44 :: instrument :: 5/18/01
Jakob is sitting on Freya's couch with her, their shoulders touching, his hand resting against her thigh. Instrument, Jem Cohen's documentary about Fugazi, is playing on her television set. A film of lean and weathered bodies. Energy and motion as active textures. They got started late, after a few bottles of beer and a few hours of talking about work (Jakob's semester is over and he's hoping to spend the summer preparing some articles to send out to journals; Freya's predictable record-store routine makes her feel stabilized but bored). It's about 11:30 now. The streets outside are dark. Neither of them have any plans for tomorrow.
He glances quickly at her. Her soft profile lit by television. Her lips. He momentarily imagines doing something bold, brazen even: taking her shoulders in both his hands and kissing her. A certain cloud of desires galvanizing into behavior. Something stops him. The moment isn't right. You'll know when it's time, he tells himself. Patience.
He is enjoying the film; he likes the band. He hadn't listened to them before. The thing that surprises him is the lack of self-conscious irony on display, the seeming earnestness of everything Fugazi does in the film. Irony is an essential element in the gradschool world he inhabits, fundamental as iron: so strange to see into a world that is different. Bizarro World. A place of complete sincerity. He feels like this filmmaker, Cohen, is back from the front with observation.
Freya shifts. Her arm rests against his. She's ready. She won't let him leave tonight without kissing her. The throb of the music. Chicago is in full bloom.
::
