Finger painted nuance

My hair was red.

It was the colour of a Coca Cola drink can.

Two days before it had been yellow. Bright canary yellow.

I was sitting on the floor, with my legs crossed and my mind reeling.

He was playing electric guitar. His hair was long and occasionally strands of sweat soaked hair would fall across his face. I knew he was looking at me through it.

Soon he became more obvious.

My friend elbowed me in the side.

He likes you.

He likes me.

I was a little embarrassed and anxious because I’d hardly slept for the last three nights. I had been camping out at a music festival where the base was heavy and fluorescent jungle animals hung from trees.

My eyes felt like they were now hanging from my head.

The hard, heavy rock music was a contrast to the music that had been flowing through my veins over the weekend. The acid rhythm intertwined with my flared brown vintage trousers and got caught up in my vans sneakers. The hard rock music confused me a little and I wished I were at home, recovering and listening to some more favourable and ear friendly tunes.

I looked around the room.

Most people were wearing black t shirts.

I sat up straighter.

I reached up and touched the two top knots in my red hair.

I wished it were daylight and I could hide behind my dark sunglasses.

He looked long and directly into my eyes.

He smiled.

I looked away.

I looked back.

I smiled.

My friend poked me in the side again.

I rolled my eyes.

I wondered if everyone in the room knew that he was flirting with me. I felt both special and embarrassed.

The gig finished and we talked and exchanged phone numbers but we didn’t kiss.

I didn’t want him to taste the acid or the fluorescent animals.

Over time, he visited my house and sat on the couch playing his guitar or banging annoyingly on everything whilst he pretended he was a drummer.

I didn’t want to date a drummer.

But I liked him.

He was sexy and creative.

We had sex but it was never as exciting as I’d experienced it before and his shy, introverted off-stage persona wasn’t as exciting as his extraverted on-stage one.

At first, his eccentric and unique characteristics enticed me. Eventually I found those nuances to be annoying.

He wore a t shirt on stage once. It was mine and he ripped it up a little and finger painted “SEX” across the front and back in blood red paint.

He made the t shirt look like a victim of crime and I felt embarrassed and paranoid.

He sang a song about colouring his world red and I knew that he wrote that song after the first night of meeting me. He always said that he’d liked my bright red hair. I didn’t know this soon enough though because I coloured it purple. He never sang any songs about purple.

Our sex was an issue because I was young and wild and wanted more than he could give. He was awkward and deep and far too serious and blamed me for being too forward. I lacked patience. He lacked drive.

Over time, we found new interests and he sang for someone else whilst I chose a new hair colour.

He almost killed me once. He was driving too fast in his old Renault and a car pulled out of a side street whilst the drumming guitarist skidded along the road outside of a cemetery. He looked at me and laughed and said he had it completely under control but I didn’t think he was funny and the cemetery looked on as if it were one big fat omen.

I knew that was a sign and I screamed at him and became far too emotional and he looked at me like I was a lunatic and I looked at him as a bad driver.

It was never the same again.

My next boyfriend didn’t drive.

Or play drums or electric guitar.

He cooked and spun records and asked me if I needed anything at the shop and accidently knocked things off the mantel piece because he was nervous. I knew I loved him from the moment I met him.

I had blonde hair when I met him.

It’s brown now, just like his.

© ari

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Tags:

ari, blonde, brown, purple, red and yellow