In Her Own Words

The day I met Cori, Nat, and Justin, it was torrential downpour outside. The clouds were ominous, scattering glops of water on the thick pavement and dreary buildings. I was, as always, perched upon my armchair at my favorite local coffee house. I was scribbling notes furiously in my leather bound notebook with a cigarette, the smoke curling, hanging out of my mouth. I noticed the three of them right away. I noticed them because they came in and they weren’t regulars. Laughing loudly, they were, it seemed, actually enjoying life. Disgusting. They looked around the place with these hungry eyes. Much to my horror they passed the ordering counter and headed towards the back of the place. Right to me. Scowling, I gave them all a piercing glare but it was to no avail. The boy with the black hair came right up to me. Right up into my face. He smelled like pot and his eyes gleamed in the darkened room.

“Hey there sugar. I’m Nat and this here is Justin and Cori. May we join you?”

I told him no and looked back down at my notebook. It was like brushing off a fly, really.

“No seriously, can we sit down?”

I told them, once again, that seriously, no, they couldn’t. But they did anyway. All three of them. These people didn’t belong here. They weren’t tortured or weary of the world and its ways. These people just sucked.

The girl, Cori, had long brown hair, full of bouncing curls. The boy, Justin, had shorter, blonde hair. The two of them sat down next to me. I then realized that all three of them were high. Higher then the damn vaulted ceilings. I had forgotten that anyone even smoked pot anymore. I, myself, had moved onto an eclectic cocktail of drugs. Ones they probably hadn’t even heard of. They seemed like the types to actually “drop acid” or “trip on shrooms”. Slowly but surely I felt like I was in the 10th grade again, at some rich kid’s house on the outskirts of town.

All at once, they started babbling about this and that, introducing themselves again and again.
The Cori girl kept grabbing my hand, holding it to her cheek, and then dropping it. They began talking about some project, some project they were recruiting for. All of them agreed that I looked like a perfect addition to the comedy troupe. Comedy troupe? Pretentious. Goddamn pretentious people. But I sort of liked pretentious people.

After 13 cups of coffee between the four of us, I was so drunk off the caffeine, that I pursued their offer. My voice was rambling and every effort at which to stop myself, failed miserably. Stuttering and tripping over my own words I discussed plans to write for the comedy troupe, to even co-star in some of the short films. Inside of me was this growing matter, this…this THING. And I was trying to stop. This matter could just see myself from the outside, could see the laughter that bubbled from the depths of my chest and the smile plastered on my face. And it was disgusted, I was disgusted. But this caffeine, it racked my brain. It fueled me on. Nat, Cori, and Justin, their bodies and heads, their huge heads just bobbing up and down, coming at me from all directions, bombarding my soul with ideas and plans and jokes, jokes, jokes.

Breathe.

I called a couple days later. I go on with this project. Not because I want to. But because everyday, after 13 cups of coffee, I am able to sit down and interact with these…conformist bastards. Cori, Nat, Justin, and I, we collaborate. We create. We create this matter that’s inside of all of us and helps us plaster smiles on hundreds, thousands, millions of faces.

Liz Jackson, the Legend.

a fond reminiscing by nat j. gruca

The day Liz Jackson walked into my life will be a day I will not soon forget. Actually, she more rode into it from the back of a limousine, but I guess those sorts of details are generalized for a reason. It was a fair Autumn afternoon, the same as most that week, and I was standing at the corner of a street, awaiting the bus that was already fifteen minutes late.

I was a newcomer to Iowa, only having just rented a small hole-in-the-wall that my rather hirsute landlord assured me was, in fact, a legally-recognized residential apartment. I had come to the cornfields of Iowa in search for what any young hopeful in my shoes comes to the cornfields of Iowa for—to make something of myself. In my case, I was the bright-eyed individual who truly believed his skills as an actor would assuredly promise a shoo-in for any major motion picture I wanted.

So, there I was, with my homemade headshot and rather meager resume, consisting of a handful of community theater jaunts and high school productions, quite laughable now, as I look back at my blissfully ignorant self. But, if anyone were to “make it big” anywhere, Iowa was the place to start. I was to take the bus downtown, to the vainglorious streets and streets of eagerly throbbing talent agencies. Little did I know that one of the biggest-wiggestesetest of them all would come to me.

The sleek black vehicle came screeching to a halt, the back window, tinted into oblivion, sliding down with a gentle whirring. The sheet of reflective glass slowly gave way to a face, radiating pure energy and emanating a suave swagger, all at the same time. Her cold, steely blue eyes shot back at me, an inquisitive eyebrow raising more for dramatic effect than to inform the onlooker of confusion. Liz Jackson never dealt with confusion. To her, it was a fashion craze that had ended with the prehistoric times.

“Hey!” she belted out in a crystal-clear tone, snapping her flawless fingers in my direction.

I looked at her and pointed at myself, using the dated look of puzzlement that she so disdainfully rejected from her own life.

“Yeah, you, bub. C’mere and show me that pretty little head of yours.”

It was not so much a command as a figurative getting-out-of-the-car-and-dragging-my-body-closer-to-her-window. I obeyed and with lightning fast reflexes she snatched a handful of my hair into her nimble hand. As if meticulously inspecting for any sort of creature living within the chosen selection, she took only a few seconds in making up her mind. Liz Jackson hated wasting time as if it were wasting the caviar-infused champagne she drank like water. She made her decisions on gut instinct, and if it was one thing everyone in Iowa knew, it was that Liz Jackson’s gut instincts were not to be opposed.

Releasing my hair, I staggered back, as she pointed another one of her streamlined fingers at me in a poetic motion. A wide, knowing smile that somehow promised everything all at once surfaced on her tanned and picture-perfect face.

“Your hair,” she stated simply, with so much vigor that she sounded bored from mastering the effect long ago, “Kid, I can do wonders with your hair.”

And it was as simple as that. Only a few moments later, I was seated in the vast and luxurious interiors of her personal limo, signing papers being thrusted toward me, and within the hour, my talent was at her disposal. After I was let off at one of her many studio lots with directions to the best coiffeur the Midwest had to offer, I regarded that moment in the limousine to be the last encounter I ever had with the legend that is Liz Jackson.