girl.

I know this girl.

I wanna tell you about her.

I've never seen her with my eyes, or heard her voice, or touched even a hair on her head.

But I know her.

She lives up in my head. I thought her up, I suppose, but that doesn't mean I own her or even understand her. She grew out of a random lustful fantasy. She grew out of a stereotype. Dominatrix, almost. But not quite. Not the kind you see on TV and hear on 1-900 numbers. Cooler. Reserved. Vicious and perfect.

She's got burgundy hair, you see. This dark, dark burgundy, darker than blood, dark as wine. Streaked with crimson highlights. Worn straight, parted in the middle, cut short in the back, falling loose to an inch, two inches, below the chin at the front.

Maybe it falls forward into her eyes sometimes. Like a curtain of beads. I don't know what color her eyes are.

I know her, though.

She's got the body of a cat, a weasel. Sleek. Lithe. She can shoot a fly off a cow's ass from thirty yards away; she can snap the flame off a candle with a whip. She can use her own body like a whip.

She wears leather. Black leather. And when we make love--but we never really do--she's the one in control.

That's how she started out. That was all. A framework, a snapshot, a coin with just one side.

That's not how she stayed.

Lemme tell you about this girl I know...

Here's the weird part. She doesn't fit in with anyone I've really known and loved, you know. She's not someone I'd have a real relationship with. She's too different. She wouldn't fit in my life. In fact, the only thing she's congruent with...

...is everything else I dream about.

So this is what I figured. She's not a stereotype. Maybe she's an archetype. I'm not too sure what that means. But what I do know--she's an embodiment of the random things my brain cooks up when I'm up too late. Worlds with three moons and a dying red sun. Rivers that flow upstream. But it's not as if these things were somehow in her. It's like, she's in them. She's the core, the spirit. She's somehow all the things I'm not, and yet created by something in my own head. A summation, a distillation, of all I imagine. Or the root of all that I imagine.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

I wanna show you this girl...

This is something that came to me a little earlier, while I was talking online. And I don't know if I can top the first telling, so I'll just tell it the way it was told, the first time around.

And this is how it goes:

picture some little town in the southwest

arizona, new mexico. somewhere like that.

hot as hell.

dustdevils and tumbleweeds.

i'm driving out of the east. i'm driving straight into the sun.

air conditioning's broken in my car.

and i'm getting sick of my cds, getting sick of the road. i'm sweaty, windblown, there's dust everywhere in my car. i need a shower. i need a bed, actually, because it's late afternoon and i've been driving all day and i'm tired--of the road, of driving, just plain old tired.

i run out of gas

long straight road

mirage makes it seems to split and waver and float above itself, far down the road

the sun's setting the horizon on fire

there's a single little gas station

dirty as the rest of this world

old.

gas pumps are 1970s or so, big huge numbers, unattractive.

the windows are cloudy with dirt.

the storekeeper's unshaven, in a wifebeater and worn jeans, has a cigarette and a nasty attitude

takes my money and gives me a suspicious glare

me, i could care less. i just want some gas and a stinkin' motel-6

there's an overhead fan inside, and some food and drinks. i take a turn, decide i'm better off not eating anything that's got dust on it

flies are buzzing

i go back out

i open the gas door and start pumping gas, but i do it slowly, kinda lethargic, because the sooner i finish the sooner i hafta keep driving. but then it's not like i wanna stay here, either.

gas starts going, really, really slow.

i try to sit on the hood but it's too friggin' hot

so i sit on the back, which is also hot, but not as bad.

and so i'm there. weary and dusty and hot and squinting down the road the way i came, trying to tell myself dammit, i came a long way already, not much further to go, gotta be a motel around here somewhere

and then i notice this flickering on the road. like a sun off a mirror.

and there's been nothing, absolutely nothing, on the road thus far, so this catches my attention

i watch it.

it gets closer. a little bigger. it's the sun gleaming off a windshield.

i have nothing better to do, and anyway i'm getting a little interested. so i keep watching. and it gets closer.

it's one of those big american sportsters from the 60s. mustang, firebird, something before the world decided to make sleek-looking cars. this one's just classic. and it's not one of those museum pieces, not one of those gleaming perfect ones that some middle-aged upper-middle class man has in his driveway to remind him of the youth he never had. this one's real; it's seen use. it's dusty and roadbeaten, dented.

convertible? i don't know. no, actually...or if it is, the top is up.

so i can't see anything except the sunlight flashing off the windshield until it's very close

and then it passes, not tearing down the road, but not going slow either. just cruising.

and there's my burgundy-haired girl inside...

one wrist on the wheel

the other elbow resting out the window, the fingers splayed on the cusp of the door

and i'm squinting to get a better look, and she doesn't see me at first. i don't know if she has music going; maybe she does, but she's too cool to move to it.

she kinda glances over, then

this lazy, unaffected sideglance, like she couldn't care less if she was looking at a tumbleweed.

and her lashes are long, low, swept low because her eyes are narrowed against the searing light--not quite squinting, but almost

it's a glance that inadvertently smoulders. sets fires. and then she's passing, and i don't know if this is my imagination, or if it really happened, but i could swear, just swear, that right before she looked back at the road--still unaffected--her lips (and we all know whose lips they look like...) twitched a little, like they were considering smiling, but didn't deem the cause worthy of it.

and then she's past the gas station and still cruising down that road in her car, and i'm just watching, just staring, until she's a dot on the road, and then gone, flinging up a trail of slow-settling dust behind her.

...I know this girl.

She's not someone you ever forget.