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.
