Going Home Ch. 01

Please give me the support of your vote.

*

Virginia meets Jerry, a man who just wants to talk while drawing her face.

Ginny had never been anywhere outside of Detroit. Working while caring for her elderly, alcoholic mother, she didn't have the money or the time to travel. Born there, raised there, and educated there, she lived there for 30 of the 35-years of her life with her mother until her mother died three years ago. Now no longer dependent upon her mother's meager Social Security check to help make the rent and make ends meet, she was alone.

With Detroit in between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, once such a beautiful place to live, she saw the city go from very good to very bad. Embracing everyone as her friend, she watched her happy, trustful, and innocent disposition turn sad, distrustful, and wary of strangers. As if there was always the fear of a storm brewing, there was always too much unrest and so much rage and evilness in the air.

A product of her environment, her environment had a way of changing her, affecting her, and morphing her into someone else, a person she no longer liked and sometimes didn't even recognize. Perhaps if she lived in Beverly Hills or on some tropical island, she'd be a different person. Yet, with her growing up and living in Detroit, if she didn't keep her wits about her and her guard, walls, and barriers up at all times, she'd nothing more than a victim and another statistic of crime on a police blotter.

Along the way she met a man, Jerry, where she worked as a waitress at the diner. Even though she was there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner five days a week, she made very little money. Unlike any man she's known who just wanted to have his wicked, sexual way with her big tits, he just wanted to talk. Being that talk doesn't cost her anything, she could do that as long as that's all he wanted to do, just talk.

A savvy and street smart young woman, with her ready to put a stop to their private conversations, she was always waiting for the other shoe to fall where he no longer wanted to talk but to have sex. With him not flirting with her, talking dirty to her, and/or disrespecting her with his leering looks, he was good to her and he treated her with respect. Accustomed to meeting mashers and players, she never met a man like him before.

With him much older than she was, in his late sixties or early seventies, there was no thoughts of romance on her part. They were just friends. With her alone, she could use a friend. With her feeling so lonely, sometimes she wished he was thirty years younger or she was thirty years older. Unlike other men who weren't as good to her, this man didn't want anything from her, expect anything of her, or ask her for anything. He just wanted to talk so they talked for hours. Talking about everything and laughing over nothing, they talked, just talked.

A first time for everything, surprising even her, he didn't even ask her for sex, which is why she enjoyed doing small favors for him. Maybe that was his play and his way to secretly and stealthily seduce her. He was going to trick her into having sex with him by pretending he was above all of that. He was going to trick her into having sex with him by pretending that he wasn't interested in her and her big tits. Maybe once he convinced her that he was more her friend than just another degenerate man, she'd trust him enough to let her guard down and believe all that he told her.

Yet, with her always wearing a too tight and one size too small uniform top, he never stared at her breasts and/or leered at the cleavage that she showed for the sake of getting bigger tips. He never made sexually suggestive or inappropriate comments as do most of her older, male customers. If she called any of them on their bluff, they'd probably have to take a blue or a yellow pill before they could give her what she needs.

Sadly, the only men she meets at the diner are men at the bottom of the barrel instead of men on the top of the hill. For sure, if they could afford a better meal, they wouldn't be frequently her greasy spoon diner that had over cooked coffee and stale donuts, but cheap prices.

With him being one of her regulars and always sitting at her table, coming in for a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie, seemingly all that he could afford, he just like drawing her, not her naked body, just her face. It wasn't real drawings, just pencils marks, scribbling, and sketches he'd do on a paper napkin or on a pad he always carried with him or on papers that he pulled out of his pockets. With him sticking the sketches in his pad when he was done and saving them, obviously the drawings meant more to him than they did to her.

Some of the pictures he drew looked more like her than did others. Some of the pictures he drew fascinated her that someone could capture her within five minutes of scrawling a few lines on 5 x 8 inch piece of paper. Perhaps his fascination with drawing her face was his secret sexual perversion to keep. Perhaps he masturbated over the pictures he drew of her when he returned home.

"You're pretty," he said, the first time showing any interest in her at all as a woman instead of just as his art model.

Seemingly and intuitively, he somehow knew she needed to hear him say that. Yet, he shocked her with his kind comment. With no one ever calling her pretty, she wondered if his compliment was sincere.

"Thank you," she said with him making her day whether he was sincere or not.

With her talking to no one but her customers, by her surprised reaction and beaming smile, she was obviously hungry for a compliment.

"You have an interesting face. You have a face that I never tire of drawing," he said looking from her to look at the sketch he was drawing of her.

Whenever he looked at her like that with his stare so focused on her face, he looked as if he was trying to read her mind in addition to reading her face. With her feeling self-conscious by his stare and with her never liking to be the center of attention other than when in the diner, she had a habit of looking away.

"Thank you," she said again not accustomed to anyone complimenting her plain face and staring at her for such a long, length of time.

He made her wish she had a man in her life. He made her feel as horny as she felt lonely. Only women who looked like her never lived happily ever after as those tall, blonde, beautiful, busty women do in fairy tales or in Hollywood. All the men she knew, even the plain looking men, wanted a woman who had a face of a model and a body of a stripper. All the men she knew ended up with a bitch. She'd settle for any of the men she knew but with none of them giving her a second look, seemingly she wasn't good looking enough for them to settle for her.

She'd be happy finding an average looking guy who worked at a decent job, who wasn't a drunk, who didn't beat her, and who didn't live with his mother. She'd be happy have two or three children, albeit plain looking children. Being that they'd be her children, they'd be beautiful children and she'd love them in the way that no one but her mother loved her.

* * * * *

Ginny didn't have many friends but Jerry was her friend. An older man, she enjoyed viewing him as the Dad she never had. Taking time with her and talking to her as if she was his equal or the daughter he never had, he taught her things.

He taught about things that have already happened and about why they happened. He taught her how to know things before they happen. Seemingly he had an intuitive finger on world events, on the pulse of the economy, on all things political, and on people. Even though she was street smart having grown up in Detroit, she wasn't streetwise like Jerry. She could read people but not like Jerry could. He knew everything. Seemingly with nothing he didn't know, there weren't any questions that he couldn't answer.

With her still fairly young and still feeling invincible, when confronted with a threat, she'd face danger head on while he'd rather stay in the shadows as an observer and let danger pass him by and go on to another victim. With everyone having a gun these days, especially in Detroit, her confronting her attacker was a foolhardy strategy. Only she couldn't change how she was brought up as a tough, street, city girl from Detroit.

Maybe because she knew so very many people from the local diner but she was lucky that nothing bad has happened to her yet. With Detroit infested with as much crime as it was infested with roaches and rats, living there safely was growing harder to do. Inevitably one day something bad would happen to her if she didn't get out of there soon. Some drugged daze juvenile would shoot her dead for a dollar or some armed killer would rob the diner and take her as his hostage.

Jerry was mugged once, hit from behind and knocked to the ground for his watch. It wasn't an expensive watch, just a quartz watch that ran on a battery that he used to tell the time, the day, and the date. His face was badly bruised and scratched from his head hitting the sidewalk hard. After taking that blow to the back of his head head and hitting the front of his head on the sidewalk, he sometimes forgets what day it was.

He was lucky to have survived such a brutal attack. He was lucky they didn't shoot him. Whether police or criminal, black or white, they shoot everyone in Detroit and not all of the shootings are reported or even investigated. Too many bodies suddenly disappear in Lake Eerie or Lake Huron only to get tangled up somewhere. Finally, they resurface miles away on the distant shore from the current. Identified by a toe tag as a John or Jane Doe in a morgue, too many people go missing and too many murders in Detroit go unsolved.

As always there's a reason for everything, the reason why he lived that day was for him to tell her his story. Whether good or bad, everyone has a uniquely different story to tell and he had a good one yet to tell her. Only it wouldn't be until after he died that she'd hear his story.

"It's not my time to go," said Jerry holding out his hand that was rock steady, his way of showing her that he still had plenty of life in him. "Trust me. I'll know my time when it comes but it's not here yet."

She bought him a new watch at the pawnshop, one with the day and date. One of the few possessions he cherished, he didn't look as if he could afford to replace his watch. Certainly, he didn't look like he had anything. Looking much like a homeless person, he wore these old clothes all the time with paint marks all over them. She wondered if he found his clothes in a dumpster.

He didn't smell. He was clean but he never shaved. In the way that Vincent van Gogh always had a scraggly beard, he had a scraggly beard that he didn't trim. Obviously his appearance wasn't as important to him as was the faces he drew. In the frightful mess that his hair was always in, he'd cover his head with a baseball cap rather than comb or brush his hair, she wondered if he even had a mirror.

* * * * *

When the weather grew colder and Jerry stopped coming to the diner, she went to his house to bring him some coffee, a piece of pie, or whatever food the diner had that they were getting ready to discard anyway. After a while, whenever he didn't make an appearance at the diner, she went to his loft to check on him. With her having nothing to go home to, not even a cat or a dog, sometimes she visited him after work just to talk.

Jerry lived in one, very large room in a building that looked condemn and no doubt should be condemned. Many of the building that surrounded his building were abandoned and condemned. With his room the entire top floor of a five story building, the building had an old, dirty, glass ceiling. It was the kind of ceiling that was trimmed with copper. All of these building must have been grand buildings when they were built in the Gilded Age, the late 19th century.

Oxidized by time and the weather, the copper had a nice green patina to it. Perhaps if there had been more copper than just the trim, thieves would have stolen that long ago but it would be impossible for them to take what little copper there was without breaking every pain of glass. Even at night, between the stars and the moonlight, Jerry didn't need lights with all the light that came through his glass ceiling. His big room had lots of natural light.

"I chose this building because of the glass ceiling. Sleeping here at night is as if I'm sleeping on the roof and under the stars. The light here in the morning, the midafternoon, and the late afternoon is just what I need to paint," he said.

Much like everyone else who lived in those abandoned buildings, she figured he was just another homeless squatter. Jerry didn't have a TV. He didn't want a TV.

"Televisions are just an excuse for people not to talk," he said waving a hand of disinterest. "Besides with all of the drug commercials on television these days, they make people who aren't even sick think that they are ill and need these medications."

"You're right," said Ginny laughing at his insight.

"In my day, my parents didn't take anything but an aspirin. Now, when you go to your general practitioner who's an internist, they're nothing more than drug dealers and pill pushers. Few of them even take the time to read up on all the side effects some of these pills cause and none of them even care that most folks can't afford to pay for the medication."

Instead of zoning out in front of the TV, he spent his time listening to the radio, talk shows, financial shows, weather, and news. When he wasn't drawing her face, with the radio always on in the background, he played Solitaire, chess, or checkers. For someone who had nothing he had a lot to tell her about life and mostly about people. Able to read someone just by looking at their face, he knew a lot about people.

"I can tell a lot from a person's face," he said. "Just by the first glance, I can tell everything I need to know about a person by their face. The reason why people look like they do, their faces are the clues to their real identity. In a way, I'm a detective reading the clues while searching for the information that I need to tell me who they are. In the way people carry ID's as their identification, with no two faces looking quite alike, their life stories are written all over their faces," he said pausing to look at her before taking her face in his hands. "You have a good and kind face."

She rolled her eyes and made a sour face.

"I do?"

He smiled. He had a nice kind smile and white, perfect teeth. Either he had false teeth or he spent a lot of money on his teeth to have teeth that looked that good at his age. Even though she tried and failed miserably, she tried reading his face in the way that he was always able to read her face. She felt so transparent when with him.

In the way he already knew her story, she wondered what his story was and why someone like him was living here and like this. Maybe living here among the blight was all that he could afford on his Social Security. Maybe just tired of all the bullshit, he had come here to this Hell on Earth to die.

"You have a wonderful face. You have a beautiful face. I love your face. In the way that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa or in the way that Rembrandt painted all of his portraits over and again before releasing them to the world, I love drawing your face. There's character and a story written all over your face," he said letting go of her face.

She looked at him with skepticism while he looked at her with adoration.

"Thank you but I don't have a beautiful face. I have a plain face. If anything, compared to what men think are pretty and compared to celebrities, I have an ugly face," she said wishing that she worn more makeup and concealer than she did.

She always wanted to have her face done at a department store's makeup counter but she never had the extra money to buy all of the makeup that they'd no doubt pressure her to buy.

"What makes your face so very special are your big, expressive, blue eyes. What makes your face unique is the way that your soft, long, blonde hair frames your face in the way that a nightlight gives ambience to a room," he said. "You have the kind of face that I love to draw."

Wow, she thought to herself. That was the best compliment she's ever received. Either he's drunk, crazy, or in love with her, she didn't know which. If only he was younger, she'd kiss him. If only he was younger, she'd allow him to feel her breasts.

"Thank you but I'm not very pretty," she said again while soaking in all the compliments she's never heard and no one's ever given her before.

He smiled at her while putting a fatherly hand on her knee.

"I'll have you know without makeup, lighting, and talented photographers, some of the women who you think are the most beautiful are not so beautiful at all. The most beautiful women are the most photogenic women and the reason why these women are so photogenic is because they have big features that show up on film and on canvass. Gisele Bundchen is one such woman. If you saw her out on the street without her makeup and her hair done, other than the fact that she's so tall, you'd never recognize her as a supermodel," he said.

He looked at her while waiting for her obvious response.

"I understand what you're saying, I do and I thank you for the pep talk but when I look in the mirror, I see myself as others see me and not as you see me," she said. "In that regard, you make me feel special. In that regard and in the way you draw me, you make me look better looking than I am."

As if he was an oracle and indeed he was, he gave her a wisely insightful smile.

"You're too used to seeing your own face. You don't see yourself in the way that I see you. I see women and faces different than you. After having drawn thousands of faces, no one is more critical of faces than I am and you have one of the most beautiful faces I've ever seen," he said.

She couldn't help but time his compliment to heart. She was soaring as if she was high. He called her beautiful.

"Thank you but either you're losing your eyesight, you're drunk, or your nuts," she said with a laugh.

He shook his head in rejection of her comment.

"The most beautiful women are those women who have big eyes, large noses, high cheekbones, and protruding chins. Just as a singer wouldn't be as good without their sound stages, studios, and mixer men working on their behalf behind the scenes on a sound board, you wouldn't look twice at women you believe are beautiful if you saw them on the street without their makeup. Without their entourage of hairstylist, cosmeticians, and fashion designers, at best they're average looking people just like you."

From beautiful she was now relegated to being average only she knew what he meant and what he meant to say wasn't insulting her just his way of trying to uplift her.

"Thank you, Jerry," said Ginny.

They remained silent while he stared at her face as if seeing it for the first time or as if seeing something in her face that he hadn't noticed before.

"I'm hooked. I can't stop looking at your face," he said finally turning away from her as if he was embarrassed that he had said so much about her face. "Always inspired to draw your face, wanting to capture your every look, a multitude of facial expressions, I can't stop myself from wanting to draw your face over and again.

She thought about her hair. It was such a mess.

"I need to get my hair cut," she said pulling a handful of hair over her shoulder.

"Yet, with your hair distracting and taking away from my looking at your face, your hair and your face are at odds with one another. If you don't mind me saying, you'd look better with a shorter hairstyle, one that comes to your jawline," he said. "You'd look better with a hairstyle that compliments your cheekbones instead of a hairstyle that conceals them. You seem to prefer to hide you face with your hair but that's a mistake."