No happy endings

   After it happened, I went right into the bathroom and pretended I was doing what people do in a bathroom. Of course, I had closed the door properly and, after a few minutes, I turned the faucet on to make water run and make them think I was washing my hands. But the truth was that I wasn’t doing any of that. I was staring at myself in the mirror, looking at a person that I knew but not really that well. I got closer to the glass and really tried to get in there, I really tried to see if there was a human behind those eyes. Maybe the one I thought I knew or maybe another, a new person that I had to get to know better.

 But no, it was me. It was me there, naked on a bathroom in which I had never been in. I decided right there that I wanted to leave but, after what was happening in there, I had no idea if anyone was going to let me leave. To be fair, they both looked like decent people, not the kind that put a lock on the door and then do something unspeakable. No, they really seemed like any other people or at least like any others that liked what they had started doing after a lot of drinks. But I did want to leave so that had to be my priority. In this day and age, I couldn’t just do as they pleased and forget myself in seconds.

 However, that was exactly what I did. I tried to forget myself for a while, trying to pretend I was some other person or that I was in some other place. It worked for short periods of time but then I had an interruption from reality and I had to start over again. But that had been a very good idea because, not much long after my escape to the bathroom, everything finished and we found ourselves catching our breaths. It was then I stepped out of that place, after arranging myself properly that is and checking that I had all my belongings on me. I know very well how rude that was of me, but there was no other way.

As I walked towards the bus stop, I tried to convince myself that was the best thing to do. After all, I didn’t even know them. I hardly knew their names and not so much more about them. I did not know what they did for a living and had no idea of the dog’s name, the one that had been sleeping in his little bed for all the time I had been in there. I didn’t get to ask how was it possible that they could afford such a nice place in such an expensive neighborhood, being only two people with, as far as I knew, fairly common incomes. But none of that was ever mention at any moment, as alcohol had played too much a role.

 I sat down at the bus stop. The place was lonely and freezing. Luckily, the next bus would pass in just a few minutes and I would be home in a rather short time, or so I hoped because of the late hour. When the bus got there, I noticed there were very few people in it at that time and the only ones there were all alone, not talking to anyone or having any kind of interaction. Somehow, I felt I belonged there at that moment, in that exact place in the world.

 When I got home, I checked my cellphone as I took off my clothes off for a second time that night. They had written me that they had loved their evening with me and would have loved for me to stay. I felt strange, wrong somehow. It was all made even weirder by the fact that the guy that wrote had a picture of their wedding as his profile picture on the app he used to contact me. It made me feel like an invader, like someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. And also, it made me feel lonely and not worthy of anything.

 I spent a few minutes in the dark, sitting on the edge of my bed, only wearing socks and briefs. I wondered about my life, my shitty little place, my horrible job and my absolute lack of friendships and real love possibilities. Instead of spending a fun night, which had been my intention all along, I was feeling horrible. Feelings of loneliness and sadness invaded my body and it was then when I moved to get under the covers and tuck myself in tightly in order for the warmth of the fabrics to make me feel a little less horrible.

 However, the mind always works more when left alone. So, I started thinking about the cute couple that I had met earlier. They had seen me at the bar, and we started drinking right then, drinking and drinking a lot. We did that for only a couple of hours and then they talked about their place and I just said “yes”, without any hesitation or doubt. I just pushed myself into something I didn’t know about, without measuring any possibility of danger or any outcomes. They had chosen me as their person for a while and it was just when I entered their place when I realized what I had become, at least that night.

 I was just a guy. I wasn’t me, with my personality and all the things that make myself the person that I am. They weren’t interested in that, so the alcohol collaborated with some part of my unconscious brain to just hide all that was me and “enjoy” myself that way. And I did, I cannot pretend I did not feel pleasure or happiness in different amounts. But it was right before running to the bathroom when I realized they just wanted a body there to be with them. I was not myself in the sense that there was no one inside that body, at least not the full me controlling everything, as it should always be the case.

 One has to do what one has to do, so I did. I made them happy or at least did exactly what they had probably thought about for a long time. I was the vessel for their imagination, for their pleasures and fantasies. And that was nice, I guess, but I have to believe someone, only one person, can also feel something for me and not only for the me that moves around the world but for the me that lives inside this body, the me that thinks and hurts and feels insane sometimes. Maybe someone can find a way to actually love me for who I am.

 But I won’t keep my hopes up. This is life, not a silly movie. There are no real happy endings.

My truth

   The moment I came out from the interview, I took out one my cigarettes and lit it up right there, in front of the office building. There was no one there doing the same thing, so of course people looked at me as if I was the strangest thing they had ever done, almost as if they had never even seen a human smoking in their lives. Maybe it was my clothes or the way I was standing up or maybe the fact that it was obvious I didn’t belong there. Maybe they were very good at looking through people and knowing their truth.

 I didn’t stay long to figure it out. With my cig on my mouth, I walked towards the bus stop. I didn’t really want to go back home so soon, so I wasn’t precisely running to grab the bus. I stood a bit far from the bus stop in order to finish the cigarette, as I thought of the questions they had asked me and the answers I had given. My truth right then and there was that I wanted to scream, to run away and just put my head inside a hole in the ground. I was frustrated and tired and just fed up with everything around me.

 My bus came in too fast, so I had to put off my cigarette. Luckily, the bus was not as filled up as it could have been. I was a bit pissed off that I had to pay for it, only because I knew going to that stupid interview had been a waste of time. The same thing had happened that year, once and again and again and again. Sometimes it was in places close to my home but I mostly had to travel by bus in order to just feel like an imbecile once I got to the actual interview. I had to sit there and pretend I knew shit about shit.

 Somehow, I had learned to pretend and lie in many parts of my life, but never in situations like interviews. Actually, more than not knowing how to do it, I think it was something related to not having the same mindset than the people doing the interview. I knew I wasn’t one of them. And I don’t mean it like saying I’m better or something like that. I’m certainly not better. But the point is we weren’t understanding each other because we were two very different types of people who could never connect at any level.

 That happened to me in every interview, from the moment I came out of college until today, six years later. Six years and I have never had a steady job because people won’t hire me. Maybe it’s lack of enthusiasm or maybe it’s just that I don’t have any skills or knowledge that can be applied in a “useful” job. And I live in a country were jobs are a precious thing, not really offered in every corner. And yet, some people get them and stay in them for several years or maybe all of their lives. And here I am, over thirty now, jobless and still wondering if I will ever be able to live by myself.

 As I step down the bus, a couple of blocks away from my house, I decide to take my ass to the nearest park. I have no need to hear my mother’s questions about the interview or feel how my dad looks at me knowing that I’m a complete and utter failure. No, I need to mix it up a little bit and maybe the park has exactly what I need. If I was a pothead, I would consider smoking there for a while but I cannot even have an interesting hobby like that one. I’m very boring and just sit there by myself.

 There are many guys walking dogs and old ladies also doing the same thing. I get obsessed for a while with people picking up their dogs businesses. Then, I remember why I’m there and my world just crumbles again. I feel the need to cry but I really don’t want to. I’m tired of having done that so many times in the past. It’s like I’m dried up, just too damn tired to shed one more tear into this ungrateful fucking world. I’d rather just stay put and think about something else, escape from everything once again.

 Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Why doesn’t that faggot just commit to something and start changing his ways? Why doesn’t he just become whatever it is that people are looking for in a worker? I mean, that’s what people do: they pretend to be this superhuman in order to be considered for anything from a job to a damn relationship. Fuck, even people that want to fuck each other lie about many things in order to get laid. So what’s up with this guy? Why doesn’t he just do what everybody else does and shut up?

 Well, I can’t. I physically can’t. I cannot pretend forever, I cannot work in something I despise or don’t even have an interest in. Of course I don’t have that luxury, to like what I work in. I don’t and I know that. But even in that case I just feel like I have no other option but being this sack of gas and shit that biology turned me into. I cannot just acquire all of those things that people have because it’s a case of you have it or you don’t. At least it is for me, from my point of view.

 Of course, you people are just thinking: “Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Why doesn’t he just do something, like all the rest of us do?” And the real answer to that is that I don’t have a fucking clue why I don’t do that, why I don’t just turn into someone else and become this being that everyone wants to be connected with. But I can’t. I have failed as a human male, I know that. And I’m trying to reconcile with that in a world that doesn’t give a fuck about individuals, where the group is always much more important than anything you might be feeling in your little weak head.

 When I realize it, it’s almost completely dark. The lamps on the park illuminate everything in the creepiest way and it does remind me that this city is filled with rapists, murderers, robbers and, the worst part, stupid fuckers. So I stand up and walk a few blocks towards home. I prepare in my mind phrases to tell my mother and my father. As I enter the building and press the elevator button, the sense of dread enters my soul once again. I feel awful, like crying once again, but I just don’t do it. What good will that make?

 I enter home and, as predicted, she asks me about how it went and my father looks at me over his glasses. I just say whatever thing it was that I prepared and then excuse myself because I really want to pee. And it’s true, but I also want to run away from there because I have no need to watch them look at me. I feel parents can really see through their children, even if they decide to buy the lies you tell them as their sons and daughters. Parents always know, in one way or the other, and that has always scared me.

 I enter the bathroom, close the door and pull out my penis. As I pee, I look myself at the mirror and see someone I don’t completely like. It’s not only his looks that I have always hated, but also the fact that he cannot be the person that everyone wants him to me, that he needs to be in order to survive this motherfucking world. Look at him, staring back at me with those depressing little eyes and that fucking brain that’s only filled with garbage. I can say I sometimes despise him to death.

 And his looks. He cannot even get anyone to fuck him and there is no doubt why. Never mind the tiny dick, just look at his face. He looks sick and oily, just disgusting. He finishes peeing, washes his hands in seconds and leaves. I enter my room and just fall on my bed. Again, I want to cry and scream and yell and hit and kick. But I can’t. I know nothing of the sorts will help me be whoever it is I’m supposed to be. It just won’t and I don’t know what to do next, when to just quit for good. It seems like the obvious choice.

 How many times can I stand being rejected for a job interview? For how long can I wait until I understand that no one will ever hire me to do anything? Am I resistant enough to last like this forever? Should I even keep doing that now, that I know the reality of who I am and my possibilities?

 I fall asleep and wake up in the middle of night. My mother apparently understood it all, because she didn’t wake me up or nothing. It’s four in the morning and my thoughts race through my head. I’m trying to stay in control, but sometimes it is taken from you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Being wild

      As he went down on me, I started looking up at the ceiling. I had been drinking quite a lot and then, he had rolled a marihuana cigarette in seconds and we had smoked it together while laughing about people that we had met in our pasts. We shared a lot and we knew it but, for the night, we had decided to remember certain things and not the whole picture. We hadn’t discussed it with so many words but it was clear to both of us the moment he had stepped in my apartment that night.

 It felt nice what he was doing and, I have to say, he looked better than ever. He had recently entered a gym and the results were already showing. Granted, he might never become an Olympic athlete or nothing like that, but he did look amazing, just like I remembered him from the past, or even better. Back then; he was tall but very skinny, with a beautiful body that had virtually no curves. I never complained then because our relationship was based on love and he had been my first love.

 This time around, however, as I closed my eyes out of pleasure, I knew that everything we did was simply based on lust. That love that had united us so many years ago had been dead for almost as long as we had been apart one from the other. We had lived a lot and we hadn’t spoken much through the years, only following each other on Facebook and such social networks where you can take a peak on the lives of others, almost always just to have something to regret.

 But then, we reinitiated our relationship by talking at least once every two months and then more and more often. As the time passed, we realized we had grown to be very different people socially but very alike in everything that had to do with sex. Sometimes, we would chat online for hours, talking about what we would do together if we could and things like that. I didn’t mind at all, as I had vowed to be a single man for a long while. I was certain that kind of flirting wouldn’t amount to anything.

 Him, however, had a very different life going on. As we started talking, he wouldn’t say much about himself and would often prefer to talk about me or about the times we had been dating. But eventually, he had to confess that he was not only dating someone, but that he had been doing so for more than a couple of years. Furthermore, he hinted to me once that his partner had proposed to him with a ring and everything one would imagine, but that they had agreed on marrying after they were able to afford living together and everything that came with that.

 At first, I had decided to slowly pull away from that friendship of sorts we had developed. For a while, I couldn’t understand why someone that was almost married would talk to me like he did. Furthermore, it was outstanding to read how he described my body with a precision I would never imagine a surgeon to have, much less a boyfriend I had spent less than half a year with. It scared me but at the same time it felt very flattering, as no one else was telling me the things he said so often.

 Then, one day, he wrote to me on my cellphone one afternoon. It was a weekday and he just said “Hi”. I said the same thing and then we engaged on the typical conversation one has with any living person: we talked about what was going on with both our lives, what we were doing right then and there and, finally, the weather and such things most people don’t really care about. Then, after about fifteen minutes of filler, he finally said what he had been wanting to say for a while: “I’m alone in my house now…”

 I immediately understood what he meant with that. He clearly wanted me to drop by and have sex with him. In minutes, he confessed he had been thinking of me for some time and that he wanted to feel again what he had felt with me back in the day. He was very flattering, telling me a bunch of stuff I was very glad to read. He told me I had been the best lover he had ever had and that my body was ingrained in his memory forever. He said all the right words, in the right order.

 However, I was reluctant because I remembered his almost husband. And I have to confess something: I have not been an angel all my life. I have been known to go to bed with people that had previous engagements, me knowing about the whole thing. The difference this time was that I actually knew him and I had been in a relationship with him. Somehow, that changed it all and I had to lie in order not to meet him for sex. One part of me wanted to but my true soul gained the upper hand.

 Not that my decision changed anything. Especially not after, one night during a shopping spree with a friend, I stumbled upon my former boyfriend and his fiancée. We couldn’t just pretend we hadn’t run into each other, so we decided to shake hands and talked a little in the middle of the mall. I don’t know how, but I ended up chatting it up with his partner and I have to say I found him to be a very nice person. He wasn’t the type of man I had envisioned for my former lover, but he was undeniable a good person and I understood why that relationship had formed and had lived through the years.

 However, I had no idea why the guy wanted to cheat on that nice man. I didn’t understand it at all and didn’t understood either when he called me out of the blue in order to invite me to a “game night” at their place. According to my former boyfriend, it had been his fiancée’s idea. I struggled with the decision of whether to go or not but finally the decision was taken for me, when the fiancée himself called me on my cellphone and begged for my presence. After that, I couldn’t say no.

 The evening, I have to say, was pretty tame. They drank conservatively and their jokes were just like their level of general fun: just average. Other friends of theirs were there, thank God, so the evening passed without a hitch until my ex-lover pulled me aside on the kitchen, touched my genitals over the fabric of the pants I was wearing, and told to my ear that he really wanted to fuck around with me. When he realized nothing could happen there, he told me the story he had created for his almost husband.

 He hadn’t told him that I was a former lover or boyfriend. He told him we had gone to college together and that we had gone out several times together because of mutual friends. But his lies proved unnecessary, because his fiancée never asked anything. He was being a gracious host and a nice person overall, not drilling into people’s lives or anything like that. That made me feel even worse when I got home. So that’s why I’m staring at the ceiling right now, trying not to think a lot or feel much.

 When he came back to kiss me on the lips, I did it in a very distracted fashion. He had come in to my apartment out of nowhere, as his fiancée had left the city for a couple of days because of a death in the family. He was in mourning, who know where, as the love of his life was getting rid of all his clothes and my clothes as well. Yes, I felt guilt but then I realized, or told myself at least, that none of that was my doing. I wasn’t the one doing something wrong, or so I told myself.

 As I had sex with him, I tried to dedicate my senses to the moment. The marihuana kicked in right when it had to. I heard his moans and I felt the heart of his body very close to mine. And we spent hours doing the same thing, in different ways.

 When he left early the following day, I realized that I was one kind of person. And I have to tell everyone that I’m not ashamed of that. I am the person that fucks someone that wants it and I’m the person that does something knowing the consequences and ramifications it could have, if any.