Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
SPIDER-MAN
A fter getting the text about the comedy gig and where to meet the guys, I left my apartment after a quick dinner and shower and change to freshen up. It’s not too far from my apartment, and it’s a really pleasant October evening, so I decide to stroll over to the venue. I have the time.
I find myself wondering just how it is that now, when I probably shouldn’t be dating anyone, I find myself drowning in options for guys lately.
Like, I’d not been having a dry spell or anything (Lord knows I haven’t). But guys who seemed interested in more than just a little bit of fun? And that actually felt worth pursuing? I can’t remember the last time I had a proper date before this insane cavalcade of perfect guys dropping in my path.
Now, here I am with more guys interested than I can count on one hand, I’ve been on a couple of dates (hell, tonight might even be a date, kinda, right?), and I might even be falling into major feelings for my secretly-freakin’-ripped best friend who I guess maybe I’d had feelings for for a long ass time but I didn’t let myself confront them!
Hell, even my inner monologue is out of breath!
I know I’m not exactly ugly, but am I really such a catch that I can suddenly have so many guys to choose from? I’m a mess, I’m always juggling a hundred things at once, and then there’s a potentially huge, life changing, earth shattering thing I’ll be throwing at them pretty much off the bat, and honestly, I just don’t see how I’m not going to come out of this alone in the end. I’m a disaster waiting to happen, and my love life is the perfect example of that. It’s probably the universe’s little personal joke at me - it’s the worst time of my life to have to be getting this one of my little worlds in order, so of course it’s going to throw men at me.
It’s as I think this that of course a dark shape falls out of the night and lands on me, causing me to crumple to the ground.
As I start to hyperventilate, taking a mental inventory of all my extremities for any signs of damage, I come away with only registering a dull ache all over as whatever landed on me wriggled around on me and rises into a shape above me.
“Oof, sorry about that, man, but uh, thanks for the save,” says the shape, extending a dark gloved hand in my direction. “If it weren’t for you, I think I’d be street pizza right now.”
I take the hand and feel myself lifted up to my feet. Letting go, I start taking a more thorough check of myself, dusting myself off and feeling around to make sure everything is where it should be. Once satisfied, I find myself losing the panic and finding a slight flame of indignant rage.
“What the hell was the—” I break off when I look at the shape, a guy, who landed on me. He’s my height, lean, with gorgeous dark skin, illuminated by the lights of the street around us, causing it to seemingly glow. He’s dressed all in black, but there’s a sprayed on design on the shirt that looks something like a pair of stylized eyes with a toothy grin. He’s covered in straps and trailing ropes. He has a helmet on too, which he takes off, revealing tight coils of kinky dreads, edges dipped in purple color, as they fell to one side and frame the top of his face. His really strikingly beautiful face. “Whoa. Uh, no problem. But did you just, like, fall out of the sky.”
He grins at me as he watches me taking him all in, revealing a delightful brilliant white smile. “Whoa to you too, dude.”
He grabs my hand, and pulls me into the vacant lot I was passing. “Come on, I wanna show you something. Call it thank you for saving my ass.” As he says that, my eyes flit down and take in what a fantastic ass it was to be saving, perky but held even tighter by straps holding onto his cheeks through his cargo shorts.
Behind the wire fence, he sets us up in front of a large wall, the side of a store. Looking up at the corner nearest the street, I notice some kind of pulley and something like a looped rope seat, before my curiosity is overtaken by what is actually on the side of the wall.
Before us is a beautiful display of art. Swirling blues, purples and white, surrounding a figure in white and a figure in black, hand in hand. Beneath them, classic comic sound effect style letters proclaim “TOGETHERNESS IN GEEKDOM”. It’s then I realize the solid, straight lines in the swirling colors behind the figures make the outline of the Javits Center.
“This is incredible!” I breathe. “Did you do this?”
“Yup. I was up there making the finishing touches. Missed the first day, I guess, but everyone knows NYCC is busier on the weekend anyway,” the guy says, eyes taking in his handiwork, a smile stretching across his face.
“Wait, you were up there on that thing?” I point up at the ropes still on the corner, making the mental connection to the ropes this guy is wearing.
“Yup. Let’s me get all up in those hard to reach places, y’know,” he grins at me, winking. Despite myself, I feel myself blushing. “Anyway, thanks for saving my life, even by accident. I was trying to untangle myself, and just plain fell out. The name’s Duke,” the guy, Duke, says, putting a hand out to mine.
I take it, and he gives it a firm shake, before then bringing my hand to his lips and kissing the back of my palm. “Jesse. Is me. My name, Jesse.”
He grins again. “Well, thank you, my shining knight,” Duke claps his hands, and invites me to sit on some discarded pallets to the side of the storefront in the lot, makeshift seats I imagine he would map out his design from, staring at the wall.
I join him, figuring I have a few minutes to spare before meeting the guys at the comedy club. And there is something weirdly enchanting and alluring about him, that’s hard to resist. “So you did this for NYCC?”
“Yeah, man. I love Comic Con. For a few days, it’s like everyone in the city just geeks out, and you get to meet amazing people from such different walks of life, all sharing just one thing in common: a love of comics and being a big ass nerd. I love it so much,” he leans back, smiling, his locks falling idly behind his ear.
“Yeah, I can get that. You know, growing up, I didn’t think anyone liked the comic books I read all the time. I would escape into those worlds in the pages whenever I found myself alone with time on my hands. Which was a lot, sadly. But every year, when Comic Con would roll around, I could always find a bunch of people to talk about my favorite books with.
“You love comics too then?” I ask, tilting my head his way as I continue to find intricate details in his street art.
“You kidding!” He says this as one hand shoots across the harness on his torso, clicking clips open. Then he lifts his shirt, and my heart jumps wondering what is happening. Then I see: underneath his clothes, he’s wearing a Spider-Man costume. Presumably, he’s been cosplaying today at the Javits Center.
We talk about comics and the reasons we fell in love with them, finding surprising similarities in our stories. I was left alone a lot growing up, he didn’t have any siblings and didn’t have the greatest health as a kid, so found himself shut indoors away from the other kids a lot. He fell in love with the wild artwork, the expressive lines and stylization. I fell in love with the deep lore and labyrinthine stories, added to over decades, handed down from one writer to the next.
This leads to him showing me photos of a lot of his murals. As a street artist, he makes these wonderful pieces on walls and billboards all over the city, sometimes huge like the one before us, sometimes small, and barely noticeable as people go about their day-to-day.
“Doesn’t it ever frustrate you? That your artwork gets washed away eventually, that it never lasts?” I ask.
“Nah,” he grins again, that grin that speaks a knowing kind of serenity. “Nothing lasts forever. The beauty in a thing isn’t that it lasts, it’s that it was ever there at all.”
He gestures to the mural on the wall, lights coming on to illuminate sections as the bulbs reach out across it in umbrellas of light. “Take this. Tomorrow, in the light of day, some folks might see it and be moved. Some might take a picture. However the impression is made, they take it with them. The piece may be on a wall for just a few weeks, but it will live with the people that saw it and were affected by it for a lot longer than that, traveling who knows where alongside them.”
I think about what he’s saying, and it sounds beautiful, but I still find it so hard to understand. I think about why I make my own art, in my own ways. “You know, I love that…but that’s so not me. I make the things I make, I think, because I hope they’ll last long after I’m gone. That they’ll prove that I was here. That I was seen. That…”
“That what, Jesse?” Duke turns to look at me, eyes gently pushing me on.
“…That I mattered.” I practically whisper, as Duke leans in.
“Of course you matter, Jesse. You’re here,” he leans in closer, his breath brushing my lips. I can’t take my eyes off those deep, dark eyes as he moves closer and then his lips press against mine and I close my eyes.
He pulls away, and I breathe out a long breath that seems to take some unknown weight with it.
Then I remember I’m supposed to be meeting Perry, Seth and Tom. I check my watch, “Shit, Duke, I am so sorry, I really got to run, I’m meeting some…friends.”
He stands, taking my hand to help me up, “Sure, Jesse! Look, I know this might be a bit forward, but I feel like I owe you for saving my life. Perhaps I could buy you a drink sometime?”
“I’d really like that,” I say, because I honestly would.
“Awesome,” he fishes around in a bag at his hip and produces a card, and gives it to me. “Call me!”
And with that, he jumps up onto the wire fence, foot catching between the links, hauling himself to the top, and balancing precariously. Reaching to the end of the rope, he wraps it around his hand, and pulls himself up, the muscles tensing under his sleeve.
“Careful!” I shout, skin crawling at the thought of him dropping from even this height.
He looks back over his shoulder, and smiles. He hooks onto a carabiner, “Don’t worry! Don’t you know?” He leans back, flipping over, grabbing the rope seat in his legs, moving it behind his knees in a swift motion, and dangling, securely, upside down and looking down at me, “I’m Spider-Man!”
We both laugh, before he gives me a gentle upside-down wave goodnight, and then swings himself back upright. I head around the fence onto the street and wave goodbye as I pass.
Okay, universe. Good joke.