TOO YOUNG FOR LONELINESS - rory fleming

In a world without women he plays piano in the living room. He hears the phone ringing. He runs to the kitchen to pick it up. There is only static. He likes chatting with the phone operators of the different companies that call the house. He once talked to a guy from Time Warner who dreamed about Martians and multiverses. He goes and plays Moonlight Sonata. Disembodied, he watches himself sway, his back turned. He hears a knock at the door.  The music keeps playing after he leaves the bench. It’s a pizza.
 
"Pizza-man," he says, "Do you have a reason to keep living?"
 
The pizza-man is in his forties.
 
"I don’t have an answer to your question.  Is that Moonlight Sonata?"
 
He shuts the door. He looks at the box, Papa John’s. He rips the top off and dances with it to the melody of Moonlight Sonata. He draws a face on it. He imagined the first woman would look more like himself: with longer hair, a softer jaw. Luckily for him, the sharpie was black like his hair. He puts it down and continues dancing, now with his mother. Today he formed his first memory of her, at age sixteen.




Rory Fleming
The Disaster Artist
Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell