People Watching (OPEN)

[Gwendolyn James]

It was a typical weekend mall day. People EVERYWHERE. Gwyn sat in the food court, elbow draped over the back of her chair while the other held a smoothie to her lips. Mmm, strawberry banana. One leg crossed over the other, candy apple red pump bobbing with the movement of her foot.

Her aqua gaze swept slowly over the open area, watching the plethora of people walking by. A skater punk with a bad haircut and his chubby cronie. A disgustingly cute couple, a woman with a baby in a stroller, a couple of giggling girls.

'Hm, nice shoes.' She commented mentally as one of the girls walked by. But then her interest was gone again, and she continued watching with her darkly outlined eyes. Today her hair was blonde and green with pink, orange and yellow plastic hair clips. You know, the cute animals and bows that children used to wear in the 90's.

[Allen Daughtry]

'Malls make for the best sight seeing.'

Allen Daughtry wasn't one to really care for the atmosphere of the shopping malls or their materialistic nature, but business had been enough to force his hand. Earlier that day, while casually strolling through the halls of Moral Crest (and literally minding his own business), his favored ebony-tinted sunglasses had been shattered by the heavy foot of some cocky passerby. After a bloody massacre of a fight, Daughtry was forced to spend the entire day without his unnecessary eye protection, and found himself grumbling the entire day.

Once school was out, he practically ran for the mall. Once he arrived, a simple beeline to the nearby eye doctor led him to find a new pair of sunglasses that were tougher and bolder than his last. The new gray-tinted shades now sat comfortably over his cerulean gaze as he finished a bite to eat, the last morsels of a fast food cheeseburger still held in one hand while the other kept the tray under it. He stood against a nearby wall, his newly shaded eyes happily glancing to and fro across the heads around him, noticing big details, but not caring to take in much of the little ones yet.

As he finished the food and tapped his chest to relieve himself of some indigestion, Allen prepared to take his leave when he noticed a strange looking girl looking bored at one of the nearby tables. She was most certainly younger, yet her hairstyle was seemingly everywhere in color.

"You're an easy one to spot, aren't ya?" Daughtry finally asked, his hands slipped away in the large pockets of his overcoat, the brand new shades gazing downward onto the girl's form as he kept a neutral frown of curiosity, "Trying to break apart from the crowd here? Teenage crisis?"[/font]

[Gwendolyn James]

"You're an easy one to spot, aren't ya?"

Aqua hues blinked, and she glanced up as a blonde haired boy approached her, he had a big coat and his eyes were hidden with sunglasses. Sunglasses inside? Well that was certainly interesting. Or weird. She gave him a once-over before looking back up to his face, a delicate puzzled expression on her face.

"Trying to break apart from the crowd here? Teenage crisis?"

Pfft, teenage crisis? Any kid that walked around slightly out of the norm of the Hundred-dollar haircut hair, Abercrombie, cookie cutter, blend-in-the-crowd zombie was having a crisis. Gwyn thought those doofs were the one's with the crisis. Her parents would love for her to be one of them, so that at the friend parties she would look just like the other doctor's/lawyer's Barbie daughters. No thank you.

She gave him an amused, closed-mouth laugh, the kind that sounded kind of like 'hmhmhmhmhm...' before giving him a pearly grin.

"You're witty."

That was it. No hello, no 'hey there hot stuff.' Just a brief lie observation, and a smile. What did he want, a life story or something?

[Allen Daughtry]

'Oooh, girlie wants to be a wall. That means I either leave or be a pain in the ass. I wonder which one it'll be today?'

Allen kept the sitting girl in his peripheral vision as he leaned back into the nearby wall and pocketed his hands, sitting motionless, a sentinel of curiosity. Just before, he had tossed out what was left of the hamburger he had for dinner with a nonchalant underhand toss into where ever the nearest trash can had been, and had barely landed the shot. He didn't cheer.

He let a smirk of its own build in his cheeks as he heard the girl's one and only response, something that spoke bounds when being so brief. He shrugged, and added "I try," before allowing a brief period of silence to fall between them.

He then turned his gaze to the crowd surrounding them. It was strange: to live in the United States had an incredibly wide swath of human nature, encompassing so much of the world's cultures and ethnicity, yet even still, separate areas had their own quirks. In Philadelphia, Allen had grown used to the dirty ghettos and rugged blue collar workers struggling to survive. In New York City, his brief visit saw him giving small tips to living statues and staring at aspiring theatrical players, business sharks and foreigners. San Francisco was different: a larger Asian community, a more obvious liberal and narrow minded way of life on one end mingling with a financially conservative and materialistic obsessive form on the other side, and plenty of young men and women that were far too impulsive when they dealt with anything in life.

The National Enquirer. Hummers and hybrid cars. Hollister and pre-worn jeans that cost ten bucks more than the already jacked up prices. Cappichinos and super size. All of it. He felt as if he had entered the dark side of America while mingling with its greatest perks. It was a mess. But it was also an incredibly stimulating sociological experience.

But enough of the logical side. It was time for Daughtry to take that significant portion of him and swing out some entertainment.

'Hell with it, let's push past the limit if we have to.'

"You know, it's funny," Daughtry finally begins, his eyes poised on the crowds as they pass by, his shades following the trails of ten year old cell phone users, sixteen year old single mothers, and forty-two year old women looking as if they never left high school, "The whole reason most people have such a hard time accepting themselves is because they're afraid of what others will think of them. And here we are, doing just that, watching them, judging them, with every nonchalant glance and thoughtless grin. It's truly incredible, the irony of it all, wouldn't you say?"

He never turned his eyes toward the girl, but let the grin widen, "Yes, what splendid irony this all is. This fear of ourselves."[/font]

[Gwendolyn James]

Gwyn turned to see him better, legs swinging to rest on the back of her chair, the top of the back tucked beneath her knees, feet hanging freely. Her back rested against the table, elbows bent and resting on the table top. Her aqua orbs moved from him to the people passing by, making mental notes and calculations from her once-over's, people were both fascinating and utterly useless at the same time. That's what made people watching so interesting, in her opinion.

When the boy issued his theory, Gwyn pressed her lips together thoughtfully, mulling his words over in her head. She hadn't thought of it that way before, of people being afraid of themselves and thus being able to accept themselves. She knew about how people have an innate need to fit in, or be accepted, or whatever that was called that she learned in Psychology class. Or, she should say, most people. Gwyn didn't care what people thought, in fact she did what she could to piss them off, make them uncomfortable, and be different. Many people found it repulsive, but at the same time intriguing because how on Earth could someone not want to fit in? She would have to be inhuman or something, right?

Pfft, wrong.

Gwyn tugged on a lime strand of hair, contemplating his hypothesis just as a porkly portly woman in leopard print pants walked by. Ew.

"I should say so. It's nice to be on the outside looking in, like you're observing an ant farm or something. If only I had a magnifying glass.."

[Allen Daughtry]

"What, so you could burn them?"

A grin of sarcasm formed in Daughtry's lips as he quipped back at the girl, his attention returning to her as she commented on her own analogy. She was right of course - this idea of watching other people through the gaze of an outside force, without personal connection, seeing an individual's life and activities in such a repetitive and gray manner that their life seemed to be routine, and in comparison to that of others, that everyone's lives were nothing more than redundant.

But like the need for a magnifying glass, to truly understand the life of an individual ant, one could not simply watch them from the distance, to join them with the rest of society. If someone wanted to truly understand the persona of a single person, they had to interact with them on an entirely different level - a much more intimate one.

In his own way, Allen Daughtry was a master of observation. Though he did not always notice the finest detail of a person or in an environment, he was often less interested in the specifics and more in the mood of the greater whole. He pulled together cultures, analyzed them, and learned how to respond to them. Yet, when it came to individual thought processes, he was still quite a novice.

He shifted his weight off of the nearby wall, and turned toward his right to direct himself at the girl. She had seemingly changed her seating position, her legs now adjacent to the back rest and her elbows supporting her on the table as she leaned back. He thought it was curious how she chose to position herself; though there was no particular symbolism behind it, she certainly stood out from other people. She was already easy enough to separate from the crowd passing by, like a dot of red on a canvas of white. Daughtry pondered if this was a sign to her own reason for watching the rest of society from the outside - because she was so different, or chose to be so.

"But using a looking glass can be so limited..." he commented as he smiled again, though retaining his restrained posture, "The only way to truly understand the people is by interacting with each and every single one. But I dare say that's impossible, so what's someone to do?"[/font]

[Gwendolyn James]

"What, so you could burn them?"

"Hahaha...yes."

Just imagine for a moment, these people walking by with their Abercrombie and Victoria's Secret bags on their arms, the monotonous tile of the mall turning into cement...a sidewalk. And she, Gwendolyn, towering above them all with a magnifying glass, tilting it just so to concentrate the sunlight into a fatal beam. Burning up the over-priced clothing and hundred dollar haircuts, scorching the yippy pocket pooches and 99 cent whoppers on their way to grease covered mouths.

When he spoke again, she blinked at him blankly, her face contorting into a mild look of disgust.

"I don't wish to truly understand anyone. As far as I'm concerned, people are tools to society, capitalism's puppets. Predictable and transparent and boring at any level beneath the surface."