of many people - especially in their bubble - who were glad to know him.

“Uh, right.” He said brusquely, let go of her hand, and went back to trying to use the lighter. He knew she meant no harm, but her watching him struggle with what he felt should be a fairly basic task made him feel even more awkward.

“Need any help?” She finally asked.

“Does it look like I need help?” He snapped, slightly rattled at the implication.

“Yeah, it kinda does.”

“Well, I don’t.” He went on pressing the trigger in vain. When nothing happened, he reluctantly handed the troublesome tool over to her and let her successfully do what he had been trying to do for half an hour. Finally, the lighter birthed a few flames on top of the charcoal lumps.

“Huh.” He backed away from the humming fire. She stood in front of him, waiting for what one usually receives after doing someone a favor. But instead, David cleared his throat and took the lighter from her.

“I could have done that myself.” He grunted, sounding unusually uptight.

Nazeli flipped her mane over her shoulder, and an idea crossed her face. She picked up a stick and wrote a string of numbers into the wet sand.

“Call me when you do.” She winked, and cat-walked away. The tide was getting higher, and fearing the waves would claim the digits, David looked behind him to where all his belongings lay and grabbed his script-writing notebook and pen. He managed to get the whole number down before it washed away, and he almost felt pathetic to be as glad as he was to have it. Paul wouldn’t have been this excited; he collected phone numbers like stamps, but also like one collects stamps, he closed the book as soon as he got what he wanted from them. Many girls preferred to keep their encounters with him a secret, but Paul boasted about them, mostly just to their small group of mutual friends.

“Prom season is upon us.” Their friend Rachel, a girl with a long bob haircut that perfectly framed her full, freckled cheeks, announced during lunch one Friday afternoon their senior year.

“That’s right.” Paul scanned the table looking for someone to put on the spot. “You have a date yet, Josh?”

“Not yet.” Josh, a junior with long dreadlocks and clear glasses that ate up half of his face, took a sip of milk. “But I’m thinking of asking Aria.”

“The one in our grade? Band geek? Good luck.” Paul snorted.

“Good luck with what?”

“Getting her to put out.” Paul answered, with an air of wisdom that David envied.

“Yeah, good luck getting her to put out.” He parroted his friend, and looked at him for approval. He barely knew Aria, and no one had ever “put out” for him, but just echoing Paul gave him a sense of baby fortitude, like he felt when he channeled Sean Connery.

“That’s not my goal.”

“Sure it isn’t.”

“No.” Josh said firmly. “It isn’t.”

“She sure is cold.” David heard himself say, and suddenly all eyes were on him, X-raying his frame for truth.

“Do you know that?” Josh asked, and David panicked, trying to crawl out of the hole had dug himself.

“I mean...uh,.....she just seems, uh…..all I know is that she probably wouldn’t go with me.”

“Not with that attitude, I’m sure.”

“She might.” Paul bit into an onion ring. “If you’re both hungry enough, you’ll eat.”

“I’d rather starve.” Rachel made a face, and tucked into her second slice of pizza.

“Go for it.” Paul nodded towards her tray. “Might do you some good.”

After muttering a few phrases that can’t be said in school, Rachel stormed off. While Josh had his back turned to watch her go, Paul held up his hand to David as an invitation to high-five. For a split second, David could do nothing but stare. If there was something to be congratulated for, he didn’t see it. Still, he gave in, feeling his stomach twist and turn. In his pocket, his phone cried for attention, and he knew exactly who was making it buzz. He tried to make a graceful exit, but it was his turn to be mischievously grilled by Paul.

“What about you? Who are you going with?”

“Uhhhh...no one…..here.” David muttered, trying to muffle the incessant buzzing with his sweaty hand.

“Someone from a different school?” Josh asked. “We’re allowed to do that, right? Or not?”

“I think we are.” Paul replied. While his two friends launched into a debate over prom rules, David excused himself to read the message outside by the bathrooms.

“What happened yesterday?” Her message read. What had happened was that David and Nazeli - who by this point considered themselves in the “talking” stage, but wanted to move into deeper waters - had gone to Nazeli’s house the day before “to do homework and watch a movie” - a plan that rarely goes as intended for most hormone-crazed young people. They were huddled together on the couch with the television whispering, laying on each other in that hazy dream of an afternoon. But he could just hear Paul berating him in his head.

"You wanna do more than just hit it and quit it? You want to dive in? Trust me, brother, she wouldn’t blink if you dropped dead right in front of her. None of them would. 007 never slept with the enemy and neither should you. A man always sticks to his guns."

If a man’s job was to stick to his guns, David vowed to superglue himself to them. He disengaged himself from their embrace and began to pack up his books and laptop.

“What are you doing?”

“I gotta go home and work.”

“But you can work here.”

“I’ll call you later.” He muttered, knowing full well he wouldn’t. When he saw how hurt she looked, he ran out to his car, and put the key in ignition, shaking the whole time. He reclined in his seat, imagining a much older David who could relax enough to own his endorphins and smash totem poles into oblivion. Well, much older David was here now, staring blankly at Miami Beach, agonizing over bygones. They only contacted each other sporadically after that, and the chasm between them grew when Nazeli moved across the Atlantic for college and she became nothing more than a blip on his social media. The few times he did see her in-person, which was only at church when someone in The Circle got married or passed away - yielded nothing more than polite chit-chat about work (him, saving his money: her, saving the world). The last time he had talked to her was over email after Paul had sent out a private online link to “After School” before it hit the festival circuit.

“Loved it!” She had written, and then added, “The editing kind of sucked, though. Wonder who did it? ;)”. She punctuated her joke with a wink, and he chuckled, knowing that this was her strange way of flirting.

“Yeah, hmm…..I wonder.” David wrote back. “It was pretty hard to do. So many wasted takes that didn’t fit Gary Marshall’s vision.” That last sentence gave him particular satisfaction to type, as it was a jab at Paul.

“That’s not what Paul said.” She winked, and that raised David’s eyebrows. He took a moment to gather himself, and then typed.

“When did you guys talk?” He wrote furiously, then added, “Lol” to soften the message.

“A while ago.”

“What’s a while ago?” David pressed her, and stiffened in his chair waiting for her response. When she didn’t give him one right away, he asked, “What did you guys talk about?”

“Not much.”

“Not much? :)” He tried to coax her with an e-smile. “Classified info?”

“The Desmond character is so funny! Kind of like you back in the day :)” She changed the subject, at which point David gave up. Though she punctuated her comment with a smiley face, he couldn’t help but wonder if she really meant what she said. It didn’t take a film critic to know that Desmond - the female lead’s hard-hearted ex-boyfriend - was the biggest jerk in the movie. But didn’t she know that what she saw on screen was nothing more than an illusion? That a glacier held nothing beneath its surface? That he needed something he was too scared to put into words?

“Ha. When? ” He typed out, afraid of the answer......

(To be continued)

friendship
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About the Creator

Sharisse Zeroonian

Writer/Filmmaker/TV Producer/Long-Suffering Teacher/Potential Grad Student

"but all my words come back to me, in shades of mediocrity"

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