Mirrors

   He took off the condom carelessly, threw it on the bin and look at himself in the mirror. For years, he had known he was a very attractive man. Men and women always made comments about how good he looked and how educated and well dressed he always was in parties, even if they weren’t the kind of parties to dress up to. His hair had always been shiny, his teeth white and his muscles very well toned and defined. He didn’t really have much to complain on the front.

 However, as he saw closed the door to pee in privacy, he looked at himself again on the mirror but saw someone else. He was suddenly looking at a short kid, kind of chubby and with a serious acne problem, which was odd because he seemed too young to be having acne problems. That was him when he was about ten years old, maybe a little younger or a little older. Maybe it wasn’t really him but the image he had of himself after so many years of looking at himself in mirrors.

 The man looked on, even after being done in the toilet. He looked at himself naked and saw beyond what people saw every single day. They loved his ripped abdomen but then he recalled he had worked for that body, day and night, paying month after month of a gym membership his parents had bought him to help his poor self-esteem. They had taken the advice of a teacher and the boy just ran with it, going every single day for a couple of hours. He was thirteen back then.

 Outside the bathroom, shuffling could be heard. He was back in the real world, a place he hated to be in but had to love in, like everyone else. Looking at mirrors had always been a way for him to be at ease, because that way he could see beyond everything. His goals were always clearer when he looked at himself on a mirror. It didn’t matter if it was the elevator of an old building or the wet toilet of a very rundown cruising bar; he felt mirror gave him a door, a way to escape.

 Sadly, there was no one to talk about what he felt. People always seem to now what he wanted and how he was going to get it. It was because he was better looking and a success romantically. They only knew the cover story but they were fascinated by that man that paid a great apartment, a car and many other things, only by modeling in underwear for several companies. And to be fair, he was very successful that way. But not enough. There were always younger, hotter models to be in advertisements of any kind, and they didn’t mind doing whatever the job needed them to do.

 That was how he started performing sexual favors in order to get money. However, at first he only did it to gain the contracts he needed so badly to keep having a stable income. But then, as he gained popularity, he started to do to win more money, to keep his lifestyle alive. It was impossible to live properly by only putting on a speedo. He needed to do more than that and he did. He took off every single piece of clothing and became an escort for the rich and wealthy who visited the city.

 He let water flow on the sink and looked at the water for a while. He put his hands under it for a bit and then used the humidity to comb his hair. It was a calming motion, to pull his hair back and forth, to get it just right on his head. It made his head quieter, better for thinking about what he was doing to do next. But the conclusion he reached was always the same: he needed the money, so he would keep going out with those rich men until he had enough saved to stop having sex with them.

 However, saving was not something he did, not as often as he wanted at least. Most of the money came and went, spent mostly on clothing, skincare, his gym membership and the payment of his debts, of which he mad many. All of that wasn’t cheap at all and only a very small amount of money was spared every month. That tiny amount went to his savings account but it almost didn’t grow at all. The last time he checked, he wasn’t close to live a really freed life. Not by a long shot.

 There was a knock on the door and then a deep voice. The man outside told him that he needed to get going, so he wanted to know if the younger man needed a ride. He answered “No”, bluntly. The man answered back with: “I had a great time. You can stay the rest of the night of you want”. When he heard the door of the bedroom closing, the young man stepped outside and noticed his client had left everything in a very neat order, except the bed sheets, which were a mess.

 He let himself fall on the bed and lay there naked for five minutes or so. It almost never happened that his clients just left. They normally wanted to talk or play some creepy old fantasy that they had. Even after the sex was done, they still wanted the charade to go on for as long as they wanted. They thought that time is money and when paying a room in a luxury hotel for a whole night, they wanted to get their money’s worth. The same was applied to him. He was no better than something like a room, a thing. He was very well aware of that analogy.

 He was merchandise. After all, it had been him who had started everything, even asking clients to recommend his services to others and so on. He had a website with pictures and videos, not showing his face of course, and it was visited daily by hundreds of lonely men. Only a handful could actually pay the price to spend a night with him, as he had several rules and conditions to actually let them even look at him. He used his looks in his own advantage and he did very well.

 However, he had heard of competition and there were many young men in need of money who delivered the same services for cheaper. They were mostly college or high school students who needed money to pay for education. And they were younger and better looking than him, at least in the eyes of his clients. He had to take care for them in the world of modeling and also in the world of escorts. His life was tougher than many would have thought so, but he had chosen and he always reminded himself of that.

 He got on his feet and walked towards the window. He looked outside: the sun was rising and, in a few hours, the streets would be filled with people going from one place to the other. He grabbed his jacket, which he had put on a chair just by the window, and took a lighter and a cigarette from one of the pockets. It wasn’t allowed but he didn’t care at all. He opened the window and started smoking, feeling the cold wind of the morning on his thighs, penis, abdomen and chest.

 He looked down, towards the people, and he kept thinking of other ways to achieve his ultimate goal, which was to live like a superstar without having to do everything that he did to live like that. He could learn a proper skill, but that meant spending money on education. That way was a no go from the start. He could create some kind of enterprise but he had no ideas of what to do. His body was all he had and it was already difficult enough to be a model in such a crowded industry.

 The cigarette fell to the ground when he finished smoking, when he realized there was no way out and he had to keep doing what he did, until something else happened and changed his world. There was no other way about it, no matter what people thought about his so-called advantages.

 He put on his clothes, looked at himself on the mirror once again and then stepped outside the room. In the elevator, he saw that kid from his past again but he closed his eyes until the machine stopped and he walked fast towards the exit, into the cold streets of an uninviting city.

Inside the storm

   The weather outside the terminal was terrible. The storm had been brewing for quite a while and it had finally unleashed itself unto the city in the ground. It had been going on for about three hours and, according to experts, rain could continue to fall for a very long time. It was not possible to know how many hours or even days that would be as the system had become the storm of nightmares and something like that was not going to go away in a couple of seconds.

 The airport had been packed earlier but, as night came, people were sent back to their homes or hotels, in the hope they could resume their journey the following day. That was not going to be possible but the hope for something better is always present in most people. They do incredible things because of that hope and that means they can be capable of some beautiful things but also of horrendous acts. It’s just the way humanity works and it will keep working like that forever.

 A perfect example of that would be Patricia King. She found herself in the bathroom the moment her airline announced, via speakers, that all their flights had been grounded and cancelled as the storm was impossible to get through. You probably don’t know this, but Mrs. King was a very determined individual. Not only she had become the top executive in her law firm in record time, she was well known among her colleagues for nailing every single case that landed in her office.

 Patricia King was hated and loved and both feelings were felt especially strong inside of the law firm she worked so hard in. She was applauded when applause was required but that did not mean everyone liked her, least of all Robert Frost. Frost had been her nemesis from the first moment she had entered the office tower in downtown where the firm was located. He had been the star of that place for many years, had built the image of the firm himself and saw King as a threat to everything he had done for himself and others.

 This was fast overheard by the woman, as she had learned from a young age to be alert for any kind of dissidence in the group she was in. She had been like that in college and in high school. Her classmates respected her but always knew when and what to talk about when she was around. That explained why, despite being so well regarded, she didn’t really have any friends. She lived alone and had never been in a romantic relationship with any man or woman. She wasn’t interested in “wasting her time”, as she had once phrased it to her own mother.

 However, Mrs. King cannot and should not be portrayed as a monster, a “power hungry bitch”, if you will. As a woman working in a man’s world, Patricia knew that she had to work twice as hard to get somewhere in life. And that’s exactly what she did: she started working at a very young age, earning money and saving it for the future. Her parents were very surprised when, at the age of sixteen, she was able to pay for her own new car, not requiring their help for any of it.

 She paid her way through college exactly the same way, grabbing most of the money saved from many summer jobs in her youth in order to get herself the best private education money could buy. As she was so focused on her goals, she achieved them all very easily; at least that’s what it seemed from an observer’s point of view. After all, Patricia always had a winning smile on her face and there was never a moment when she didn’t seem to know her next move.

 However, this was all a deception. She was a human being, flawed and imperfect. She had not been born special in any way and had to build herself to be who she wanted to become in the future. That’s why, realizing this in her early years of adolescence, she decided to stay focused and never drive off the road she had perfectly designed for her life. She knew she wanted to be well known but for helping people and being a lawyer was the perfect way to do so. She was decided.

 As she washed her face in the airport bathroom, after hearing the announcement of the cancellation of the flights, Patricia realized that, for the first time ever, she had no idea what to do next. Her plan had been to get back to her city, where she would give two lecture in different locations on the same day and then, she would sign the papers to buy herself a brand new office, finally a real space only to herself where she could give life to her very own law firm.

 She had been thinking about it for a very long time and finally the moment was perfect: she was beloved by the people that needed to love her and there were the exact amount of favors owed to her that she needed to make her dreams come true, at least the most urgent dreams. It was all-perfect but for every single thing to work, she needed to be in the city the next day. The storm had formed out of nowhere because she was always checking weather conditions and many other factors that may cause disruptions in her business. She planned it all.

 But, as life goes, not everything can be predicted. The world is ever changing, always throwing curve balls at existence, to see if something would change, from time to time. Patricia went back to the check-in counters and complained but the staff was leaving because the airport had been closed. Every single flight had been grounded. In a second, she realized she could pay for a private pilot to take her to the required destination. So, in the middle of the storm and with her only small suitcase, she left the terminal.

 Luckily, the last shuttle bus was right where it should be and it took her in only five minutes to the general aviation terminal. She was hoping to fin everything operating as normal but, of course, the terminal there was closed too. Drenched, she walked around, trying to think of something. Patricia then spotted a security guard and tried to bribe him in order for him to let her walk into the tarmac, where she would hopefully find an available pilot. But the man had no use for money. Big mistake.

 This is where everything went bad. Or maybe it should be said that it went worse, because this was not the first time Patricia had done something like that. As said before, people do bad and good things depending on the moment and Mrs. King was the type of person that was always two plays into the game. She had bribed before, she had used her looks to get evidence for cases and had even had sexual relations with men and women in order to get what she wanted, whatever it was.

 Patricia King was not the jewel everyone thought she was. There was something, however, that people could feel when they were around her. And it was that rotten piece of her soul, corrupted by greed, that made everyone think twice about being a little bit too close to her. Instinct had made great things for her but it had also being something very good for the people around her, as it warned them that Patricia was to be respected because of the danger she represented to herself and others.

 So she grabbed the guard’s gun and shot him, point blank. Her hands were covered in water and so was the gun. The thunders covered the noise. She managed to get to the tarmac and, what do you know, there was a pilot available, originally waiting for a wealthy client.

 One hour later, Patricia landed in her city. She was a bit dizzy and nauseated but ready for the big day that was awaiting her. This may serve as a remainder that we are all capable of horrible things. The thing is, we do not all cave to our deepest, darkest passions.

The tribe

   Once outside the darkness of he cave, the two men collapsed to the ground, exhausted. They had been lost for day, wondering in the dark, putting their hands on the foulest places. They had to be intelligent with their very small rations and their use of light. They had to flashlights that work on kinetic energy and one more that ran on normal batteries. That last one had depleted its energy in a single day. The others two had been of great help, even if the two men were not really strong at the moment.

 A couple of days latter, they woke up in a hut. They felt a strong smell near their noses and realized it was and indigenous woman, much older that they were, putting a bowl with some green paste inside beneath their nose. They didn’t want to be rude, but their reaction was to throw the bowl to the wall and crawl to the wall. It was then when they realized they had various cuts on the skin, plus many other bruises.

 Of course, they didn’t understand what she said but, somehow, she did seem to understand what they said. Maybe it was some kind of magic or maybe it was just an impression but in the following days, the two men regained their health and felt even better than before. They spent their days doing nothing until a man and a woman, also native to the jungle, came for them. Apparently, from what they could make of it, their nurse thought it was time for them to leave her and go back to civilization.

 The process was not immediate. They stayed with the tribe of the man and the woman for what seemed like a month. They didn’t speak their language wither, but that wasn’t necessary. Hands and body language was enough to communicate the most basic ideas so, in a matter of days, they were able to understand one another.

 Richard, who was the oldest of the two lost men, began to be interested in the ways of the jungle people, believing it to be very interesting how they use scorpion and spider venom to dip their arrows in and then hunt all of their meals. Apparently, the venom could be washed away from the flesh of the fallen animals and it wouldn’t affect one bite of a meal. He was very impressed by their agility and cunning too, as they seem no to be scared, in any moment.

 Lucas, the young one of the couple of rescued men, was not as interested in the hunting techniques as he was interested in the woman that had came for them to the old woman’s house. He had no idea of what her name was but he knew he loved her curves, her bright black hair, her big brown eyes and her full lips the color of strawberries. He couldn’t stop watching her everyday, even when she was doing her other chores such as cooking or helping the children of the tribe.

 Richard learned fast about their ways of hunting and in no time he was doing it himself, being able to bring a full-grown wild boar for dinner. Apparently, such a kill was a very uncommon occurrence as they tribe decided to hold a feast in their honor for their bravery and exemplary behavior. The natives had never seen foreign men before but they rather thought that Richard and Lucas had been sent by their gods to help them in times of need. That boar was not special. What was special was the fact that they hadn’t had anything decent to eat for a while.

 Every woman, man and child thanked the two of them and they rapidly learn some words that night, after they had heard them being repeated once and again and again. The celebration was topped off by the taking of a very powerful alcoholic beverage made from a mx of fruits the indigenous people picked up from all over the jungle. Richard was unsure about drinking it but Lucas did it in order to impress the woman he liked. It worked, as she thought he was brave for doing it.

 They both paid their bravery with three full days of chronic diarrhea and hallucinations. Richard had taken less than Lucas, but he too started seeing things once he got away of the village in order not to bother the others with his awful state. He would see his wife, his son and his parents. He had forgotten about them and maybe they had forgotten about him too. There, kneeling on the ground, he saw the image of his wife hugging and making love to another man. He also saw his little boy all grown up, turned into a man that was the opposite of what he had been. And his parents, dead for a long time.

 Lucas had it worse. He vomited and soiled himself several times. The woman he loved attended to him as his nurse and she feared the worst because he had really taken a lot of the beverage and she believed the messengers of the gods probably weren’t as tough in the stomach as the natives were. She did her best to keep him with them, helping him with cold water and prayer.

 He saw his family too. He didn’t have a wife and children but he did have friends, all of whom were giving him their back. He saw them saying how horrible of a person eh was and how disappointed they were of him. They also said that they had always thought he was a fake, always pretending to be something he wasn’t, always trying to be one step ahead of everyone to seem cool or whatever but he wasn’t. He heard the laughter louder and louder and he wanted to scream and pull off his skin to stop feeling the pain all over his body.

 After a while, their condition disappeared. The day Richard woke up from his visions, he was taken to a nearby river with freezing water. The shaman of the tribe made him swim in that water and when he was out, everyone cheered. Apparently, he had achieved another level in his status among them and he was proud of himself. However, he now had his family on his mind, calling for him from a distance. They were probably thinking he had died by now but he needed them to know he was a changed man, man that could make their family so much better now.

 He waited until Lucas came out of his sickness. He helped him out of the cold water in the river and then spoke to him alone, in a hut they had built only for them. It was the first time in a while that they were alone and that they spoke their language. Richard wanted Lucas to know he appreciated having a companion through this ordeal but that he had realized, thanks to the beverage, that he had responsibilities and that he had to fulfill them.

 Even being younger, Lucas understood what Richard was telling him but he also announced something: thanks to the visions, he had realized he needed to stay there with the tribe. He had seen his present and his past but also a glimpse of the future and he knew that the only real happiness that he could take away in this world was there, with the natives in the jungle. Even more, he had already decided to ask for the hand of his nurse in marriage, as he loved her deeply.

 The next day, Richard wanted to announce his intentions to the tribe but here was no need. They all knew what he was going to do and they had prepared a feast for him, to send him on his way. There was no psychotropic beverage this time, rather plenty of meat and some provisions he could take for his long way home. On a leaf, the shaman explained to him how to get to the nearest town from where he could possibly reach civilization.

 He thanked all of them and bid farewell to all of them, both in his language and in theirs. They were moved by this kindness and by the fact he hugged Lucas as a son, even if he wasn’t. He was thankful for his help and his support in the most difficult times, both in the jungle and in the cave. There were things that were a secret between them and Richard knew he could trust Lucas with all those revealed secrets.

 As he went away, the native nurse came to Lucas and said a few words by his ear. Somehow, he understood. That same night, they got married in the most beautiful ceremony the tribe had seen in a while. Everyone was happy, well-fed and very good health. The gods had really sent them. But for Lucas it was them, the tribe, that were the real saviors, making him realize what his life was and how to make it into something better, for him and the world.

Soon

   His body entered the water slowly and was soon covered in foam that smelled of vanilla. He sat down on the edge of the enormous Jacuzzi and just closed his eyes and pulled his head back. Adam was trying to relax after the party he had thrown, a luncheon in honor of all the donors that had decided to give money to the hospital his foundation ran. They were all nice people, always smiling and nodding and shaking hands with one another. Adam knew most of them really well, from other events and from social encounters, and he knew most of them wee awful people.

 He took advantage of their guilt to fuel his philanthropic endeavors with all the money they had to give which was a lot. They were owners of huge companies and brands and taking a thousand dollars out of their bank account was almost unnoticeable. Their guilt came from the fact that most of them were always doing something behind close doors, whether it was having an affair, or having links with organized crime or having some sort of sickness or condition that they didn’t want anyone to find out about, among other reasons.

 It’s not like they knew Adam knew but rather than they used any social service available to atone for their sins and guilt. For Adam, who was a young businessman and also the owner of several companies, that had to be taken advantage of, instead of potentially loosing that money to other “causes” like prostitutes or alcohol. He didn’t have to threaten or to convince anyone, they just did what he expected them to do and that had always been the case even when his father was alive.

 It had been five years ago that his father had died and had left him in charge of every single one of the companies he owned and also in possession of most of his estates. Of course, his siblings had attempted to fight this will but he soon clarified no one would be kicked out of nowhere and there would be no fighting among family members. He distributed the estate and was sure everyone was represented in the various businesses they had. That way he earned his family’s trust and also the respect of their community of wealth.

 In time, with his keen eye for business, he managed to win the respect of every single company owner in the country and was able to prove to them that his young age was not a downside of who he was but rather and interesting and potentially key characteristic. After all, his father had died when he was just twenty-seven years old and many in the companies and among his family thought he wasn’t mature enough. He had an older sister and his dad had partners who were more experienced. But the will of his father was respected and he ended up being what they all needed in order not to let everything be lost.

 However, he wasn’t perfect himself. It was not that Adam had any obvious flaw but rather that he had too much interest in his rivals and friends. He had many of them watched by private investigators, forming kind of a team that revealed to him every little dirty secret they all had behind close doors. This gave him the advantage in every business negotiation because, although he would never blackmail anyone, he knew how to use those secrets in his own advantage. He was truly obsessed with getting to know everything about a person and wouldn’t let his investigators rest if they hadn’t found anything meaty.

 In that luxurious bathtub, he would often have a bath, as he would check all the files on his investigations. He was very adamant that if there wasn’t any interesting discovery in the first month, he normally left the person alone unless it was a current rival of sorts. He didn’t want to be using all of that to be a rat. Business was business and that’s what it was all about but personal things, very personal ones were just out of bounds. He had discovered, for example, how some people he investigated were HIV positive or had cancer. This for example was never used against them and the files he had were destroyed because that was personal.

 What he liked to find was something like a love affair, like some weird transaction with the mob or something like that. Both those things made people feel very guilty and guilty people are not good for business. It was very easy beating them in that arena where he had learned to excel from a young age, thanks to the tutoring of his father. He used those really silly secrets to make them tremble in their pants and from there his victory was already settled.

 The fun thing about it all was that Adam tried to be the contrary of all those rivals. First of all, he wasn’t stupid enough to do something crooked. He had all kinds of advisors and people working for him that would tell him if he was making a mistake or how to achieve something without the need of dirty money or cheating. If he didn’t saw an honest way to do something, he simply didn’t do it. He was rich enough so it wasn’t that bad not to win more money. He wasn’t driven by money because he had learned to control his thirst for power.

 Besides, he was very open about his life, both personal and in business and was always very clear that he didn’t answer to any one in his personal decisions and that only his family mattered in his business ones. That was it so he wasn’t the best media character, even if some news outlets loved to show some pictures of him hugging beautiful models, kissing men and women or having luxurious holidays in some faraway hotspot.

 Adam was not about settling, that was true. He wouldn’t marry any women because he thought that kids would come soon and he didn’t wanted children not to have a father. Because he was always away for business, was always focused on that and had only a few very well defined moments during the week when he could just relax. He didn’t think a wife and kids deserved that, even if it came with all the money and privilege he had to offer. His mother insisted that he got married to continue the line and have someone inherit all of it when he died. And she was right but he had no idea how to accomplish that.

 He had also thought of the option of marrying a man but that had the same problems, minus the conceiving part that would be replaced by the whole process of adoption or by them using a surrogate mother, which was his favorite option of the two. Any way, he wouldn’t have time for them and he wanted to be able to share everything.

 The bottom thing was that he needed to love someone and that didn’t happen. He had sex often enough and went into dates and was charming as a man could be, but no one had really made him think about them as a potential wife or husband. He was very nice and a complete gentleman with them but he needed someone that gave him something he didn’t have, that made him feel unbalanced but, at the same time, that made him feel like everyone with that person was worth it.

 Adam was not very big on the concept of love. He thought it more like an alliance of sorts were two people realize they have to be together because they work much better as a team. He knew many people like that, friends and family, and he had the image of his parents, who had always loved each other just like that, helping each other and being the best partners one could ever see.

 With the soothing sound of water around him, Adam realized that some day he would want children, that one day he would want to wake up and find someone he loved to smell next to him. He was only thirty two years old and thought that maybe it could happen the next day or in a couple of years but he was sure it would happen because, sometimes, he felt that need but it wasn’t as strong as it could be. He knew it wasn’t strong enough yet.

 He then stood up and walked naked towards a wall, where some wind blowers dried him up. He had to stand there like the Vitruvius man, feeling the soft caress of all that wind. Then, his mouth began to feel dry and the world around him started to get distorted. He felt dizzy and tried to hold on to the well but he just fell to the ground, a marvelous granite floor.