Kick Drum

Passing Strangers: A woman's haunted by the backbeat of a former lover

Hi Friends,
This is the first piece in an ongoing weekly series of brief character sketches I plan to publish. I’m fascinated by the interior dramas happening all around me, all the time, wherever I go. If love can be defined as the act of seeing another, you might think of Passing Strangers as a collection of love letters from me to all the people I’ve encountered real and imagined in the park, on the train, at a stoplight, or in the checkout line at the grocery.

We live in a time where it’s so hard to truly see anyone else, much less connect with them. I hope you’ll find these little vignettes entertaining— a chance to slip inside someone else’s skin for a few moments. In other news, I’m still working on a new novel, but I’m far from ready to begin sharing it here. I hope these little portraits will hold you over until then.

Peace & Music,

Ben

FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She felt it deep within the basement of her dreams, the subsonic, steady pound of it, relentless and stirring. She twisted in the sweat-dampened sheet and comforter, her free leg torquing the fabric taught between her legs. The late afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, casting a shadow like grill marks across the plain of her naked back. FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She ground her pelvis into the bed pushing against the backbeat, still not ready to surface from her dreams.

In the shower, she yawned and shampooed with something that smelled like a mango smoothie spilled into the patchouli moccasin of a Phish fan. FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She could still hear it, feel it even with the bathroom door closed. The bar would be five deep tonight with post-festival revelers, too drunk to tip. She worked a double yesterday and was in no hurry to go back.

FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP. She knew it was him. There was no use pretending she didn’t. How many times had that foot jack-rabbit thumped beneath her cramped kitchen table in Austin, making tiny circular waves in her coffee. How many paradiddles had he tapped across her back as they lay spent after hours of sex that left her feeling raw and empty and craving more– more than he was ever willing to surrender? FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP.

She had moved half way across the country to escape the ever-present reminders of him on posters stapled to telephone poles and flyers hung in shop windows. Now here he was, all these years later beating through the walls of her shitty apartment from ten blocks away on the main stage behind a kit she imagined someone else set up and tore down every night so he could move on to the next town and the next party girl he’d never let hang around long enough to ask for anything more than a selfie.

When she stepped out onto the sidewalk, a light rain was beginning to fall, turning to steam before it hit the asphalt. The music had stopped and she was grateful to have her heart beat according to the rhythm it required, not one dictated. At the corner, she turned West, deciding she’d treat herself to coffee and a donut before going into work.

The bell above the door in the donut shop announced her, and before the door could close, the main stage act launched into an encore.

FOOMP – FOOMP FOOMP.

She winced and stepped up to the counter.

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