Marine Research - Parallel Horizontal
Perfect. Jeanie thinks that she could not have said it better herself, that everything Michael Yakutchik does and says is perfect. She thinks it has to do with his face. His face is responsible for all his dreamboating qualities: he has the look of an old movie star, shrunk down to boy size, suggestive of maturing magnetism, gallantry, and charm. His arms have a kind of deceptive bigness, she’s noticed, and Jeanie suspects that underneath his sweatshirts and polos, Michael is a fair-to-moderate beefcake, totally cuddleworthy. She has been pursuing a program of discreet stalking the past few months, trying to get to know him better by placing herself in close, semi-hidden proximity to Michael, for example by monitoring his Facebook updates and, when he writes something like, “Out to the mall for new kicks,” telling her mother that she has an urgent need to borrow the car to run to the mall, around which she then walks and watches, feeling creepy and flushed. In her mind, the best-case scenario that might obtain if she were to see Michael out and about would involve him ditching whatever friends he had with him to spend some quality time with her, maybe shopping, maybe eating at the food court, during which time he would compliment her eyes and deploy an unexpected innuendo regarding her breasts, and then drop a devastating, heart-piercing remark like, “I’ve seen you around school. You have a quiet sort of beauty.” Unlikely though it was, considering the facts that she and Michael had not spoken meaningfully since freshman year history class and she had not yet run into him at the mall, the mini-golf course, or out by the lake, this scenario and its extended version (back of her mother’s car; she and Michael locked in jumbled, sweaty sex; subsequent hours of hand-holding) gave her hope that she was on the right track, because she could conceive of it happening, and that meant to her, in an indistinct way, that it was possible.P.S. Marine Research was Amelia Fletcher's post-Heavenly band. They only released one album, the fantastic "Sounds of the Gulf Stream." They also have a split EP with Built to Spill out there.[Buy Sounds from the Gulf Stream]