I haven't been able to focus on my rhyme and meter article when Lucien Carr is the only thing on my mind, and when that's the case, it's extremely difficult to get him out of your mind, because if he's a singular deity in your thoughts, then the thought of removing him is plainly nonexistent, so for the past day I've been living inside of his charm replicated through fuzzy memories.

My readers aren't concerned from what I can tell, because only one has commented about an update that I can't provide them with, because Lucien Carr is stuck in my fucking brain, but I don't update every day anyway, so I still have time before the remainder of my readers are arriving at my doorstep with pitchforks and fire and signs protesting my laziness and my newly found infatuation with a librarian of all people.

I've tried stationing myself by the computer, fingers poised to type something my readers will enjoy -- though they enjoy everything I spew out of my whirring brain -- and I have been ultimately unsuccessful, as all I can do is imagine myself as a schoolgirl who writes their name blended with the name of their crush in their pink unicorn notebook, hoping that no one will see it but hoping that their crush will somehow get the hint from the opposite side of the fucking classroom.

There are certainly benefits to being a schoolchild, however, benefits that I have mentally enhanced since escaping from Columbia University where everything was all or nothing, and it was a high stakes environment where screw ups can send you to the bottom of the food chain, but that's college for you, and middle school was so much better in some way, because I didn't have to fret about producing an article every other day for people who can't do the research themselves and rely on me to bring them knowledge in their cramped schedules, which is becoming increasingly arduous when someone won't fucking leave you alone.

And despite Lucien being the only person on my mind for the past day, I've since then decided that revisiting the library is a sound idea, and I must've been drunk or something, even in my abstinence, because now I'm crossing the street towards the ancient building flooding with books and intellectuals and Lucien Carr, the mysterious writer hiding behind the shelves of things he already knows.

I'm not as nervous as I was yesterday, as I know now what I'm dealing with, however strange he is, so with the minimal reassurance of a full breath gliding into my lungs, I crack the door from its hinges and step into the welcoming library.

Immediately when I enter the facility, the aroma of ink to stamp books and the paired aroma of novel pages are wisps around my head to accompany every other delight of such a magical place. Now that I've acquired a deeper appreciation of libraries, each sight I absorb is more and more magnificent than it had previously been. The shelves scale to grand heights, the books murmur about their designated plots, and the atmosphere buzzes with the life of knowledge.

A huddle of scholars swarms a table in the middle of the room, some completely silent and some giggling to their friends at the absurdity that is none other than Lucien Carr, modeling on the table as a book is pinched between his fingers, with his sonorous speech reverberating against the walls so that every library patron may hear about his oddly fascinating topic about which he was reading when I visited here last: homosexuality in Greek mythology, except now he's including Roman mythology as well.

It's not that I should've expected anything less from someone like Lucien Carr, just that I assumed he wouldn't be this lively at nine o'clock in the morning, when most of the world is either drooling enough to save California, or about to murder someone to steal the energy they themselves don't have. But this is Lucien we're talking about. His bounty is endless.

"I'm not saying you have to like them," Lucien begins, somewhat of a drunken slur to his voice, though his posture suggests that he's absolutely sober and just deceitful, "but you have to admit that Patroclus and Achilles were pretty fucking gay, all right?"

He's actually correct. Though Homer never specified that Achilles and Patroclus were in a romantic relationship, there's nothing to imply that they were not. There are so many details that prove their affiliation, an affiliation that extends beyond a platonic type, and it's just splendid that Lucien is cognizant of this, because when I try to explain it to my friends, they never are.

Confused whispers bend around the huddle, professing how this man makes no fucking sense, but Lucien only nods in approval, because he's opened their minds to the possibilities of secret homosexuals they never knew existed, if only in fiction, and some of them are not well disposed towards that subject, so they subtly retreat to the library tables to resume their studying.

"Did you know" — Lucien clusters in his own figure, hands pressed against the air as if on glass — "that when Patroclus died, Achilles cried so loudly that the gods at the bottom of the sea could hear him?"

The library patrons are generally unfazed by this factoid, though some of them display an interested expression, perhaps only to appease the boy screaming at them on the table, because when you think about it, that's a powerful position that Lucien sustains there, prone to kicking and jumping and murder of those surrounding him, and considering his character, I'm not completely certain that he wouldn't do any of those things.

"They asked to be buried together, you know." Lucien smirks, tossing his head as if to pose as someone who can never be consumed by a mortal human, someone above us all, someone blatantly untouchable.

"Lucien, get down from there!" the manager orders, and with a broad sneer, Lucien complies, narrowly avoiding crushing the bodies of the library visitors as they wrestle with parting the corporeal sea of which they are a part.

He would've carried on with his monotonous work of sorting the books and locating numbers of patrons, already returning to it instantaneously after jumping from the desk, but then he spies my figure cowering in the doorway in awe of his bravery, and he instead revises his route so that it leads to me.

An obnoxious swagger beats the soles of his shoes as he approaches me, jaw carved into a stone lock. "Allen Ginsberg, back so soon?"

I replicate a motion he performed for me yesterday, the type where he leans forward to spill one of his many secrets with you. "You know I can't stay away from you for long."

"Well that's quite flattering really," Lucien starts, going through the motions of a lovestruck teenager, but I cut him off with the real explanation as to why I'm here (although the first explanation was the true one, but it was also the creepy one, so I have to replace it with this).

"I figured I might do some extra studying before I write the article. It's always healthy to know more than you need to know."

"Perhaps." Lucien fumbles with a half-worn pack of cigarettes, pinning it in between his ivory teeth and preparing to ignite it. "Sometimes it gets you in trouble, though."

I can already feel myself asphyxiating under both the layers of smoke and the layers of memories attributed to it, but I politely weigh out smacking the item from his mouth, as that would most likely spark an irreversible conflagration. "Speaking of getting in trouble, cigarettes are banned from the library. It's a public space, not to mention a hazard."

Shouldn't he understand this? Smoking is almost never facilitated in closed quarters, because the carbon monoxide produced from flaming materials can potentially poison someone, and that would just be a shame to have a law suit and terrible bodily functions on your plate. He also works here, for god's sake! I can assume that he's not the best of workers, but his boss wouldn't hire him if he didn't have a grasp on the rules here, or at least a grasp on common sense.

Lucien gestures to the door, abhorring being contradicted, because to him there's always a way, even if he has to choose to ignore it for that way to materialize. "Then shall we go outside?" That obnoxious eyebrow of his twitches.

"You know, cigarettes are bad for you, even if you're outside."

"Fuck my health. We're all dead anyway, but maybe we should live a little first, you know?" His opening words are punctuated by his lanky form slamming against the door progressing out of the library, and I suppose it's my job to trail behind him, as he's too captivating to abandon -- I suppose it's better to abandon my extra research than the beginnings of a new adventure.

Lucien is positioned on the steps by the time I fully exit the building, his legs a right angle to support the elbow maintaining the cigarette, maintaining his premature decay, and I join the man on the concrete slabs with an invisible shield from the smoke.

I glance over at him, but his eyes never shift for my sentences, and that's by some means all right. "So what was that whole speech thing about?"

He eventually engages with me, the cigarette bobbing in between his lips with each syllable shaped like lines on a heart monitor now pulsing in the air. "I enlist in flammable activities to receive flammable outcomes, and it is only in the morgue that I would consider regretting any of it."

The manner in which he immobilizes his smoke within his teeth is far too elegant for something that kills millions of people, but I'm catching myself being drowned in the spell, and somehow I don't want to stop.

"All they did was develop an unfavorable opinion towards you."

Those patrons may not be visiting the library any longer, all because of Lucien Carr's wild frenzy of Roman mythology with the unwanted twist that these scholars generally dodge when it's possible, though with my new companion's outgoing personality it's quite strenuous to do so. But it's not like Lucien gives a shit about what people think of him, as long as he enjoys what he does.

Lucien shrugs. "Let them. A human's opinion is theirs alone, and I presume that's why you're writing about rhyme and meter, yes? Because you despise it?"

"Basically."

"Typical journalist," Lucien mutters, skewing from me once more to mutter again how journalists are too desperate for the world to handle.

My mouth steps to the side, dissatisfied with Lucien's critical description of me. "Actually, I like to think that I'm a poet."

"A stiff homosexual is what you are," Lucien states flatly.

From what I've observed, Lucien Carr is a very perceptive man, and now I'm realizing that he may be too perceptive. It's not good form to delve into the secrets of others (even if Lucien is far from the trap of good form, sipping martinis in his lounge of uncouthness), the secrets that a person never broached because a secret is all that it will ever be unless they're ready to share it, and I am aware that this detail would've emerged at some point in our friendship, but I had never predicted that it would emerge solely from Lucien's intellect.

Even so, he's the one shouting about homosexuality in Greek and Roman mythology, so it's unlikely that he's homophobic, saving the rare chance that he's ranting about it as a cruel joke to an already marginalized group of society, though that seems implausible for him, primarily because he was flirting relentlessly with me yesterday with a phenomenon as mundane as the various flicks and rotations of his eyes, and he wasn't even repelled when he noticed that it worked. Either he's an extraordinary actor or he's genuinely intrigued by me, but he claimed to be gay himself, and I don't suppose a heterosexual would include that in their role. It was pretty damn believable, too.

Finished with the fun and games now that this topic has woken, I chuckle halfheartedly. "No, um, I'm not..."

"Ah, a closeted homosexual." Lucien delivers a snippet of ash into the rough pavement of the stairs, vision not once tackling me in order to maintain his crypticness blooming with each awkward second. "Not for long."

I almost choke on my own saliva at his ending comment, and Lucien grins to himself like always, a portion of his face hidden by an alternate angle as his cigarette hangs from his fingers in order to manufacture a resounding laugh.

Why is it that he knows so much about me? We've only chatted twice, and now he's obtained one of my most personal secrets, suppressed through years of classic high school settings where any form of deviation is punished by a body in the locker or a head in the toilet and ultimately the cold shoulder from your peers. Lucien Carr must be the Sherlock Holmes of Paterson, of New Jersey, of America even! He's got skill, and there's no denying that, but it's also a bit freaky to my elusive character, though he soothes it deftly with a smile and a wink to make it seem as though I willingly told him these facts.

"How did you deduct all of this already?"

Lucien leers in the faintest of fashions, then converting to solemnity. "I need to teach you that the way someone does something is not important to the outside person, just that it's happened. I need to teach you a lot of things, in fact, and only when you become my apprentice or something like that will I reveal the way in which I function."

A smile lurks upon my lips, unwarranted by me yet permitted to linger. "So what you're saying is that you'd like to be friends?"

Lucien incarcerates me within his ocean eyes, waving the cigarette with the snap of a wrist, and he delivers the verdict. "Oh, absolutely."  

~~~~~

A/N: I've written five thousand words today where is my fucking chill

also where is lucien's chill??? honestly??? seductress i'm calling the police

nihilism: rejection of morals or religions in the belief that life is meaningless

~Dakankan