This was suppossed to be a very detailed post on a saxophone concert my friend and I went to two weeks ago, and the half-naked mad woman who stood in front of my car, refusing to budge, demanding money, somewhere during our ride home.
But this isn't going to be one.
Because whenever I tried to type all those details down, I realised over and over again that the concert wasn't really important. My friend isn't really a friend. The half-naked mad woman might very well not mad at all, although she was really half-naked.
That concert was an escape.
I remember I was tired and sleepy, but once the music began, I sat up and lean forward in my seat, my eyes fixated at the musicians, and very surprisingly, my usually-hollow breathing fell in rhythm with the saxophonist deep, concentrated breathing. It was my perfect escape from all the chaos happening that day to me: rude students, flawed logics, thick books, cynical friends, bright yellow office doors, broken glass in the toilet, proposals to hand out in four weeks' time, a glass of tea when all I wanted was fine coffee.
My friend was an escape.
He is my escape, and in the back of my mind I know that I am his escape too. I'm not sure what I was trying to escape from, but he sure was a comforting escape. I thought I knew what he was escaping from. (Boy, I was wrong.)
He told me the reason of his escape, and asked me mine. I did what I do best: I lied to his face. Now I guess I'll have to plan another escape, this time from myself.
That half-naked mad woman might be escaping herself too. (I lay in bed that night, trying to picture myself standing half-naked on the street, begging for money. Somehow the picture makes sense.)
"She," hissed my friend, "is as nutty as a fruit-cake."
"She is not," I insisted. "She might be more normal than the two of us blend together."
He laughed, telling me to be careful because she might turn up in front of my house that night. I shuddered, because the night was dark, and she looked horrible, with shaved head and a scar on her face, as if she walked right out of a horror movie.
"She'll be waiting for you in front of your carport!!!" teased my friend.
"She is NOTTT!!!" I protested. It wasn't until very much later that I realised how childish I must have sounded, and it turned my stomach.
But my friend was right.
The half-naked mad woman turned up in my house that night.
I saw her, the half-naked mad woman, lying in my bed, clutching at her heart, humming to the tune she had heard in the concert earlier that night.
She had noticed the way her friend touched her, and she had the urge to escape. But she didn't know where to turn.
She had the insight to stand right in front of her friend, refusing to budge, demanding more time.
