Waking Up - A Flash of Jazz Story
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When Olivia woke up on a rainy Saturday, she
realized that everything had changed. She looked at the raging storm that lay
outside her old windows then smiled and slid out of bed. She walked down the
narrow hall to her kitchen to prepare a cup of tea then stopped as she reached
her living room. There were beer bottles lying all over the floor along with
issues of The New Yorker, several poetry books bent on certain pages and an
ashtray overflowing with butts, some lipstick stained, and others just stained.
She glanced at the sight and then plodded towards her kitchen. She really wanted a
cup of tea. A rainy Saturday means that I can stay in and watch movies, she
thought as she prepared her kettle.
Olivia
lowered her bag of Earl Grey tea into the mug and said aloud, “I don’t care
anymore. All of it. None of it.” Her words barely came out in a whisper, yet
she felt as though the Universe heard her finalizations. Once everything was ready
and the kettle slowly boiled the water, Olivia returned to the living room and
proceeded to throw everything away. She no longer cared if she recycled the
bottles or not. She threw away all the magazines and placed the poetry books
back in their respectful place on her shelves. As she threw away the
last bottle, the kettle began to whistle, giving her enough of a reason to take
a break. Once her tea was prepared, she returned to the living room and sat down on her couch she lovingly called the “Nyquil
Couch” since if anyone laid down on it, they would instantly fall asleep. She
did not want to fall asleep. She wanted to be fully awake for what she was
feeling at the time. Olivia no longer cared about following her friends in
their urban hipster ways; to her, it seemed as nothing more than an excuse to
be assholes with limited knowledge about the world spread out so widely. She
remembered how David read every poem from her various literary magazines,
proclaiming to want to be like them with his work. To him, getting his work
published by those that mattered meant that you had “made it”. Olivia took a
quick sip of her tea and then said, “Bullshit. They’re all pretentious. Snobby.
Arrogant. All of it.” She then took another sip of her tea then smiled as she
leaned back onto her couch.
What did it
matter, then, to be so “liberal arts” knowledgeable? Why did her friends claim
that they wanted to be the voice of all people only to create an ivory tower
filled with indie films, locally brewed beers, music made by people you’re never
heard of, and mostly white people unless you are a minority who thinks
outside of your “colour box”? That’s how they felt about her. Olivia was not
the typical black girl living in her city. She refused to listen to rap,
claiming that it rotted one’s brain, and preferred to listen to folk, rock,
alternative, jazz, Classical music, and anything else under the sun that had a
soul. She tried to listen to country once due to a redneck intellectual that
she was briefly interested in, yet the twang made her nauseous enough to stop
after only a week. The final blow came for her the other night when she
attended a concert of a local musician located at one of the coffee shops in
town. She wanted to support the musician because she had several of his CDs and
she wanted to get out of her apartment for the night. So, she arrived at the
coffee shop, only to be told that it was now standing room only and that there
were no more chairs. Olivia didn’t care; all she wanted was to see this guy
perform.
After walking
around the tightly packed place for several seconds trying to locate a spot,
she found a piece of a wall that had not been claimed and leaned against it
while waiting for the concert to begin. Several seconds later, several people
of her own ilk walked in front of her, narrowly missing her feet, and stood
too close to her. She sighed yet was still determined to see, or at least
hear the concert. Just then, the musician himself walked right in front of
her, again narrowly missing her feet, and did not even say excuse me or pardon
me to her. She sighed again then pulled out her book and read. More people
walked in front of her, carrying bottles of Pabst’s Blue Ribbon as well as
other bottles of imported beer as though they were trophies. The musician
walked by her again and brushed roughly against her book. She glared from
behind the pages and then placed the book back in her bag when she heard him
start playing. Two songs later, she was out the door, miserable and ready to
return home. Although she wanted to be around people that she felt would
understand her and claim her as one of their own, she felt nothing more than a
pit of something hard and cold in her stomach. They don’t care, she thought as
she got in her car and drove off. Were they supposed to? Does being an urban
hipster give you the right to be more of an entitled asshole because you claim
to be so in touch with the world around you? Such were the feelings she felt
that entire week leading up to the small party at her place last night. It was
supposed to be a small affair that, unfortunately, turned into nothing more
than another rendition of last Saturday’s concert. No one truly cared; all
wanted to step on each other’s feet and the beers were merely bragging rights.
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