Palace pursuit

   The Tanjima pace had been deserted for half a century and it was now a museum. No one really knew why the palace had been evacuated one, out of the blue. The point was that people never returned and decided to settle in other areas, leaving the palace to decay rapidly. It was only recently, some five years ago, that a local businessman had decided to acquire the land and remodel the palace in order to exploit it commercially, as tourism was becoming more and more important in the region. His goal was been fulfilled, as it became one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country in only a few years.

Nathan and George were a couple that had just arrived from Japan and had decided to visit the palace. It was the beginning of winter, so the level of tourists in the place was not that high. They paid the entrance, grabbed a map and started walking. The palace was enormous and it also encompassed several land used as gardens and as farmland, so people could see how the rice and vegetables were grown for the inhabitants of the palace when it was occupied. It generated the first fight between the couple: Nathan wanted to go to the farmland, as they had a place where you could touch cows and horses. But George wanted to go to the gardens and see which flowers hadn’t yet died due to the winter.

 Of the two, Nathan was the more positive and upbeat one. He was always willing to help people and loved to sing pretty often. George, on the other hand, was cranky all the time except when he was in a romantic mood. The only way to calm him down when he was pissed about something was for Nathan to kiss him softly. Many people thought they were not the best match ever but they did get along well. The thing was that they always had these silly arguments that always took their time.

 Trying to decide what to do, they came to a crossroads: one-way the gardens, the other way to the stables. They looked at the map to know what was best but then something ran past their feet. When they looked for what that had been, they realized it was a dog. It was small and very hairy. It was one of those little dogs that need their facial hair to be cut regularly in order for them to see where they were going. But apparently he didn’t have any problem. He just sat there and stared.

 Nathan kneeled that and stroked the dog’s head. He didn’t do any noise, so Nathan proceeded to pat his back and stroke his ears too. And the dog just stayed there, moving his tail slowly. When Nathan was finished, the dog stared at George but George didn’t really like dogs. He thought they were always full of ticks and dirt and he just didn’t like pets all that much. That’s why they didn’t have any at home and Nathan had decided not to fight for one.

 The dog, realizing George wasn’t going make a move, come closer and then bit George hard in the sheen. It was very fast because when they started screaming and looking at the leg, the dog had already left. George was so angry he decided to run after the dog, even when Nathan told him that there was nothing wrong: the dog had not even left his teeth mark on the leg. But nothing could stop George when he was that angry so Nathan followed him.

 They ran downhill, towards the crops. George saw the dog going that way and ran after him because he wanted to grab him and file a complaint. He was like that, always thinking he was making a better world by complaining about everything. Nathan had learned how to handle it, often not even acknowledging his boyfriend, but sometimes it was difficult. For example, this dog thing reaction was disproportionate, especially when George, unaware the land around the crops was flooded, decided to run across them to get the dog, that had sat down on the other side, waiting.

 The result was George getting wet up to his knees with water and a security guard coming and telling them they could be fined for disturbing the crops. Nathan spoke with her and explained that George had just made a mistake and that he didn’t meant anything by it. She decided to let them go, seeing he had just ruined his pants but not any of the plants, and told them to stay away of the area. So Nathan had to push George away and the dog followed them until they were just in front of the stables.

 There, they quarreled for a while. George said that Nathan never really defended him when he was right but Nathan said he wasn’t even right in the first place. He was just being all crazy because a dog had bitten him softly on the leg. George declared that was an example of how his boyfriend always tried to make things that happened to him smaller, as if they weren’t really that important.

They were raising their voices so much that the tourists going into the stables looked at them and some even took pictures. It was only when the dog barked and ran inside, that the two men decided to stop talking and enter the place.

 It smelled like a proper farm and it had room for seven cows on one side and seven on the other. That was half the building. The other half was occupied by the horse area, were George ran to just after entering because he had seen the damned dog going that way. Nathan, not wanting to participate anymore, decided to caress some of the cows and take pictures with his cellphone. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his boyfriend; it was that he was very high maintenance and that was tiring.

 After fifteen minutes or so, Nathan went to the horse area and took some pictures in there too. He didn’t realize George was standing on the doorway, until he was closer. He asked him what he was doing and George responded that he was looking for the dog. Bored with that silly chase, Nathan decided to take picture of the horses, which were enormous. Then, a chilly gust of wind entered the building and he saw George just stay there and then walk like a zombie. He had to go after him.

 He caught up with him not very far, en route to the garden area. Then, out of the blue, the dog appeared and barked and George became crazy and launched himself at him. There was no way to stop him from behaving like that because the dog was doing exactly what drove him crazy: tainting home and making him fall and trip and follow running. The dog, Nathan thought, was smarter than any of the humans in the palace.

 He didn’t really run after George, just trying no to lose him. But then found himself with his boyfriend that had ran out of breath in front of a beautiful field of roses. He touched Geroge’s back and that made him raise his head to watch the beauty that unfolded in front of them: rectangular gardening area were roses of every single color had been planted. And they really were in every single color: red, blue, yellow, pink, brown, black…

 The couple got closer to look at them and realized there was a sign that said: “Please feel free to take any rose you want. You may only take 1 and it has to symbolize something to you”.

 They tried to decide and right then the dog appeared on one side of the rose field and had a red rose in its mouth. He got to Nathan and pushed him gently in order for him to grab the rose, which Nathan did. According to another sign, red meant passion and love. So he gave that flower to George without even thinking about it because he had just realized how much he loved him. He didn’t cared about having to run after him or stand by as he fought his battles. He could do that and more because he loved him.

 George’s eyes were watery but then he remembered he had to take a rose for Nathan. He looked at the dog and asked him which one he should get and the dog barked and both guys laughed. He went for the blue one, which was meant to symbolize all feeling that can live through time, like trust. And he trusted his life and his love to Nathan so he gave him that one.

 The dog disappeared as the two men kissed softly and embraces each other, running through the bushes to find another couple that maybe had come to the palace in need of some advice, without even knowing.

Morning after

   He woke up hugging his pillow and naked. He had no memory of when and why he had removed all of his clothes but a glance to the floor next to the bed proved it was all there, all over the place. Unfortunately, there was also a smell that hit him hard and fast and which he was not preferred for. He was too tired and dizzy to get up from the bed and grab everything and put it in a bag. But he had too because the smell was too powerful and he couldn’t rest in peace with vomit all over the place. Because that’s what the smell was.

 He did what he had to do as fast as he could and went back to bed. He didn’t put on underwear or even a t-shirt to counter the cold morning. He simply covered himself with the thick bedspread and closed his eyes, ready to sleep for a couple more hours. But he couldn’t. He turned around in bed, tried hugging the pillow, tried sleeping on the side, on his back or his chest, but none of the positions worked. He just couldn’t fall asleep and he found frustrating because he did feel tired.

 Apparently when arriving that morning, he had had the time to pull down the blinds on his window and that’s why it the place look nice and dark but according to his alarm clock it was almost one in the afternoon. He had no idea at what time he had arrived but he knew he wasn’t going to sleep anymore. And that frustrated him. Anyway, he stayed there and just closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the city.

 Suddenly, he heard the vibrating noise of his cellphone but the device was not on his night table. It wasn’t on the floor either and he hadn’t felt it in any of the clothes he had put on a bag to wash later. For a moment there, he thought he was imagining things and that the sound was only in his head. After all, he had a lot too drink and his body was still processing it all so maybe he was just hearing things that weren’t there. He closed his eyes, again, changed the position of his legs and tried to relax.

 But the sound came back. That humming sound felt near but it wasn’t in any of the obvious places, unless he had left it in the bathroom. But he didn’t remembered having been there after he arrived. So he stood up and went to the bathroom and didn’t find anything. Taking advantage of having stood up, he decided to pee and it was there when he realized where the cellphone was.

 When he finished in the bathroom he opened the door of his room, which was unusually closed, and found his boots lying there and his cellphone inside one of them. He couldn’t explain how he knew the device was there but the important thing was that he had found out and that he could happily return to his bed.

 There, he found out it had been a friend who had been calling, causing the cellphone to vibrate. She had called four times and had sent two messages asking if he was all right. He tried to remember if he knew why she was so worried but didn’t really know, although the most likely thing was that he had left the party without telling anyone and as drunk as he was she had been worried for him. He did kind of remember wandering around the streets, feeling the piercing cold of the morning and not even knowing exactly which bus he had to be taking to go back home. He finally got into one and probably fell asleep in it but woke up just a few blocks away from his usual stop.

 He decided to write a short message to his friend and let her know he was a bit confused and still dizzy but alive and well in his bed. She responded at once, telling him she had not been lucky enough to rest all day because she had a wedding to go and had to prepare for it. She was actually really late, even if the event was going to be place late that night. She told her friend to let her now the next time he decided to leave drunk from a party and he told her that if his brain worked that next time, she would get her warning.

 The man left his cellphone on the nightstand and just stayed there. He looked up to the ceiling but he was actually thinking about the party: he had been invited because the people that had organized it knew his friend but he had no real knowledge of anyone there. That’s why, from the moment he arrived to the moment he left, he started gulping down glass after glass of alcohol: wine, rum, vodka and so on. The cocktail he was making in his belly was more dangerous than any of the actual cocktails that were made for people in clubs and pubs.

 No one even looked at him all night, not to say “Hi” or to fake and interest and ask something. And to be honest, he happened to dislike most of the people more and more as the night went on and the alcohol dissolved in his body. They all seemed so pretentious, so full of shit to be honest, that he didn’t even want to be having a fake conversation with them, he though that would be even more excruciating that the embarrassment he felt when someone entered the bathroom when he was vomiting. But he never saw the face of the person, so he couldn’t care much.

 He left the party because, as always, he felt like the odd one out, like the different one even when he knew for a fact that he wasn’t different or special or anything like that. He didn’t have any tragedy in his life, he was suffering from anything like a disease or something and he was alive and well and living. He couldn’t really complain about anything but he left that party because he couldn’t take it anymore.

 It may have been the alcohol but he was sure that even sober he would have been bored even faster that he had been. Because he couldn’t try to join any of the conversations as people looked at him in bad way when he tried to enter one: he would just stand there and listen and try to elaborate some opinion on what they were talking about and then realize that some of the people looked at him as if he was something horrible standing there or, worse, as if he had no right to be there.

 He hated parties and going out and all that shit because of that, because every single time he did it he felt judged by one or many, he felt judged because he never had enough money to spend, he felt judged because he was in silence for long periods of time, he felt judged when he finally gave his opinion and people found it to be wrong somehow and it was very tiring. He realized that he gulped down alcohol when it was free and he could do it because it created a barrier that protected him from everyone being assholes and it kind of worked.

 But he knew he couldn’t do that always. He couldn’t just hide behind glasses and glasses of vodka because he wasn’t really that person, he wasn’t a drunkard because he loved alcohol, and he was one only when he felt the need to escape. And when he didn’t have any money he just left the places where he was because pressure proved to be too heavy sometimes. No one ever tried to stop him or anything but he did dream about that, he wanted someone some day to be finally interested by him, even if there was nothing to say.

 It was his belief that everyone wants that in life, everyone wants to feel interesting and wants someone to be there and be all amazed and dazzled by your life, even if there’s nothing that’s amazing or marvelous or interesting in it. He knew that he wanted that. Even more, he needed that person urgently but whoever he was, because it had to be a he, wasn’t here and with some many people in the world and his way of being and so on, he knew it would be different.

 He was clear too that he wouldn’t change his way of being, his personality, because that would be just compliance and trying to change to make others feel nice and he didn’t wanted to be one of those people. He wanted someone to be happy with the actual him and not with some clever invention that made everyone more comfortable. He actually pitied people that went through physical and personality changes just to please, he thought of them as pathetic little people that lacked the balls it needed to go through life, even when he also felt very weak most of the time.

 He decided to turn around, lay in his belly and just sleep a bit more. He finally felt he could close his eyes and go to a land that was only his and maybe there he would find that person he needed. Maybe they would hold hands and talk or just share a moment together. Then, when time would come to open his eyes, he would just promise to wait patiently until the day they would actually meet.

Humanity

    I feel I can’t even breathe, I can’t even talk like a normal person and everything I do tends to be joined by some kind of pain. Why is that? Why is it that whenever I want to do things right, they never really come down as easy as they should be or at least as enjoyable as they should be?

 They say, the people I guess, that the world is paved with good intentions. I don’t think that is true but if it were true, I think things would be much better than what they are. If good intentions were the norm, everyone would just be better off or at least would have more of a chance to make whatever they want to make come true.

 No, I’m not missing the point that such saying is precisely meant to be the opposite of what it is. Good intentions are obviously a façade, a way of getting into something and then you realize that being nice and good is simply not enough. You have to be bold and unapologetic. The thing is that when some people behave as such, they are admired and respected. People often love sincerity and that brass characteristic in some men and women. They would even go and call them “heroes”.

 But when others say the same things, even going a little further, then they are not heroes and they are considered just undesirable and annoying people. They are deemed not graceful enough by the rest of the so-called community and are treated worse than if they had a very contagious disease.

 That has happened to me many times. People told me I’m too shy, I never speak, I don’t talk and so on. And when I finally did and said what I had on my mind, many were shocked and seemed to confirm that the reason I didn’t speak up was actually a good one. Because most people mistrust the ones that don’t speak, that shy away from the lights of life.

 People love when a person just talks and talks and always has a story to tell. They don’t care if the story is real or not, they just love to hear and be in the presence of such gods of humanity who embody everything most people would like to be: confident, courageous, adventurous, experienced, interesting and many other character traits that are more realistic in a cartoon than in a real person.

 From the first years of school to the last years on Earth, people always seek those people out. If they can’t be like them, they want to be their friends, to always be close in order to catch those gems they often lay on the world, whether they are experiences that seem incredibly interesting or maybe a joke told in great way or romantic experience or whatever it is that makes them a magnet of attention.

  We are trained by society to be like that, to try to enter that select group. They teach us songs and they make us sing them in the presence of family members and even family friends and others. They make us repeat every word time and again and seek out new things for us to say, to make us interesting while we are children because there’s is an unspoken agreement that no one should be nasty to a child, at least not their face.

 Some kids succeed in the attempt initiated often by their parents (although the kid himself can do it) and then they are inside that group. The bad thing is that they don’t get to stay there forever. They have to keep doing things; they have to be little circus freaks, entertaining the world while they live their lives. Some people realized they are very good at this and others just fail and are forgotten.

 Of course, another way to get in later in life is when having good looks. In young life this doesn’t really count as judging kids by their looks is frowned upon by society, even if every single person has an actual opinions. But that ban is lifted in adolescence because that’s the moment you sort of transform into the person you are going to be for the rest of your life. So after puberty, everyone is magically entitled to judge you and every single person in the planet and, unfortunately, that’s one way to get noticed.

 If you are deemed good looking or beautiful or cute or whatever the word is, you will get into a select group that have certain privileges for a long period of life. Now that period of life is even longer than in other eras of humanity because now we judge more because we think we know more when the truth is that society is the same stupid animal that has thrown humanity of course thousands of times before and will keep doing it in the future.

 So you have to be interesting and beautiful and bold and nice and good and so many things that are not even clearly defined and that are just a mask that people put over their faces, their real faces and their real feelings about every single thing that happens in the world. Is not something revolutionary to say that many of those pretty faces, of those good people, are actually the front of the most despicable beings in the world. It has happened a lot that the mask just falls off and people realized that they cannot keep lying to themselves.

 To be clear, people know when those they admire are not real, are not honest and lie. But they simply look the other way, which is one of the main characteristics of the human being, which is not made of all good and lovable stuff. We are made of really slimy things and those characteristics have shifted the way humanity is many times.

 We are hypocrites. That’s the reality of everything, the truth of our existence and the reason I write and the reason you may read this to the end and the reason to many other things in this life. We love to do things in different ways, not always because we are dared but because we just want to disobey and create chaos. Other times we just nod and smile and nod and smile for life and there are many people in the world that are real professionals in the matter, people that have lied so well to others and for so long, that they have even begun to believe the lies they say.

 I’m not saying that the world is all made up of false and corrupt creatures but the goodness and perfection of it all is simply too annoying to be real, too superficial to be really something that anyone would authentically care about. I do think there is goodness and real feelings in people that can make them much more interesting than the superficial reasons most people use to get close to someone, to make their heroes. But those feelings are so ephemeral that most of the world doesn’t even care.

 The dangerous thing nowadays is all of this fake attention to issues that used to be taboo or forbidden or just dismissed in a second. Although many people really believe in discussing those subjects and be open and real, many more are using them to make them look better, to make them look like saviors and heroes again.

 There are people that simply do not care who they have to pass over as long as they get what they want. And the worst thing is that many others admire that in a person so it creates a very sick thing when someone is just deemed the best because they pretend to be something that they are not and are clearly doing wrong things to get there but they are all forgiven or forgotten.

 Yet, many others decide that they just don’t want to buy into all of that. They don’t want to be in those groups, in those sects that idealize every single aspect of a human’s life. Everything today is a standard, there is a very narrow path to follow is people decide to get off that standard. And even if they choose that path, the options at the end of it are scarce if they exist.

And it’s not about being different because that shouldn’t be a thing in life. At the end of the day, thanks to DNA, we are all different and that is obvious. We are not machines so we are not copies. Being different is imbedded in us so we shouldn’t praise or go after that because it’s who we are.

 I just hope my body let’s me speak and think again, soon.

Silences

   She had always loved to drive; as it liberated her from everything else she had been doing that day. When she drove back home from work, even with the traffic jams, she relaxed a lot and even stayed a bit in the car when arriving home just to think about one or two things. She also loved to be in bed with her husband and just share those priceless silences that people not really think about. Silence is beautiful when you feel you are complete with someone else and feel any sound would be just a disturbance, a nuisance. Emma and Greg had always had that kind of understanding and many people found it to be a bit disturbing but the truth was they didn’t really cared if other people approved or not of how they behave as a couple, they loved each other like mad.

 However, Emma one day realized she had been looking another man at work, someone she didn’t really know that well. She detailed everything he didn’t and she liked him right away because he stood away as different to the rest. Most of her coworkers were noisy and very annoying, always talking and mumbling and just behaving like parrots. The man she had discovered, who probably worked in another floor, was very different and was visibly shy and kept to himself. She realized, after several minutes, that she had been seeing him making copies and looking for a stapler, even as she had very big stack of work to do. When she came back to her senses, she felt oddly embarrassed and just went back to work.

 Emma had thought that behavior would only happen that one time but it didn’t. It started happening more and more, and not only with that man from work but also in the street, in stores and in the bus she took home when leaving the car there. She would just look at them carefully, appreciating everything they did, which was normally something really mundane and boring to everyone else but that seemed like magic to her. She didn’t really appreciated their bodies at all, she preferred to focus on their behavior and on whatever they were doing in the moment, no matter if it was listening to music, reading, jogging, talking on the phone or just standing there, close to her.

 If she was honest to herself, all of this made her feel very strange. She loved her husband but she just loved to look at this men just being there. She thought that maybe it was because she had been married so young and now she was getting interested in others but it was very particular that she didn’t even bothered to look at their faces sometimes and, if she did, she would discover that they didn’t looked at all like the men she supposedly found attractive. This went on for several months and for Emma it was something hard to process, because she had been living fifteen years of a very happy marriage and felt awful about what she was doing, as if she was cheating on her husband.

 One night, she decided to break their ceremonial silence and just tell Greg about what was happening to her. She hated the people that beat around the bush for hours without never ever getting to the point, so she went straight for it. It may have been a little harsh but Greg knew that was a trace of Emma’s personality that was just essential to her and he embraced that attribute with open arms. He just heard what she had to say and, after a detailed explanation of what was going on, he asked her if something else had happened. Obviously, he was worried she had cheated on him with one of these men. But she hadn’t done that so he just hugged her and told her there was nothing wring about what she did and even if something more happened, she could talk to him.

 The conversation was very positive for Emma, who had always known Greg would respond well to any issues that would be presented to him. So she kept on with her life, still looking at strangers and just that. Then, one day, one of these men looked back at her and just smiled. This tore apart everything she had thought about this strange process before and started to wonder if what she was looking for was some sort of action in her life. Of course, she didn’t like those disgusting men who looked like a cartoon character but she was still human and discovered she loved someone that looked much more deep and interesting that all the other men.

 With the man of the smile, she never had anything but she could’ve. The next man that smiled at her was lucky enough to receive a smile back and now her sessions looking at men involved much more interaction, often just smiling or staring mutually at each other. Most people would find that disturbing but to Emma it was all very alluring and it started to become almost sensual. She realized, although this was no real surprise, that she craved a real intimate life with a man. Her husband was kind and good and loyal but he wasn’t adventurous, he wasn’t passionate and that made her terribly sad.  It had always been like that but now, feeling more liberated, she had finally decided to accept it.

 One afternoon at work, when she stayed a bit more to finish up work, she found the first man she had been looking at in the elevator. She couldn’t resist looking and he responded by staring, never smiling. Then, without a word, he pressed the button of the next floor, stepped out there and looked back. Emma didn’t even doubt it and she followed him to a janitor’s closet where they had sex. As she expected, the sex was passionate but it was not vulgar. The sex was fulfilling but never disgusting or plain.  When she came back home, however, she knew she had to tell her husband so she did. She told him everything and then just waited for his answer. There was a long silence.

 Finally, he stated that he understood her and that he had felt like that too, some months ago. Of course, she instantly thought about asking if he had met someone too, but thought it was better not to push any subjects to the floor. Greg held Emma’s hand and asked her what she felt for him. Emma told him she loved him and she had never doubted it. But she also knew she was curious about the world and she wanted more from it now, more than he might be able to give to her. It hurt her a bit that a single tear slid down his face as he smiled and said that it was all fine, that he understood and that he just wanted to know if any feelings changed or if she started to change her mind about other things.

 She never had sex again with the man from her office but they did see each other often. It was incredible to realize that they had been feeling the same or at least seemed to agree on whatever it was they were looking for in other people. It wouldn’t be another couple of months until Emma had sex with another stranger, a man who was a bit more interesting that the man from the office simply because he really never spoke to her and didn’t even smiled or anything of the sort. It was very strange and even frightening but it made it him so interesting and attractive to her. She also told her husband about this man and he was also fine with it. She couldn’t deny it felt strange, but she knew she had become, a long time ago, into a real free woman.

 Time passed and her interest in men started to decline. She wasn’t just interested anymore and just wanted to dedicate the following years of her life to herself and her husband. She proposed for them to go away on a holiday, to some beautiful place far away, in order to just be with one another, in another background and see what they really felt for each other. The first time they had sex during that trip, neither of them could believe the change that had occurred in the last few years. It was obvious that something had changed and it apparently had changed for the better, as the two of them ended up being extremely happy with everything that happened. They did not discuss the reasons and it really wasn’t necessary as long as they were happy.

 And they were, for many years, until he died from a stroke. She cried all day long that day and when she finally stopped, she felt part of her soul die with him. She realized that she had loved him more than she could ever understand and that everything that had happened between them was just about learning and talking things, in their own way. She did discover he had been with someone else too, before she had her “season” but she never managed to discover who it was. Somehow she needed to know, to thank whomever it was. But that thought vanished in time and eventually she joined her husband, adoring him always.