Changing lives

   Thomas had gotten used to working out almost every waking hour of the day. He would wake up very early in the morning, sometimes at five in the morning, in order to get dressed up fast, hop onto his wheelchair and then drive directly to the gym. He would help the owner open up shop and then he would spent the whole day in there, resting only once to have lunch in the gym’s cafeteria and sometimes to drink some water and other drinks he ingested in order to have proper level of vitamins and all of those.

 He had been invested in growing his strength since he had came back from his service overseas. He had lost one leg and had been in treatment for his other one for a long time. Actually, the only times he spent out of the gym or his house would be spent in the hospital, in his treatment. He would have some physical therapy and then receive several shots that would help his body deal with all the scars and, especially, with the psychological consequences of everything that had happened in the desert.

 In his team, he hadn’t been a leader or someone too important. He was just one of the guys, trying to realize the mission that had been entrusted to them. They had to patrol small towns and suburbs looking for terrorists, for people attempting to use their dwindling power to hurt a bunch of invaders. He had told those exact words to his psychiatrist, telling her that he understood how damaging their existence there was but that he was younger somehow, even when it had happened only a few months before.

 Thomas was a bit resentful of the full thing, having no intention of going back or of wanting to contact the other guys that had participated in the war with him. Even watching pictures he had taken there was awful, hurting his head and his insides. He even burned some of them, but his wife prevented him from doing it with the whole lot. She hid everything in a box, far from his reach in order to preserver things she thought he would need in the future. She thought she knew what was best for him.

But in reality, she had no idea. What he wanted was to build himself up again, to be strong and fit in order for the world not to be able to destroy him. When his foot blew up, he felt he was made of clay or something like that. He felt like something and not someone, like one little piece in a large game that didn’t care about people like him. And he didn’t want to be just that, he had grown fed up of the whole soldier life, only entering it because he needed the money they paid to help his family out. But he had other dreams, before all of that. Not anymore though.

 Everyone person that went to that gym had grown to know Thomas in one-way or the other. They all knew he was the guy without one foot but also as the guy that could spend almost two hours in the same weight station. It was amazing to see him sweat but not care too much about it, going on and on. Many asked him for advice and he would give it to them but he was always clear about not letting them getting too close. He didn’t want any friends or anything of the sort. He didn’t want to compromise at all.

 That’s why his relationship with his wife had grown sour and stale. They didn’t have sex anymore and she claimed it wasn’t because of his accident but he felt that wasn’t the case. However, he was honest with himself and he knew he had relinquished any need for sexual relationships.  He had no interest in them, even if his penis proved to be working still. His doctors had assured him he could have children if he wanted to, but the truth was that he had no intention to have any kids.

 He wasn’t interested in living the life they had always wanted for him. His family, his wife, his friends in his soldier team and everyone else thought that knew what he needed in his life, what he had to and how he had to do it. And he had done exactly that for a long time, accepting the life he had been almost forced to live. But now he felt free somehow, he felt that by losing a part of himself, he had allowed real freedom to enter his life. It finally felt like he had a reason to live and not just go by.

 One day, his wife finally exploded in a fit of rage. She broke some plates and threw the box filled with his pictures and medals to his face. She yelled and demanded some action from him, something to tell her he was still the same man she had married. But the truth was that he wasn’t and he told her exactly that. He also said that he would be picking up his things and that he would be happy to sign any papers she wanted him to sign. He wheeled himself out of the house and then left for the gym.

 That night, he went back home to find it empty. She had probably left for her mother’s house or something. He stood up from the chair and decided right then and there that he didn’t need it anymore. He would get some crutches and then a prosthesis for his disappeared foot. He didn’t wanted to stay as a cripple, he needed to take the freedom he had been granted and use it to make whatever he wanted in life with it. He put all of his things on a few boxes, carried them to the car and then drove right into a motel to sleep for the night. It was the best night sleep he had in a long time.

 A few weeks later, he signed the papers his former wife’s lawyer had for him in his office. He was using the crutches then and had already sign up to get a prosthetic foot. It was going to cost a lot but him being a retiree from the army would get him some kind of discount. He was happy that day, celebrating the whole thing with one of his only friends, the owner of the gym. He was already thinking of getting a job, when his friend told him he would be welcome to work as a trainer in the gym. Thomas accepted in a heartbeat.

 He eventually got a nice little house, he was enjoying himself a lot at work and was even open to having new friends and maybe even a romantic relationship. He had built his body to be the one he wanted and now he was doing all he could to be the guy he had always wanted to be as desires and wishes go. He was finally himself and that made him smile from time to time, especially at those times he was alone and he remembered everything that had happened in his life and how much could still happen.

 Thomas was eager for more.

What is content?

   The world today is all about making things, producing whatever it is you want in the hopes that someone, somewhere, would want to own in some way, whatever it is you have made. Content creation is the biggest thing nowadays and the fun part of it all is that the ones who create that content are not even good at creating anything. They just grab the best parts of what interests people the most and they mash that up together in order to create something that will attract people to it.

 Usually, content means videos, texts and pictures, all trying to call your attention into something you are probably interesting in. There so many things around right now, that we can say for sure that there is something for everyone. Is not like in the past when people had to go places to look for what they liked and maybe what they liked was not widely available or was even forbidden. Nowadays, every single kind of content is available in your home, without even moving from your bed.

 And people complain about that. Actually, they have two ways of complaining: they want more information, even easier to attain at every single moment in their lives and every single place in the planet. But others want the opposite. As always in human history, there’s always a group, a very vocal one, that advocates for a return to the old days when everything was done by hand and when people didn’t have the same freedoms they have today. They phrase it differently but you know what I mean.

 I won’t say that these kind of people want less freedoms and less information, because many of them just want to be freed from things like social media and the pressures of modern life, but I bet there are some of them who don’t really like the fact that information gives freedom, it gives us power to know that there’s something better out there. Information is knowledge and knowledge is a big power that can never be underestimated. Just ask the ones that have used it to their advantage.

 Of course, not every single piece of information is valuable; just as not every single piece of content is good or even worth a look. We are being dumped tons and tons of shit every single day into our mind, by people and even by computer generated automatic services that read into what we like and enjoy, deciding then to sell us whatever it is they are pushing somewhere in the world or maybe closer to home. Maybe they want us to buy tickets for a sport event, or music from various artists. Maybe they even want us to buy time with some other person or a game that can shield us from the pressures mentioned before.

 This world is surprising in that it has some things that are surprising, amazing if you will, but there are others that have always remained the same. For one, our naiveté is still a big problem when someone else wants us to believe in whatever it is they are talking about or whatever they are trying us to do.  We are still very much a silly little creature that had the luck to evolve into something a little bit more versatile and interesting. And yet, we still like to believe what we know are lies.

 Maybe its because people have gotten used to having everything at hand, just in front of them, so they have left their defense mechanisms in a dark corner inside their minds, where it cannot help them when someone wants to take advantage of them. Humans have decided, actively, to let their guard down and just enjoy all the good things of being the most evolved creature on the planet’s surface. Sadly enough, there are bad things too and there are many bad humans around to make our lives not like a dream.

 But we were talking about content. And how does this all relate to that? Very simple: the content machine that has been created, where people ask for “community managers” in their companies, is all about trying to make us thing one thing that may not be true. Actually, it’s mostly never true. We are now offered various options and we have to decide which one is the real one, which will make us happy for sure. And when we decide, we mostly choose the most visual striking option.

 That’s because we are humans, we are attracted to everything that goes inside our heads through our eyes. It has always been like that, ever since publicity was created and all the attempts to sell whatever it is they were selling. Because you can better believe that every single piece of content today wants to sell you something. Only a small fraction has been created for your pure enjoyment and even that can be put into question. It’s all about buying, about exchanges between people that can go right or wrong.

 But the truth is that we don’t really mind at all. We don’t care what it is they want to do with us. We just conclude that it is all a tale trying to make us feel scared about big companies and the government and how the mighty God of capitalism works. Our reaction is one of contempt for the ones that try to warn us about the bad things behind this society that has become a huge marketplace where everything is exchanged, no matter what. There is always a buyer and there is always someone selling exactly what we are looking for, what we want the most.

 We don’t know how else to live anymore. If everything disappeared tomorrow, many people would collapse on the spot, not knowing what to expect from the world. And that’s very important, because people feel safe in this huge marketplace, they know how everything works and they like that. The unknown has only ever attracted a very small amount of people, the real adventure of not knowing what lies beyond. Most of us like a good routine and we stick to it even if we complain daily about it.

Well, that’s what content is all about. It’s brings a cozy feeling to people that sometimes think the world might be going down any day now. That’s why even the news coverage in general has changed, in order to adapt reality, those things that we always thought that they couldn’t be manipulated. History changes or at least the way we look at it. Our perspective is no longer ours, but someone else’s, someone behind a computer who wrote exactly what we are going to think about a certain subject.

 And I have bad news: they have succeeded. Because people are not critical anymore, they just listen and listen, read and read, they think they are building their own opinion but they are not. They are just choosing what they like from what they’ve heard and seen, not really digging deep into anything. That’s too much work.

 That’s how we live nowadays. So if we can still fight, making the kind of content that is free from everything and every form, maybe that way we can still have a little window of hope. Maybe that way we can actually give people hope for the future and even for a present that looks like one thing but that is most likely something else.

Words from within

   I have found myself without words, without a real need to speak out, to talk to anyone. I find every person to be utterly dull, to be devoid of anything really interesting to say, of anything that means something to me. Granted, it is my fault and my perception. I cannot explain why it happens and exactly how, but I realize it is something that is part of me and I cannot shake it off and continue my path through this world. Is not as simple as many people things. Demons are stronger, always.

 That does not mean they win every single time. It means the battles are always hard, filled with blood and sweat. And you will lose some of them, hopefully the ones that don’t really matter. If you lose, you learn. And that’s always good but not really. Because when you learn you have to have a good brain inside your skull. If you don’t, well, learning all you want won’t change a thing. You will always have a narrow-minded view of the world and that may not be the best in your life.

 I have learned a lot of things, I believe, both useful and useless. I know the names of all countries in the world and their capital cities but I have no idea how to use numbers beyond the most essential calculations. I know some things, here and there, about some of the world’s personalities, about animals and things all over the cosmos. But I have no idea what love is or what responsibility means for most of the people. I don’t even know if I want to know, but it’s clearly frowned upon.

 Not talking in a world that yells at you every single second of the day could even be dangerous. How to counter all of that crap that enters your ears and body? By talking, by having opinions and thinking. I do all that except the talking because I have found myself noticing there’s no one there to actually listen. And talking is only worth something when someone is listening and maybe they change their views on a subject because of what you said. That’s not happening to me.

 Granted, I’m not saying every single thing I say is worth something, anything for that matter. But I have realized that, as humans, we do need to be listened and for people to care, in any way possible. We need to feel we matter, that the world would be different if we suddenly disappeared. Sadly enough, the world wouldn’t really change if I died now, only a small fraction of it and only for a small amount of time. That’s not drama but a reality and the truth is not always something we want to listen to. But truth does not care about us, only about what is.

 Yet, I may be too much of a drama queen. Maybe every single thing that I’m thinking and writing right now is just in my mind. Maybe I’m worth much more than I feel to, maybe the world would change if I died right this moment. But something in me does not think so. Something inside of me, in my heart or brain or lungs, is trying to tell me that I’m hollow and that I simply don’t matter. Because another truth is that we don’t all matter and we’re just too afraid to realize that.

 So many billions of humans have lived, many more are alive right now and others are being born right now and in the future. Of all that cluster of human souls, only some of them really matter in some way. Maybe they discovered something or they made feel people good. It is possible they fought wars or their love, branded by words, transcended the borders of speech and time and truth. But those people are such a small group in such a vast amount of people. Just people.

 Yes, we all matter to someone, in a way. We all have parents and sisters and brothers and more family. Many have daughters and sons, lovers and pets. There’s always someone that remembers you. However, that may not be enough to some of us, especially when life has decided to make your life different, to make you the one to go through a path that not many people travel. And you don’t feel honored at all because it pisses you off how you feel like a gamble.

 I don’t speak that much because I hate my life. I don’t hate the people in it, because they have done their best. That’s another truth. But I do fucking hate that I have learned so much and really know so little. I hate that this world doesn’t seem to have a place for me. Each second that passes the air around me seems to be getting thinner and thinner. In some ways, I feel like an astronaut that has started drifting away from the spaceship and only has a limit amount of time left.

 I hear the clock ticking and ticking, passing too fast. Because people think there’s torture when time goes slow but that’s not the real nightmare. It is much worse when hours and minutes and days and years pass in the blink of an eye and you feel you’re still in the exact same place, as everyone else moved around and achieved so much. And you, me in this case, are drifting away more and more. Alarms make sounds all around you but there’s nothing really you can do besides waiting. You try to reach, to live, but life doesn’t really want you anymore.

 That’s how it feels. It feels as if you’re drowning slowly and no one should live through that. Not physically or figuratively. We don’t deserve to be killed in the slowest of fashions, as the world looks at us and judges us for not being brave enough to do things that we have no idea how to do. This world is wild, is a rabid animal that has to be tamed. It’s just a savage beast that wants more and more and more and we cannot all comply with its wishes. Maybe we’re too weak.

 That’s a factor, I guess. We might be too weak for this life or, at least, for the way we handle ourselves and everything around us. I find myself to weak write anything more right now. Every single thing takes a toll on our heads and it’s just too difficult to try to handle everything at the same time. It’s too hard and we’re not the same people that before, year ago. Those rugged men and women are not here anymore, maybe in some places thought. Most of us surrendered to our feelings.

 I just wanted you to think a little bit about the state of your mind, about how you really feel and how you live. Reality is a bitch but it’s the one we have to live in for the time we remain on this planet.

 If you can, help someone else live through this. If you can, help me.

Hand between thighs

   When Alan woke up, he felt a hand lodged right between his thighs, centimeters away from his genitals. He froze as soon as he open his eyes and realized he didn’t really knew what had happened the night before. Not minding the hand or the soft breathing next to him, he tried to remember where he was exactly and what had he done to get there.

 He remembered going to his friend Amelia’s house as she had organized a party for her boyfriend, who had recently came back to the country after working with an NGO for several months in Africa. Alan had always thought Julio, Amelia’s boyfriend, was very handsome and kind and he always told her that if he had been gay, he would have been the one to get him. Amelia always responded to this by laughing and saying, “Right, you wish”. She had cooked some things, bought other things and had bought lots to drink for the many people that were coming.

 At first, it had been a nice little gathering of people and, as it was a surprise party, it had been really nice when Julio had come in and he was truly surprised to see so many people there. Alan ate a lot and then began to drink, just like the rest of the people. Music slowly changed throughout the night and after midnight they were already dancing all over the place. Everyone was having fun. And that’s all Alan could remember clearly. Memories become blurry after that.

 He turned around his head to the left and realized, although the hand between his thighs was a good indicator, that he was naked. His clothes were all over the floor, his underwear on top of a shoe that wasn’t his. He turned around his head to the right and expected not to see whoever it was awake but he wasn’t. He had his eyes closed and he was a very cute guy. Cuter than most men he had ever had sex with. But no matter how hard he tried; he couldn’t remember who he was.

 After dancing had begun, he thought he remembered drinking a lot more. He probably mixed liquors and that’s why his head didn’t feel so good. And his stomach wasn’t too great either. He closed his eyes for a while and tried to think about what he should do. He ended up remembering a conversation with Julio about some political issue in Africa and with Amelia about how hot someone was. He didn’t really remember who he was talking about but he remembered saying something about an ass.

 Carefully, he lifted the bed sheet to see it if the guy’s ass made him remember anything else but it didn’t. It was nice though and he couldn’t help but appreciating that the guy slept on his chest and with his face towards him. He almost laughed at this stupid thought but he contained himself and realized it was probably time to go.

 The hand was the most difficult part.  The best way to do it was to make him move the hand instead of Alan taking it and moving it himself. So he just moved his legs and feet a bit and that made the guy turn his head around and remove his hand from where it was, instead putting it right under his body. Alan waited for further movement but it didn’t happen, so as silently as he could, he got out of the bed.

 He suddenly had a string urge to sneeze and grab his nose just in the right way not to make a big noise. He had a bit of a dust allergy and he realized the floor was not precisely spotless. There were little balls of dust here and there and he decided to get his clothes fast, before he needed to sneeze again. He grabbed his underwear first, then one sock that was on the bed, then his pants on top of the other guy’s shirt. His shirt was on a chair, as well as his jacket and, finally, his other sock on the nightstand near the possible owner of the room.

 Alan realized two things right there: that he might not be in that guy’s place and that he had no idea where his shoes were. He looked beneath the bed and under every piece of clothing still on the floor but he couldn’t find anything. So if they weren’t there, they had to be outside. Hoping not to have to wake up the guy, he grabbed the door handle and pushed as slowly as he could. The door didn’t make a noise and he closed it with care.

 Effectively, his shoes were on the corridor outside. He got dressed right there and in a few seconds he was clothed and walking to the main door. The apartment was nice, although a bit dusty too in the social areas. There was an opened bottle of wine on the coffee table and two glasses. Those were probably theirs and that really explained why Alan had such a need to eat something or vomit. He had never been a good wine drinker and realized he must have been really drunk to accept wine.

 He put on his shoes right on the door, checked his jacket for his wallet and cellphone and when he felt them, he opened the door, got out and closed without minding the slamming sound. He was out anyway, so he didn’t really care anymore. He walked towards an elevator and press the down button and then had a memory, a confusing one, of having kissed someone in an elevator recently. Not a surprise.

 When the elevator opened, a woman not much older than Alan came out and greeted him. He walked into the elevator and, just as the doors were closing, he saw she was standing in front of the apartment he had just left and was looking for her keys. He opened his mouth in surprise and wondered who she might have been.

 Moments later, on the street, he quickly knew where he was and where he had to walk to catch a bus towards his house. It was very early and it was, if Alan remembered correctly, a Saturday. So that explained why the woman was visiting he guy he had been with. Maybe it was his sister. Or maybe it was a friend that had keys, but that didn’t really make any sense. Or she could have been his roommate. After all, he remembered seeing a couple of closed doors. If only he could remember anything about his likely conversation with him.

 When he got to the bus stop, he tried to straighten his hair and look a bit less “hangover” in the face. But that was probably impossible so he just sat in the small metal bench and waited for his bus. He checked the number on his cellphone and then realized he maybe used the phone the night before. So he checked for pictures and, he certainly had many of those but not the kind he was hoping for.

 He almost dropped the phone and had to lower the brightness of the screen so no one else could see, even if he was alone at the bus stop. There were five pictures and in all of them he was having what looked like great sex with the guy he had woken up next to. He certainly didn’t remember that but then something woke up some of his neurons: in one of pictures, he could see the guy had a tattoo of a Celtic symbol on his arm. He remembered having talked about it but not with whom. Probably that guy…

 He knew he said he knew what the symbol meant and he did: it was about eternity and everlasting energy or something like that. Maybe that had been his so-called “pick up line”. Alan didn’t really use those but maybe it had worked that way for him. He also had a couple of pictures in the party but that he remembered very well because they had been taken early in the night.

 The bus arrived; he passed his card and then sat down in the back row. He looked at people and cars and dogs as the bus took him home and when he finally got there he just took off his clothes again and got in bed. But he couldn’t really fall asleep. He was still thinking of the guy and how guilty he felt not knowing who he was, at least a name or something about their conversation or what the sex was like.

 He really was an attractive guy so Alan wondered how he made it happen. Maybe the guy was desperate or maybe Alan had some charm he didn’t even know was there. Maybe he should have stayed in that bed, with that hand between his thighs in order to know more about that guy and possibly about himself. What harm could it have done?