| About the Author |
Palmer Owyoung is from the San Francisco Bay Area and currently resides in Singapore. Home and Monet are both excerpts from his forth coming novel Halcyon Daze, which will be available in paperback in March 2003. You can find out more or download a free e-book version by going to his website at www.palmerowyoung.com. You can contact Mr. Owyoung at powyoung@hotmail.com.
His second novel The Dominatrix
and the Hitman will be available
in the summer of 2003. |
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I lay in bed for hours. The room was still slightly out of focus. The party had gone late and I could never turn down another line of coke. No matter, I liked this room. It was filled with memories, and decorated with pieces of my soul. On the wall hung an oil painting that I’d done in college. It always reminded me of “Water Lilies” by Monet, but my ex-boyfriend said that it just looked like a bunch of splattered paint. That’s why he was my ex-boyfriend. Steve was kind of an asshole, a male model, most of which are either gay or assholes. He was always pissed off because GQ had turned him down. Besides, models always feel threatened if you can do something better than they can. Since their job is just to stand there and look pretty and aloof, they never really acquire any pliable job skills and don’t have a lot of self-worth, at least the ones that have been in the business for a long time.
In the corner stood a surfboard. I loved the way it looked standing against the wall next to my potted orchids. It reminded me of a tropical paradise. Unlike most of my friends, that had surfboards left at their homes by their ex-boyfriends, I did actually try to learn to ride it. Unfortunately I got whacked in the head with it and after that never went back. I thought it looked sexy though. Surfers are sexy.
On the other side of the room was an acoustic guitar, a Fender. I’d never learned to play that either, but thought that the color went well with the hardwood floors. I wanted to learn to play it, but since I do hand modeling I realized after I’d bought it that I couldn’t cut my nails to learn.
On the wall above my bed hung a black and white photograph of an old African couple sitting on a sidewalk with their legs up against their chests. Their faces are wrinkled and scrunched up as if the sun were in their eyes. They looked sad and tired as if they’d lived hard, difficult lives. My ex-boyfriend Tim, who was a professional photographer, gave it to me. He said that he’d taken it in Namibia, which is someplace in Southern Africa. He was a nice guy, but a loser of a boyfriend, because he had a small penis and bad breath. I liked the picture though, so I kept it. For some reason it reminded me of life, death and losing time.
It was 4 p.m. and I was supposed to meet a girlfriend down at Starbucks in the Marina at 4:30. I splashed cold water on my face and put on makeup to conceal the dark circles under my eyes. I put on some lipstick and grabbed my Prada bag and was out the door. Tricia was the name of the girl that I was meeting, and although she was a bit of a bitch she was still fun to party with. Another model, she always looked radiant and beautiful without even trying. Her skin was flawless and she wore little makeup when she wasn’t working.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said kissing her on both cheeks. Models always kiss on both cheeks. I ordered a latte with soymilk and low foam. The weather was gray and overcast, a typical San Francisco summer day.
“So how did your date with David go?” Tricia asked immediately.
“It was what I expected. I knew we’d go to dinner, I knew we’d go back to his place and fuck and I knew that I’d go down on him and that he’d cum in my mouth. Then we watched a video, Legends of the Fall; Brad Pitt was so cute with long hair. He’s got a Porsche, but it’s a just a Boxster.”
“A starter Porsche Danielle?”
“Yes I know, but he’s not really cute enough for me anyway.”
“It’s too bad, because I hear that he’s got a lot of money to spend.”
“I know, but part of me knows that Steve will come knocking at my door again.”
“When are you going to give him up?”
“I’m not sure that I ever will.” It was always the same conversation with Tricia, just a different guy each time. I’d tell her about mine then she’d tell me about hers, then we wouldn’t see each other for a month, sometimes two until there was another guy. The lunches were short, they were cathartic and the conversations were never very far-reaching or philosophical.
I went home and lay down naked on my bed. I loved the way my comforter felt against my bare skin. I slept some more, put cucumber slices over my eyes to reduce the puffiness and applied a clay mask to purify my pores. I was awakened by a knock on my door a few hours later. I got up, put on my bathrobe, looked out the peephole and there he was. I opened the door.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I said
“Danielle?” He said tentatively.
“What,” I said feigning disgust.
“Can we talk?”
“What is there to talk about?” I said with a loud abrasive sigh. God he looked good. He was obviously still working out and by the looks of it; he’d been someplace sunny recently. Probably surfing down in Mexico.
“Well, it’s just that I miss you.” His eyes were averted downward, like a little schoolboy who had gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He looked adorably cute and my heart melted.
We spent the afternoon and evening having hedonistic, primal, passionate, makeup sex, the best kind. He had the most beautiful body, tanned and athletic. His chest was nearly hairless and his arms were well defined but not bulky. He also had a perfect sized cock, impressive to look at it; it fit nicely in my hand and felt delicious inside me. It wasn’t too big and it definitely wasn’t too small. Our bodies, intertwined and meshed together, seemed perfectly fit for one another. The problem was that in addition to being one of the best looking guys I knew he was also one of the most self-absorbed. He knew that he was good looking, but he also had a sense that perhaps this was all that he had going for him, which also made him very insecure.
We awoke the next day around ten. The sun was high in the sky and people were going about their day. I rolled out of bed, taking the sheets with me. Annoyed, Steve pulled the comforter over himself. I did it purposely so that I could see his naked body draped over my bed like a captured prey that I’d just devoured.
I walked into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, I loved the way my skin looked after sex. It had that post-coital glow about it. It had something to do with increasing your blood circulation. I’d read about it once in Cosmo. I brushed my teeth to get rid of my morning breath, splashed some cold water on my face and got ready for round two.
Steve had turned the television on and was lying on his side. I peeked out the door so that I could get a look at his gorgeous naked body again before I jumped him. His stomach was a chiseled six-pack and his skin was dark and flawless.
I opened the bathroom door and tackled him. He caught me and rolled me over, pinning me on the other side of the bed. I raised my head to kiss him and could feel the sensation of butterflies in my stomach. It’d been so long since I’d had that feeling and I just wanted to enjoy it for as long as I could, but as our lips met the phone rang. I let it keep ringing and ringing and ringing. I was in an amorous embrace and wasn’t about to let anything interrupt. I heard the click of the answering machine and the frantic voice of my best friend Sharon on the line.
“Hi Danielle, this is Sharon, if you’re there pick up, please pick up!”
I reached over and picked up the receiver. “Hello Sharon, it’s me, what’s wrong, are you okay?”
I heard Steve sigh, that frustrated little boy tone of his. I ignored it.
“Sharon calm down,” I said. She explained to me that her boyfriend, Tom, had been drinking last night and had gotten into a car accident. She was speaking so quickly I could barely make out what she was saying. He was in the hospital and the police were involved.
Another loud sigh came from the edge of the bed. By this time Steve was sitting up and he’d pulled his boxers on. I knew those sighs. He hated not being the center of attention. I don’t think that he’d been breast fed as a child. I’d once read that kids that aren’t breast fed often feel starved for attention as adults. Maybe that’s why he spent so much time playing with my tits.
He stood up and began pulling his pants on.
“Where are you going?" I said holding my hand over the receiver as Sharon frantically babbled away.
“You obviously still don’t have enough time for me Danielle.”
“God Steve, you’re a guy! Isn’t that supposed to be my line? Wait, it’s an emergency, you don’t understand.”
“Yeah, yeah I’ve heard it all before!”
“You’re just pissed off because you got turned down by GQ!!” I screamed as he slammed the door behind him.
Sharon was still spewing nonsense into the phone and hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t listening for a moment. I drove over to her apartment where she frantically paced around the hardwood floors, which created a perpetual creaking noise. Her hands motioning rapidly, she frenetically recounted the story to me a second time. She was on her way back to the hospital to see him. When we arrived he had already been stitched up and taken down to the police station for questioning. So the two of us went down there and waited for 3 hours while they had him detained. She called her father who was a lawyer and he was on his way down.
I had a splitting headache from lack of sleep, I was irritable and felt guilty for wanting to leave Sharon, to go find Steve and fuck his brains out. Instead I went to the women’s bathroom to do a couple of lines of coke, so that I could stay with her and listen to her worried ranting, while we waited for her father. I was nothing if not a loyal friend.
Her father arrived and finally I went home to my one bedroom apartment, happy and sad to be alone again. I wanted to sleep, to let all of the tension, worries, and problems fall away into another world filled with visions of happiness, youth, and beauty. That’s what my world was supposed to be about. As a teenager I wanted to live inside of a black and white Calvin Klein Ad. I imagined a world with simple beauty where people exuded sexiness, glamour, charm and sophistication. Let my sister save the world, I told myself, I wanted to go into the fashion business. However, instead of finding wonderfully sophisticated people, going to exotic locations and lavish parties, I found myself with a bunch of live, self-serving mannequins that looked fabulous, but couldn’t see past their own vanity. Sometimes I felt so alone amidst this crowd of people, amongst my so-called friends.
I wanted desperately to fall asleep, but I was far too wired now because of the lines of coke that I’d just done. When I got home I turned on the TV and lay down in bed. The pillows, the sheets, they all still smelled of CK-One, Steve’s favorite cologne. The odor of it just made me feel sadder and lonelier. I went to the bathroom and found a couple of Valium and washed them down with a glass of bourbon.
The next morning I woke up late with a splitting headache and my body felt as if it had been hit by a train. I looked at the time and realized that it was almost 11:30. I’d already missed my first job and was going to be late for my second. My agent would be pissed as I’d already missed one a few weeks before.
I jumped out of bed, knocked the bourbon off of my nightstand and the glass shattered. I tried cleaning up the mess, but cut my hand on the broken shards. I watched thick, dark red droplets of blood fall from the open wound and land on the hardwood floor. I went to the bathroom and put my hand under cold running water. The blood, diluted with the water, created a pinkish fluid that just drained away. I saw my face in the mirror, with dark circles and red eyes. My hair was matted and my skin peaked. I felt so tired, so ugly. I wrapped my hand in gauze. I crawled back into bed, picked up the phone and dialed a number without looking.
“Hello,” she answered in a warm, calming tone.
“Hi, mother?”
“Yes?”
“It’s me Danielle, is it okay if I come home for a few days?”
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