Contributor: Alexander Ziperovich
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I went out for a smoke and there was a long, used syringe standing upright in the gravel inside the crowded dog park in front of my building. I went up to the gate and started yelling but the hundred barking dogs drowned me out. As I stood there shouting I watched a Doberman whose curiosity had been piqued by the shiny object walk up. The big dog stooped and sniffed around, tilting its head to the side in a final consideration before wandering off. Then a young, ebullient poodle came bounding up and greedily fastened its jaws down on the needle. The stunned dog stopped moving for a moment, its tail limp, before letting out a high-pitched scream. It staggered around wildly, blood pouring from its snout as the needle dangled from the roof of its gaping mouth before falling back down to the gravel.
That was the morning that preceded the night that I met Annie. I found this girl with blood-red hair at a bar in Capitol Hill and we ended up at this beautiful condo her parents had bought her up the block. We fucked everywhere, except on the little Juliet balcony; it was too small for two people. After we finished having sex she started with the Shakespeare shit.
“Michael, you’ve read Romeo and Juliet, right?” She was standing above me in this tiny silk negligée watching me pour scotch into a cut-glass tumbler from a crystal decanter. We had just finished fucking for the third time and little beads of sweat were drying on my naked body as I sat there at this beautifully polished mahogany table, my bare ass in her expensive leather chair and the glass of scotch in my hand.
“I hate Shakespeare.” I got into telling her how he wasn’t even real, how Shakespeare was just an amalgamation of peasant ghost writers who got fucked out of there writing bylines by a couple of greedy assholes from the nobility because they had this idea that you had to have blue blood to write in those days.
“But haven’t you read Romeo and Juliet? Don’t you think it would be divine to fall so madly in love that you would rather die than be without your lover?” This strange, yearning came through her voice. “No,” I carefully said, “I think it’s melodramatic bullshit.”
“I think it’s the most pure expression of love in the world.” She gazed out her fifth story window at the lights of the city below. I shuddered, thinking, “Death is the most beautiful expression of love?” I had another drink and left.
I saw Annie from time to time around town and we even fucked again, at my place. The same thing happened, too. We were in my bed sharing a cigarette after some particularly loveless sex. “God,” She started, “Romeo and Juliet really are the epitome of love,” She stared up dreamily watching the tendrils of smoke curl up into the ceiling. “They are love.” She said it breathlessly, the corners of her mouth tipped up like little hooks as she sat there with her eyes closed, opiated with the idea. I just sat there saying nothing.
Some months went by and I started seeing her with this guy I knew, Ryan, this depressed artist kid with perpetual circles under his eyes. He walked around with her with those big black circles under his eyes looking vacant all the time and every time I saw them they were together and it was like she was hard at work casting a spell on him. She’d be talking up at him as he sort of stood there swaying, just taking it all in looking hypnotized. She was clearly moving something around inside of him.
I was walking down the street where she lived one night and it was a scene, ambulances and cop cars, even a fire truck. There were paramedics and firefighters and cops everywhere, standing around a large mass under a sheet. I said to myself, “Fuck, she did it. They killed themselves. They jumped.”
That’s when I saw her sitting on a curb across the street with one of those white blankets you see medics give people after they’re rescued from fires or car accidents draped over her shoulders. She sat there alone on the curb silently staring up into space. I asked her what happened and she slowly shook her head at me as if awakening from some private reverie and looked at me and said, “Love. Love happened.” Then she yawned.
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Alexander Ziperovich is a writer living in Seattle with his girlfriend Soph. He paints for fun and even sells art once in awhile, but his first love is the written word. Find more of him at www.everythingsings.org.
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I went out for a smoke and there was a long, used syringe standing upright in the gravel inside the crowded dog park in front of my building. I went up to the gate and started yelling but the hundred barking dogs drowned me out. As I stood there shouting I watched a Doberman whose curiosity had been piqued by the shiny object walk up. The big dog stooped and sniffed around, tilting its head to the side in a final consideration before wandering off. Then a young, ebullient poodle came bounding up and greedily fastened its jaws down on the needle. The stunned dog stopped moving for a moment, its tail limp, before letting out a high-pitched scream. It staggered around wildly, blood pouring from its snout as the needle dangled from the roof of its gaping mouth before falling back down to the gravel.
That was the morning that preceded the night that I met Annie. I found this girl with blood-red hair at a bar in Capitol Hill and we ended up at this beautiful condo her parents had bought her up the block. We fucked everywhere, except on the little Juliet balcony; it was too small for two people. After we finished having sex she started with the Shakespeare shit.
“Michael, you’ve read Romeo and Juliet, right?” She was standing above me in this tiny silk negligée watching me pour scotch into a cut-glass tumbler from a crystal decanter. We had just finished fucking for the third time and little beads of sweat were drying on my naked body as I sat there at this beautifully polished mahogany table, my bare ass in her expensive leather chair and the glass of scotch in my hand.
“I hate Shakespeare.” I got into telling her how he wasn’t even real, how Shakespeare was just an amalgamation of peasant ghost writers who got fucked out of there writing bylines by a couple of greedy assholes from the nobility because they had this idea that you had to have blue blood to write in those days.
“But haven’t you read Romeo and Juliet? Don’t you think it would be divine to fall so madly in love that you would rather die than be without your lover?” This strange, yearning came through her voice. “No,” I carefully said, “I think it’s melodramatic bullshit.”
“I think it’s the most pure expression of love in the world.” She gazed out her fifth story window at the lights of the city below. I shuddered, thinking, “Death is the most beautiful expression of love?” I had another drink and left.
I saw Annie from time to time around town and we even fucked again, at my place. The same thing happened, too. We were in my bed sharing a cigarette after some particularly loveless sex. “God,” She started, “Romeo and Juliet really are the epitome of love,” She stared up dreamily watching the tendrils of smoke curl up into the ceiling. “They are love.” She said it breathlessly, the corners of her mouth tipped up like little hooks as she sat there with her eyes closed, opiated with the idea. I just sat there saying nothing.
Some months went by and I started seeing her with this guy I knew, Ryan, this depressed artist kid with perpetual circles under his eyes. He walked around with her with those big black circles under his eyes looking vacant all the time and every time I saw them they were together and it was like she was hard at work casting a spell on him. She’d be talking up at him as he sort of stood there swaying, just taking it all in looking hypnotized. She was clearly moving something around inside of him.
I was walking down the street where she lived one night and it was a scene, ambulances and cop cars, even a fire truck. There were paramedics and firefighters and cops everywhere, standing around a large mass under a sheet. I said to myself, “Fuck, she did it. They killed themselves. They jumped.”
That’s when I saw her sitting on a curb across the street with one of those white blankets you see medics give people after they’re rescued from fires or car accidents draped over her shoulders. She sat there alone on the curb silently staring up into space. I asked her what happened and she slowly shook her head at me as if awakening from some private reverie and looked at me and said, “Love. Love happened.” Then she yawned.
- - -
Alexander Ziperovich is a writer living in Seattle with his girlfriend Soph. He paints for fun and even sells art once in awhile, but his first love is the written word. Find more of him at www.everythingsings.org.
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Alexander Ziperovich
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