Twosday: Second Choices
Tell us about your second choice.
Harold never intends to start a trend with the bird names, but on his second name he gets creative. There's one of his last remaining possessions on the table next to him, a birdwatching magazine he hasn't yet quite had the gall to get rid of, and on the front cover is a White-Throated Kingfisher. Halcyon smyrnensis.
It takes him a moment of idly wondering whether the link would be obvious, but in the end he does pen it in, surveying his grandiose handiwork with a smile. Perhaps he'll only need to keep this one for a while, or use it on special occasions. The throwback to a rather infamous source of intelligence is somewhat unintentional. Hal Cyon.
Who is he?
Harold - Hal - discovers who he is as he applies to a Californian university, picking his degree from a choice of subjects with practical elements he will be given access to. Hal doesn't have very much money, but he plucks scholarships with the same efficiency as he ingests reading material from his local library once the campus material begins to run low in his categories of interest. He's unusual, with his downgrade clothes and his quiet, evasive manner, but after a year of attendance and no sign of consequence for his first death over the horizon, he switches tack and allows himself to dip into parties. Hal King (for Cyon stays deep in his pockets, in amongst the tools and papers that he works where no one else ever sees) is too particular to whore himself out like the other boys, but he does garner a certain amount of attention and never lets it pass him by.
(The first time he goes 'all the way' with a girl - Natalie, Natalie Parks - he's alright with the kisses, and still mostly okay when she undoes her bra with one bony hand, but all the time after is full of wonder and a haze that sharpens his memory into breathing, heat and the touch of her long, dark hair against his cheek. She's on top, of course. That's when he starts to like that.)
His metamorphosis into a bird brings with it certain new challenges. For example, although the relocation from Michigan was only his first long journey, he finds himself pulled, ever year, by the desire to move elsewhere. He wouldn't go as far as to say migrate, but he's used to hard winters and hearing Stanford students complain about the temperatures he could only dream of back home wears on him a little.
In the spring, he flies east.
It's New York. A city he won't return to for another fifteen years. This is before the infestation begins, when cameras are few and far between. Thankfully. There's an exhibition on Ansel Adams at the Metropolitan which he goes to: Prints and Drawings Galleries, a series of contrasting experiments in black and white. Many are taken at Yosemite, back where he came from, and seem to evoke winter in a way that the bleak, wet Stanford months never had. Here: the break of white water over its dark underbelly; a black tree bitten by the rapids and dragging in their wake; Rushing Water, Merced River.
He gets on a Gray Line bus tour just because he can and listens to the guide rattle away names and dates while he scribbles on his newspaper. It's incomprehensible gibberish to anyone but him, a mix of potential monickers, markers, and half a preclusion against anybody talking to him. It doesn't work. Hal King is not as proficient as his predecessor was in keeping out of the reach of humanity - after all, he did get on the bus.
That's how he ends up getting an ice-cream in Central Park with a girl with long white legs and lipstick as red as HAL's eye. Their 'tour', as surprised as it makes him, turns out to cover the center of town and most of Broadway, all the way up to where New York turns green and sprouts benches. She sits him down on one next to the water and returns with two cones, and the next few hours are spent discussing art, which she knows rather a lot about, plus a debate over whether the rapid urban expansion going on around them is detrimental to the spirit of art as a whole.
He bluffs a lot. She doesn't seem to mind.
It's not about sex for Evelyn. When the sun dips below the treeline and she asks him whether he has a place to stay, he assumes that his - grateful - acceptance only has one real end, but she only smiles again and brings him back to a tiny apartment deep in the belly of Queens. There's art on the walls, but it's not framed, it just runs in little rivulets that join to make a face surrounded by wings - butterflies, he sees, when he looks closer. "Did you make this?"
"All of it," she admits, taking a swathe of clothing and tall paintbrushes from the couch and dumping it in the only other room. "I ran out of canvas, and that ain't cheap over here."
He reaches up, brushes a line so thick he can see the tracks of where bristles had been and turns his head. "Don't you ever sell any of this?"
"Hm?" Evelyn re-enters, bright busy eyes darting over the rest of the clutter, likely weighing up the necessity of having to move it while she carries on humoring him. "Nobody'd want it. I tried bringing a portfolio to a couple places, but they don't wanna hear from some two-bit yutz like me."
"Hey," he says, "It's their loss."
She looks at him, stops in the middle of what she's doing and tilts her head sideways like a bird's. Lacquered nails pin thin, battered sketches just before her chest, painted the same color as her lips - the ones quirking upward. "You're a kind of funny dude, aren't you?"
It's not as elaborate or as complex as he'd make it out to be, if it were down to himself. But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe Hal King isn't made out of structure and excessive reasoning as to who he's meant to be, where he should stay and busy himself, or what future he should lead. Maybe Hal is just for the people.
"Yeah," Hal replies, heading over to her couch. "I suppose I am."
Harold never intends to start a trend with the bird names, but on his second name he gets creative. There's one of his last remaining possessions on the table next to him, a birdwatching magazine he hasn't yet quite had the gall to get rid of, and on the front cover is a White-Throated Kingfisher. Halcyon smyrnensis.
It takes him a moment of idly wondering whether the link would be obvious, but in the end he does pen it in, surveying his grandiose handiwork with a smile. Perhaps he'll only need to keep this one for a while, or use it on special occasions. The throwback to a rather infamous source of intelligence is somewhat unintentional. Hal Cyon.
Who is he?
Harold - Hal - discovers who he is as he applies to a Californian university, picking his degree from a choice of subjects with practical elements he will be given access to. Hal doesn't have very much money, but he plucks scholarships with the same efficiency as he ingests reading material from his local library once the campus material begins to run low in his categories of interest. He's unusual, with his downgrade clothes and his quiet, evasive manner, but after a year of attendance and no sign of consequence for his first death over the horizon, he switches tack and allows himself to dip into parties. Hal King (for Cyon stays deep in his pockets, in amongst the tools and papers that he works where no one else ever sees) is too particular to whore himself out like the other boys, but he does garner a certain amount of attention and never lets it pass him by.
(The first time he goes 'all the way' with a girl - Natalie, Natalie Parks - he's alright with the kisses, and still mostly okay when she undoes her bra with one bony hand, but all the time after is full of wonder and a haze that sharpens his memory into breathing, heat and the touch of her long, dark hair against his cheek. She's on top, of course. That's when he starts to like that.)
His metamorphosis into a bird brings with it certain new challenges. For example, although the relocation from Michigan was only his first long journey, he finds himself pulled, ever year, by the desire to move elsewhere. He wouldn't go as far as to say migrate, but he's used to hard winters and hearing Stanford students complain about the temperatures he could only dream of back home wears on him a little.
In the spring, he flies east.
It's New York. A city he won't return to for another fifteen years. This is before the infestation begins, when cameras are few and far between. Thankfully. There's an exhibition on Ansel Adams at the Metropolitan which he goes to: Prints and Drawings Galleries, a series of contrasting experiments in black and white. Many are taken at Yosemite, back where he came from, and seem to evoke winter in a way that the bleak, wet Stanford months never had. Here: the break of white water over its dark underbelly; a black tree bitten by the rapids and dragging in their wake; Rushing Water, Merced River.
He gets on a Gray Line bus tour just because he can and listens to the guide rattle away names and dates while he scribbles on his newspaper. It's incomprehensible gibberish to anyone but him, a mix of potential monickers, markers, and half a preclusion against anybody talking to him. It doesn't work. Hal King is not as proficient as his predecessor was in keeping out of the reach of humanity - after all, he did get on the bus.
"My name's Evelyn," his seat-companion says, holding out her hand sideways to shake his in the small space allowed. "First time in the city?" (Harold/Hal nods.) She chews the end of her pencil, looks him dead in the eye with coal-ringed eyelashes and smiles. "You'll need a guide."
That's how he ends up getting an ice-cream in Central Park with a girl with long white legs and lipstick as red as HAL's eye. Their 'tour', as surprised as it makes him, turns out to cover the center of town and most of Broadway, all the way up to where New York turns green and sprouts benches. She sits him down on one next to the water and returns with two cones, and the next few hours are spent discussing art, which she knows rather a lot about, plus a debate over whether the rapid urban expansion going on around them is detrimental to the spirit of art as a whole.
He bluffs a lot. She doesn't seem to mind.
It's not about sex for Evelyn. When the sun dips below the treeline and she asks him whether he has a place to stay, he assumes that his - grateful - acceptance only has one real end, but she only smiles again and brings him back to a tiny apartment deep in the belly of Queens. There's art on the walls, but it's not framed, it just runs in little rivulets that join to make a face surrounded by wings - butterflies, he sees, when he looks closer. "Did you make this?"
"All of it," she admits, taking a swathe of clothing and tall paintbrushes from the couch and dumping it in the only other room. "I ran out of canvas, and that ain't cheap over here."
He reaches up, brushes a line so thick he can see the tracks of where bristles had been and turns his head. "Don't you ever sell any of this?"
"Hm?" Evelyn re-enters, bright busy eyes darting over the rest of the clutter, likely weighing up the necessity of having to move it while she carries on humoring him. "Nobody'd want it. I tried bringing a portfolio to a couple places, but they don't wanna hear from some two-bit yutz like me."
"Hey," he says, "It's their loss."
She looks at him, stops in the middle of what she's doing and tilts her head sideways like a bird's. Lacquered nails pin thin, battered sketches just before her chest, painted the same color as her lips - the ones quirking upward. "You're a kind of funny dude, aren't you?"
It's not as elaborate or as complex as he'd make it out to be, if it were down to himself. But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe Hal King isn't made out of structure and excessive reasoning as to who he's meant to be, where he should stay and busy himself, or what future he should lead. Maybe Hal is just for the people.
"Yeah," Hal replies, heading over to her couch. "I suppose I am."