Russian Beauty

Christopher Lee is an exquisite person. He has only been walking this Earth for twenty-two years, but it’s quite obvious to anyone who has the fortunate experience to cross paths with him that he is special. He is, without a doubt, the perfect man to bring home to your parents. His skills in the kitchen, his ease to make conversation, and his respect for all those around him, especially the complicated females of the world, will inevitably gain your mother’s approval. And his never-ending level of respect for his superiors and significant others as well as his need to protect those important to him will astonish your father, for a father’s main goal in life is to protect his little girl and it’d be hard for him to realize that his little girl is all grown up and has found someone perfect for her. Not to mention, the fact that all of his pants, including his lazy day sweatpants, were fitted to his waist perfectly, barely showing the waistline of his boxers and not hanging obnoxiously low on his bum was a huge positive. After all, Christopher Lee was always rather stylish.

Unfortunately for everyone though, Christopher Lee has a girlfriend who he’s amazingly devoted to. She lives in Russia, and she is rumored to be beautiful with her naturally slim and curvaceous body, lightly tanned skin, blonde-brown hair, and intense blue eyes – the same shade as the vast oceans of the world.

Keeping up a regular long distance relationship within the confines of the same state is a tremendous challenge within itself, but a long distance relationship overseas takes a miracle. But because Christopher Lee, of all people in the world, is half of that dynamic duo, it’s destined to succeed. They keep their relationship alive by telling drab yet truthful stories of their passing days, explaining both the excitement and annoyances that those around them bring, and writing down their passionate sweet nothings on lined paper. They carefully fold up their letters, packing them into envelopes and carefully sealing them with a kiss that would eventually make it to their beloved once it travels over the Atlantic Ocean.

Christopher tells those who surround him, including myself, that he will visit his boo soon. He assures us that he is to do so since he hasn’t seen her since her three month long vacation to South Carolina two years ago. Despite the fact that they now have over five thousand miles separating them instead of the five feet that were between their old apartment doors, their love has still remained strong. Christopher keeps telling me that because he has invested so much time and love into their relationship there’s no way he could ever forget her and move on. Money is just tight with him right now, he goes on to explain to me. Money is just tight. His reasoning is believable since the economy has been far from exponential these days, making it hard for everyone to keep a steady well-paying job, and although Christopher Lee is an extraordinary person, he is still a starving artist that is enduring the struggle alongside most Americans, trying to make it big and bring in money steadily for his tiny household.

And because his argument makes so much sense, I would normally be quick to believe him, but this is one of those times where you know someone is lying with no evil intent. He wants to ease the guilt eating him from the inside out, haunting his every thought once he’s alone, because lately, Christopher Lee lacks that cliché yet amazing sparkle in his eye when he is talking about his Russian beauty. It has slowly been decreasing in its strength. That sparkle that makes every girls heart melt is still there, but it no longer shines as bright.

She’s the love of my life, he continuously explains to us. I’ll visit her, he promises, once I find a steady job when I find the time to go job hunting.

Miraculously, he never finds the time to go job hunting, but he always finds time to walk around town aimlessly for hours, striking up a conversation with every person who crosses his path. It’s hard to not stop and chat when a man like him has that aura about him that welcomes you to do so. He has this classic beauty about him that catches one’s attention with ease, but by no means is he intimidating. No, he simply holds himself with grace since his tall and slender frame allows him to do so. And as much as he is elegant and wise, his childishness shows when he flicks his chestnut brown hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head, a trend that he picked up from who knows where. When you see a man like him walking towards you with a friendly smile on his luscious lips and stories of his beloved, you can’t help but stop and chat. And as you learn more and more about his mysterious Russian beauty, you can’t help but be fascinated by the way he describes her.

She is the love of Christopher’s life, after all, so she must be as beautiful and amazing as he describes her. He says that every time he looks up at the sky and allows himself to fall into a slumber, he dreams of her beautiful smile – a perfectly straight row of pearly white’s framed by plump, cupids-bow lips. Christopher goes on to explain that his girlfriend has skin like an angels and that she possesses a laugh that could only compare to wind chimes. Her hair changes colors in the light, alternating between a chestnut and a darker blonde, but it is long and wavy and never ceases to bring out the green flecks in her shining blue portals to the soul.

It’s a shame that as the days have slowly passed, his wondrous murmurings and tales of his beloved have dwindled in amount. The lack of his normal exuberance is obvious, but Christopher Lee is always back to himself when any of his favorite daily companions make their presence known.

The first time that I met Christopher Lee, I was enthralled by his tales of his long-distance girlfriend. Envy consumed me for the shortest period of time, since I have yearned for such an amazing relationship my entire life.

It’ll come to you in due time, Christopher would always remind me, just be patient. Good things come to you when you’re patient.

But as time slowly moved on, Christopher talked less of his beauty and focused more on his new friends, his favorite being a group of seventeen and eighteen year old girls that go to the local public school. Fortunately enough, I am part of that group, and I feel as if I have single-handedly witnessed the evolution of Christopher Lee, silently riding the roller coaster that is his life in the passenger seat of the same cab as him, though he is not fully aware of this epiphany. He often jokes around with us on our daily walks, ones that last for at least two hours every day of the year. Its completion is only hindered by rain, snow, and illness. It is a silent tradition that is too meaningful to be broken until we have no choice otherwise.

Such things probably wouldn’t make sense to an outsider since our walks are just hours of all of us joking around, laughing and smiling as we wander with no final destination in mind, only leaving one another once we get tired, receive a call telling us to go home, or must leave to go somewhere else where we are needed. But it is our daily ritual, and as I said before, our walks keep our minds off things. This tradition will not be ending any time soon. We often tease Christopher saying that he could be an incredibly flat-chested woman disguised as a twenty-two year old man since he always seems to relate and fit right in with us girls. Then again, despite his obvious gender, he has a slight bit of femininity to him which tends to lure us all in. He’s relatable and that is always something someone looks for in a friend. Yes, I can honestly say that Christopher Lee is one of my most cherished friendships, though our relationship is rather unconventional.

Christopher Lee is usually the only guy in our daily strolling group, aside from the occasional presence of our newest friend, Aaron. He’s relatively new to town and often joins us if he has nowhere else to be. He quickly identified with our sense of humor and fit right into our group. Ironically enough, I think he is Russian too, and when I’m alone in my bedroom at night, I often realize that he looks just like Christopher’s girlfriend, except his skin is much lighter, littered with the occasional freckle on his upper cheeks and nose, and his hair a darker shade of brown.

We met Aaron exactly two weeks after he moved to town. It was his first day at his new job at the local coffee shop in the middle of winter. Why someone would move in the middle of winter is beyond me, but that is beside the point since it is quite apparent that someone like Aaron would be the one to defy the odds and move in the middle of the winter. We had all decided that it was unnaturally cold since the weather for all of the days prior was pretty tolerable, so we decided to grab some coffee and hot cocoa to cool us down. We had padded into the coffee shop like penguins waddling in a line, draped in our winter coats, scarves, hats, and mittens. The tips of our noses were red and our cheeks were rosy, just as most people’s are in the middle of winter, like jolly Old Saint Nicholas.

We had paid no attention to the new boy behind the counter who served us our hot drinks, something we were truly gracious for since hot cocoa and coffee never ceased to warm one’s very core. However, he quickly grabbed our attention when his shift let off. Though he was supposed to leave the shop, he came to ask us one last time if there was anything else he could get us before he left, something that was very kind of him.

No, we answered him sincerely, not wanting to burden the newest citizen of our town.

We’d love for you to sit and have a chat with us though, Christopher declared, being his usual self. And Aaron had accepted the invitation graciously, falling victim to Christopher’s charm and easygoing personality just like the rest of us had, quickly inducting himself into our little group of friends.

At first, everything was the same as it always had been, with the exception of the addition of a new winter coat to our little bundle of friends. Christopher Lee had proclaimed his love of his girlfriend to Aaron, just as he had the rest of us, but eventually, Aaron too noticed Christopher’s decline in morale.

Strangely enough, Christopher began speaking less and less of his long-distance lover the more and more Aaron and Christopher would hang out together in their free time, when they were not partaking in our daily ritual. No, they would never be excused from our daily ritual.

Perhaps it was all a coincidence or perhaps there were secret forces at work that we were all oblivious to, because things slowly changed once they began spending time together as two best friends. It was understandable though. Christopher Lee must have gotten a bit tired from spending all of his free time with young girls. It’s to be expected that he’d love spending time with a male his own age, someone who could most definitely identify with him more than any of us could, though Christopher Lee will always be our flat-chested woman stuck in a twenty-two year old man’s body.

Soon enough, Christopher Lee started telling us stories about his Russian lover again, though he seemed to write to her less and less. Suspiciously enough, he stopped talking about her around Aaron too. It’s as if he brought her royal mysteriousness back into our lives to keep us happy, to satisfy our need for a new story and his need to continue his storytelling more than anything else. He even goes as far as to continue to promise us that he will save up and go visit her in Russia, though there is always a new excuse, because every time Aaron walks into the room, it seems as if Christopher Lee’s lover had never existed.