Old Random Stuff

Ollie’s Occurences – Transparent Lady

Written by Me

When someone enters college, it’s likely that they’d expect themselves to be moulded into a character that is fit to be employed in society to some degree. It is also said that during this period of time in a person’s life is where they find out who they really are. None of these stipulations hold true for me. After graduating, I entered a non-descript blue collar job, wholly unrelated to my college degree and the only thing I ever found out about myself was that I truly and completely love beer. The latter fact is what brings me to this story.

I was seated in one of my favourite watering holes on a slow night. There may be those of you who think that it’s sad that I was alone but the reality is that I wasn’t really alone. There were three other customers so technically I was in the company of others. If you think that me trying reason that I was not literally alone is sadder, I encourage you to shift your perspective a little as I have, but I am beginning to stray from the point.

I sat alone at one of those tables meant for groups. You know those ones with leather upholstery. I don’t what they call those kinds of seats and I doubt that you would know what they are called as well but as long as you can imagine what kind of set up I’m describing, then it really wouldn’t matter anyway. I could call it “The 5:30 express” all I want and even though it would be erroneous to do so. If you associate these words with the image I just described, then it would be fine, you would know what I was referring to. In fact, in future when referring to the set up (the leather upholstered seats), I will use the term “The 5:30 express”. Pardon my intrusion, but I am again straying from the point. 

Again, I was seated in the 5:30 express while in the company of others who were practicing social distancing. Sulking, as it so happened, about my past failures. A hobby common amongst people in their mid to late life times. Suddenly, a woman around the age group I just mentioned sat opposite me in the 5:30 express. At first I thought I was lucky that a woman would choose to sit with me in an almost empty bar, (Well, the bar was technically almost to capacity if you considered that people there that night were on the business of social distancing) though after a while I became suspicious. Was this one of those marriage scams I’ve heard about so often on TV while re-watching re-runs of the Japanese series, Midnight Diner? Although I don’t live in Japan, in fact, I’m not sure if I’m in the same continent as Japan but as my high school friend used to tell me “Japan is way over there dude, in China”. If this is indeed true, then I am definitely nowhere near the continent of China and therefore I am not near Japan. Where was I? Right, the series. Maybe someone in this continent, nay, this planet, had watched that very series and stole the idea just like taking a baby from the candy store. After another while, I became a little bit depressed. Was I really that sad of a sight that even though I was seated in the company of others, this woman, whom I’ve never seen or smelled before, took it upon herself to rescue me from such a situation? Wanting to avoid finding out the answer, I quietly rose from my seat in order to leave but as I did, I heard her say

“Stay” The woman said, devoid of emotion.

So she wasn’t mute. I was beginning to have the notion that she was mute but I realized she didn’t have a dog by her side or even a walking stick. I knew she wasn’t deaf because she wasn’t wearing sunglasses like Stevie Wonder did, the deaf musical genius.

For fear of looking like I was being discriminatory of the disabled in front of the two other remaining customers, I sat back down on the 5:31 express and looked at her with a quizzical gaze. To make things clear, it was I who had a quizzical gaze and not her.

‘What the hell does she want’ I thought to myself.

“Well if you must know…..”

‘She can read my mind?!’

She stared at me for a while.

“You know that you said those words out loud right?” She said

“No I didn’t!” I replied

She stared at me as if waiting for a reply.

“And now you thought of your reply instead” She said in a condescending tone.

I wasn’t sure if she was just toying with me but in any case, I felt embarrassed. I looked at her and signalled with my hands to continue what she was telling me before I interrupted her.

“Anyway, sometimes I feel like talking to strangers for no reason. There’s a lot of things you could tell them that you couldn’t even say to your best friend”

‘But you just gave a reason! And doesn’t she know how terrible a business model that is? What with all those weirdos like me out there.’ I thought.

….‘Did I just include myself???’

“Hello!” A voice from outside my head said. I looked at her and realized that it must have been her as my two other barroom companions had already left, leaving just the two of us seated at the 6:21 express. 

“Oh yes?” I replied

“You were spacing out just now.”

“Oh sorry, you see, I can’t move the tables to get closer to you so I guess we have to stay spaced out.”

She stared at me in disbelief.

“Anyway, do you want to hear a story?” She asked me.

“Ok” I frowned. “I’m sorry! I meant to smile. Forgive me”

‘Whatever, this was better than going home and masturbating’ I thought

“Yeah, definitely.” She said

‘Damn it!’ I said

She began to tell me a long and verbose story about a woman who up and leaves her family and everything else to go on a voyage across the seven seas in search of what she believed was paradise. She never made it there and is said to still be wandering around aimlessly in search of that paradise. 

I found it an amusing tale but very laborious to listen to. It would never do well as a novel as it lacked any definite climax or ending. Not to mention that it had massive plot holles, errorrs and speelling problems. 

How could the protagonist ‘suddenly’ go on a voyage? Though it wasn’t explicitly mentioned, I believe that she likely had zero training in manning a sea vessel. Was she employed as a sailor? I find that unlikely although not impossible as it was not stated in the story. 

I remembered from my high school geometry class that there are more than 200 seas in the world. Didn’t she not know that? Was she referring to the 7 great lakes instead? This minor detail would surely enrage the nit-picky. I’m glad I’m not one of them.

Looking at my watch, I realized that her story had taken an hour of my time. I didn’t know how to respond to her story except by telling her that it was fascinating, exhilarating, scintillating, reverberating, rising and oscillating. She seemed pleased.

She looked at me and said with the most empty smile I’ve ever did see.

“Don’t you think it’s better to have a sad ending than to be forever in search for an ending?” She asked rhetorically, stood up and left the 3:42 special trip. Initially I thought she went to the bathroom or to the bartender but after about 30 minutes, I realized that she had left and that I was now literally alone, except for the bartender, but I didn’t include him as being part of the scene earlier so I won’t consider him as an actual entity in this story.

‘How rude could that woman be?! Wasting my time like that and not even buying me a beer. And to top it all off, she didn’t even say goodbye!’ I thought… or said. It really didn’t matter which as I was literally alone except for the non-entity at the bar.

I went to the non-entity to not pay my tab but the non-bartender didn’t tell me it wasn’t already paid for. I didn’t scratch my head and left the deserted bar but didn’t.

‘Well at least she forgot to pay my tab.’ I communicated using an unspecified method.

It had been a few days but I couldn’t get the plot-holled, speelling errorr ridlled, research deprived story out of the place in my head where thoughts occur so I conducted my own research online yielding no results. There were results on the search engine but none pertinent to the story that I was told. I even tried asking my old friend Jeeves but he instead recommended a new pasta recipe to me.

I also tried asking my work friends but the only thing they could say to me was “A girl talked to you!?” I went home that day dejected and made a promise to find new friends. As my pride had not made a full recovery by nightfall, I decided to take a walk. It was Friday anyway so being out late was fine for me as I was at the age where I did not need to bring along my supervisor which was all for the better as he was on Sabbathical leave for the weekend.

Walking by the pier, I saw a lone figure seated at the edge. It looked like a dramatic scene so I decided to close in. Maybe this person was going to jump or do something with a rope. Jump rope maybe? As if coming straight out of a terrible romance novel, I realized that as I got closer, the figure was in fact that of the woman who walked out on me from the midnight experience. She looked evanescent in the pale moonlight.

‘….Wait she walked out on me?!’ I realized.

My pride would no longer be restored until Sunday at the least. 

Feeling an extreme urge to find out why she did walk out, I approached her from all sides. 

“Have you found paradise yet?” I asked jokingly.

There was no reply. She continued staring off into the distance. I sat down beside her a few meters away and stared off into the distance, which, based on my observation, was around 50 meters, hoping that whatever was in the distance could answer my hanging question. 

After a few minutes of silence outside my head region, she suddenly brought up the story again.

“You know the reason that woman could never make it into her paradise was that the sea……

‘The great lakes!’ I corrected her in my mind. 

“……kept pulling her boat towards the port that she left. So no matter how long she sailed, she could only travel a relatively short distance. It’s as if the sea was telling her that she had forgotten to do something before leaving on her voyage and wouldn’t let her go before she had been able to accomplish whatever that was.”

‘What a cliché and there again she goes with all these inaccuracies. Doesn’t she know how current works? I don’t but I’m sure that she’s wrong about something there because I heard from someone passing by that currents was the best album they ever heard. And isn’t it more likely that the wind more than the sea would be the one pulling her back. She hadn’t even established if this story was set during or after the Pirates of The Caribbean era long before ships like the Titanic or the Luisitania ever set foot on the ocean floor. I just assumed that her story was likely more in the Pirates era. She’d have a field day with those nit-pickers if ever she told this story to them. I’m glad I’m not one of them.’

By the time I had finished thinking, she was gone, leaving me looking a fool in the pale moonlight.

‘Damn that woman, being so cryptic and impolite’ I grumbled. 

With less pride than having no pride and feeling incensed, I decided to visit the nearest watering hole for a few drinks. 

The next morning gave me a splitting headache. I guess it was because I thought too much the previous day. By mid-afternoon it had gotten a little better. My mother used to tell me to sweat it out after the nights of drinking during my elementary and kindergarten days, so I got used to taking two-minute walks to the park to create the illusion of sweating and so I wouldn’t feel guilty brushing aside my mother’s advice.  As if out of an even worse romance novel where the two fated lovebirds keep meeting unexpectedly in random locations, I saw the same woman sitting at the park bench, surrounded by people who were up in their apartments doing something. 

You know how people get annoyed faster if they have headaches? I felt instant annoyance with regards to how she left me suddenly the night before and that one time between the panda express. I made the decision to confront her from above. I sat beside her.

“Why do you keep leaving without even saying goodbye?! It’s come-on courtesy you know?” I told her, exhausting my already thin phrasebook stored in my noggin;.

Like the night before there was no reply.

‘Maybe I was too harsh to her.’ I thought

‘No she deserved it’ I answered back.

‘I’m talking back to myself?!’ I thought.

I spaced out again for a few seconds afterwards as my mind felt tired and wanted to make sure I was of sound mind. Luckily not a thought passed through my head during that time. I wiped the drool from my shirt and looked back at her and saw her covering her eyes with her hand. I ruled out hide-and-seek because she wasn’t counting to 10,000 like my dad used to make me do. He was so good at hiding that it I still had’nt found him.

‘Oh no, now I’ve done it. I’ve unleashed my talent of making women cry. First my mother then the little kids at the day care center when I asked ‘what do your parents do?’ that one time in high school during an outreach. Or was that an orphanage? I’m not sure anymore, even back then I kept mixing up the two.’

Feeling bad, I wanted to apologize but before I said anything, I observed that her lips formed the shape of a smile. I thought it was customary for lips to form an upside down smile when people evacuate their fluids through their eyes. Was she laughing? What was so funny? Did my existence seem that funny to her? Was it tears of joy? In any case, I thought she needed space so I looked the other direction and moved to the edge of the bench.

I heard a faint, wavering voice saying “Goodbye”

I turned around to face her but she was nowhere to be seen. I looked around but there was no trace of her. It would be physically impossible to get out of the park in the time it took to turn my head. Not even my father could do that.

Now you may think that I was surprised but I can’t say that I was. I had a notion that she was what she was ever since I observed that her fashion seemed out of place. She was also slightly transparent the night previous but I thought that was just an optical illusion such as the Doppler effect.

Why did she even appear to me anyway? There was no close friend or relative of mine to die recently. Could it be a case of right place, right time, wrong person? No, she mentioned that she sometimes liked talking to strangers. I decided to forget about looking for an explanation.

A few months had passed and after nightly sessions where I would think about the events that happened to me, I finally realized that the poorly researched story was an analogy to the situation she had been in. It must have been that she had forgotten to say goodbye in life and by some strange machination, I don’t know how it works as I have no experience dying yet, seemed bound to forget the one thing she had to do to be able to move on. Whether the goodbye was meant for someone or to life itself, I don’t know. She must have died suddenly and unexpectedly. I felt sorry for her and I said a prayer. I didn’t know much prayers so I recited a few lines from the Gettysburg Address hoping it would fit the occasion. 

A few weeks later I was back at my parent’s home. I finally found my dad! He told me to clean the attic and then the rest of the house and to cook him lunch and dinner and shine his shoes just like old times. As I was sifting through boxes of old dusty stuff, I stumbled upon my dad’s old photo albums. Curious to see how much hair my father used to have, which he boasted to me about all too many times, I opened one. Sifting through the glossy pages, I noticed something other than the terrible fashion sense of the 90’s. A familiar face was arm in arm with my dad. Like a badly written melodrama, it turned out to be the strange woman I had met all those months ago. I left the attic which was still a mess, photo album in hand and went to look for my father which by now was an easy task for me as years of hide and seek had honed my father finding skills. I found him in the living room drinking beer and watching the news. It was the one where two women undressed and started licking cylindrical ice cream. Much like the news I saw him watching when I was a kid.

“Who’s this?” I asked as I pointed to the woman in the photo.

His face became grave and hesitated to reply. 

“I guess you’re old enough to know.” He said

He asked me to sit down and get a beer as it was going to be a long story.

“That woman……….” He paused

I waited for the punch line. With each moment passing in silence, increasing the value the punch line must have contained. 

“……is your real mother.” He said after smoking three cigarettes.

‘How was that a long story?! Was it long because you let it drag out for 16 minutes?! And why is this what I was concerned about?’

“I was somewhat of a playboy when I was younger.” He continued.

‘I couldn’t tell by looking at you know.’ I thought.

“I got her pregnant with you.”

‘I understand what you’re saying but don’t make it sound like we were a threesome!’ 

“I was sure her old man was gonna shoot me if I left her so I proposed to her with the wedding being set for a few months after you were scheduled to be born. It turned out that I was lucky. She was someone who I really loved, you know, I still love your moth…. My wife now……”

‘Don’t cut off your words that way! It changes the meaning completely!’

“…… But I think that if ever there was just one, it would be that woman. Your real mother.”

Instead of having some kind of personal crisis regarding my origins and my father’s love for my current mother, I was more interested to know what happened to that woman.

I asked him and his face turned even graver. 

“A few months after you were born, she went to work…… but she never got there. I got a call at work saying that I should come to the hospital. By the time I got there, I was directed to the morgue for identification……”

‘You could have worded that better’

“…….My greatest fear had become reality. It was her, lying there on the metal tray. Scalpels, scissors, chainsaws on the table beside. She was bruised everywhere. They told me that her car crashed into some trees at a relatively low speed. 10 miles an hour they said but she was already dead by then. They suspect either an aneurysm or maybe a heart attack. They told me later it was an aneurysm. That was the worst time of my life. I couldn’t even look at you for a few weeks. So I left home for a few weeks with your new mother.”

In an effort to avoid making the situation darker than black, I decided to guess how they met based on what had happened to me. I began to relay my experience with her but instead telling it as if it was him and not me who experienced it. I told him of the first meeting but he seemed confused when I brought up the midnight express part. He said that he liked that movie a lot. A statement that confused me. It shocked him that I knew how they met in fine detail. 

I decided to push my luck and mention the second time I met her. Recounting the story at the pier left him visibly shaken. To the verge of tears I believe. Later on I found out that was the moment that he believed he fell in love with her. He told me that unlike the bar, there was no one around at the pier, so it would be impossible for me to know what happened there unless he had told me. 

I pressed on telling about the final encounter with her. He interrupted me just as I was about to the part about her disappearing which I’m sure would have been a little disconcerting had that event also occurred to my father. 

With tears in his eyes and smiles in his lips and beer in his mouth and saliva in his hands he said.

“You must have met her. There’s no other way.” He paused. 

“She must have wanted to say good bye to you more than anything in the world.” 

And at that, I could truly attest that a mother’s love is truly something to be reckoned with. It was strange but I felt her love even though she had been dead for as long as I could remember. 

“If you’re free next week, let’s visit her grave” My dad said. 

I nodded and went back up to the attic. She wouldn’t be there anyway so there was no real point for me to visit her grave other than it being a symbolic gesture as I knew that she had already reached her paradise out there somewhere on an island within the great lakes. Or maybe she’s in hell chilling out or blazing the skies in heaven or reincarnated as a used car salesman. I really don’t know how dying works, really. Don’t ask me about those things. I’ll relay to you my experience of dying after I die. I’m surprised that in this day and age there have been no autobiographies mentioning this part of life.