No more parties

    After the tenth glass of vodka tonic, everything still looked the same. The place wasn’t nicer or more fun just because of that and the people in it just looked like normal people, just guys flocking around a compressed space, looking to have sexual intercourse with other men. That was the reality Ronald had chosen for himself that night and he had chosen that same reality some other times, when he felt especially horny but also very lonely. One of those parties usually cheered him up.

 However, that one had all the indications of a dud. He had been there for a whole hour and it had felt like four times that or even more. That was never a good indication of how much a place was fun or a party was entertaining. That’s why he started asking for those vodka tonics from the moment he arrived. The guy at the booze table wouldn’t even take a good look at him, he would just pour the liquids fast and try to keep the line moving or maybe he was making room for someone special.

 As for Ronnie, he did try to check out some of the other guys but they didn’t seem to care for his presence at all. Actually, some of them just seemed to not even acknowledge his existence. However, that was better than what others did: look at him straight in the eye, with the same expression they would use when glancing at a bag of decomposing garbage. They looked at his black socks, all the way up to his messy hair, and just made that ugly look that said more than a group of worse and even more than a good assortment of insults.

 He saw that look many times that night; even after he had been sitting down watching some guys play a dancing game. It looked fun and he would have liked to participate, but to his surprise, there were many guys coming in such a party in large groups. The four guys playing the dancing game seemed very friendly with one another, probably friends from college or something of the sort. So he kept to himself by the wall, downing his vodka, hoping the alcohol would help him have a bit of fun.

 Well, he never got drunk. After several glasses, he felt exactly the same way. He even went down to the rooms, the one’s with all the action. But there was nothing for him there. They were all filled to the top with men that would make a swimsuit model blush and cry. He tried to get into it but no one even wanted to touch him by accident. So he went back to the booze table and asked for one last glass of vodka tonic. He downed it slowly, watching people still getting in. Once he ran out of alcohol, he walked right to the entrance and asked for his things back. Leaving made sense.

 The guy tending to the reception seemed to be too important, as he ignored Ronald for a while. When he finally decided to pay attention to him, Ronald basically ripped the bag from his hands. He didn’t even looked at his face, not wanting to have anything else to do with that place. In a matter of moments, Ronald dressed up and ran down to the entrance of the building. He was about to call a taxi but he finally decided not to do that, as he felt he needed some time to think and walking seemed like a nice idea.

 That was probably the alcohol thinking because the area was not the safest one in the city. It wasn’t a pit of despair either, but let’s just say that people didn’t really walked around there at night just to be safe. Ronald didn’t mind, as he knew he was a fast walker and that was always important in cases one could be mugged. So he just closed up his jacket real good, checked he had everything with him and then he just walked out into the cold of the night. He could hear the music from the upstairs.

 In minutes, he was away from all of that. He was away from those bodies that had claimed the throne over anyone else, those bodies that had rendered everyone else useless and undeserving. He had all the images still in his head but he wanted to stop feeling like such a piece of trash. It was hard because being rejected like that, in such a blatant way, was always very hard on him. It wasn’t his first time in that rodeo and it certainly wasn’t something he was keen on repeating over and over in his life.

 He passed a small grocery store that, in order to sell beer and cigarettes to young people like him was still open so late at night. He laughed to himself, because it wasn’t really that late. He had stayed in the party for about two hours, between the moment he had entered to the moment he had left. And the party could last up to ten hours. So it was kind of fun. He decided to enter the grocery store and buy some chewing gum to mask his horrible vodka breath and to buy something to eat.

 When he got to the register, he paid for a pack of mint gum, two bags of chips (one lemon flavored and the other chicken flavored), a bottle of ice tea and chocolate bar in case he felt too cold. He got everything in one of those very cheap plastic bags and continued on his walk, heading home but not really having any rush to get anywhere. He wanted to eat his chips and just think, think about why it got to him so bad. Think about why he had let them get to him and his brain. Yeah, he was an average guy but somehow that had became something similar to a heresy or sometimes even worse.

 The hypocrites. Those were the worst. The ones that always praise you for being such an authentic and real guy and then just side with the new gods because it suits them best. Those fuckers don’t deserve to be paid attention by anyone; they would sell their mothers if it meant they could get to play with those they admire. It’s sad and pathetic and frankly extremely annoying, and that’s what made Ron leave the damn party and just have a nice walk home, however long it could take him.

 He was glad to see some street dogs wandering around. Some of them accompanied him for a big part of his walk, until they were apparently lured to the other side of a street by the smell of food. Actually, the smell of fried food also opened up Ronald’s appetite. The bags of chips and the ice tea had already been consumed and he was still very hungry. He knew he had some leftovers at home that his mother had kept for him, so he could already picture them on a plate, warm and cozy and he ate all of it.

 Walking faster was not really a possibility because the distance was quite big. He could get home but it would take time and getting tired before reaching the middle of the route would not be the smartest thing to do. So he just kept on walking, looking around for muggers or worse, and forgetting very slowly what had happened to him at the party. He would think about it from time to time, but he would actively decide to think about something else, because torture himself didn’t make any sense.

 It took him two hours to get home. His feet were destroyed when he opened the door carefully, in order not to make noise. He thought about eating the food but decided he was more tired than hungry. Besides, he could eat it all in the morning, as breakfast. He took off his shoes and entered his room slowly. He removed all of his clothes and then just entered the bed, which was very cold but kind of cozy anyway. He thought one last time about those men and their bodies and in a hush voice he just said, “Fuck them”.

 The day after, Ronald had a very fun family day with his parents. It wasn’t that they made something special but rather that he realized that there were things that he needed at one moment of his life and there were other things he liked to do or have when he was recuperating from a very annoying event.

 He quickly forgot about the party, the booze, the men in it and even the music. The fact that he decided to block all of that from his life had something to do with it. He just wanted to be happy and those parties were not being fun anymore. They had run their course in his life and now he needed to move on.

Reflection

   Once I got out of the shower, I looked at the mirror and realized no one was looking back to me. I hadn’t become a vampire or anything, it was just the steam that had rendered the mirror blurry and nothing could be seen. For a few seconds, however, I tried to look at myself on there. I pierced the glass, the fog and the humidity, but there was no one on the other side. It was better that way, I thought. I had never really liked mirrors but now I felt almost compelled to look at my face whenever I crossed paths with one.

 You see, I had accident a few months back and I got a very bad injury on my face. A piece of glass flew from the broken car window and slashed part of my right cheek. It was a deep cut and I lost a lot of blood because of it. Luckily, that was the most serious injury anyone received that day. No one died but I felt I was dying while they took me to the hospital and tried to save my face. And they did, they were really skillful at making my face look as if nothing had happened. A couple of days later, I was going home.

 However, I had seen myself in a mirror as they pushed my stretcher through the hospital. For a moment, they left me by an office and inside; I was able to look at my face and how bad the injury was. At first, I was too distraught to even make a sound. But then, not even a minute later, I started screaming and crying. I tried to get off the stretcher but a male nurse grabbed me and held me against the moving bed while a female nurse came in with a syringe and injected me with something that made me fall asleep.

 Hours later, I woke up in a dark bedroom. Everything had being done and I had no idea how many hours they had spent trying to save my face. I also had no idea they had been successful, so when I got off the bed and went into the bathroom to check on my face and so the bandages, the blood and the swelling, I never thought I would be the same ever again. I cried a little bit and then went back to bed. This time, I had no strength to scream or yell or do anything besides curl beneath the covers and let time pass.

 The day they released me, the doctor took off the bandages and let me see myself on a small mirror. There was a lot of swelling still and some dried up blood but my face actually looked normal. I mean, it didn’t seem anything had happened, although I told him that I still felt the sting of the glass slashing my face. He told me it was a normal feeling to have and that I could go to the hospital’s psychologist if I needed any help with coping. I told my mother right there to take me home, as I had a greater urge to get to my bedroom than talking to some stranger about my feelings.

 When I got there, I told my family I was going to sleep and asked them to not bother me for the rest of the day. I wasn’t hungry at all and just wanted to lie in bed for a long while. They had nothing to say against it, because who would? No one would ever go against the wishes of a person that has just been released from a hospital. So I went into my room, locked the door and just sat on my bed for a long time. I stared at different things, thinking about what had happened and what effect it had in me.

 Once in a while, I remembered I was supposed to take off my clothes and put on pajamas or something. So I would take off one shoe and then stare at something for a while. And then take off the other shoe and stare for a while at something else. It took me hours to wake up from my daydreaming and get naked. When I realized I could see my feet, my penis, my chest and my hands, I realized what had been bothering me about all that had happened. Again, I stood up and walked to the closet.

 On the door, on the inside part of the closet, I had a full-length mirror. I stood up in front of it, my bedroom a bit dark. I was tempted to turn on the lights or open up the curtains, by I didn’t. I pierced through that glass until I saw myself. I saw what I had seen for so long: a body I had always been at odds with. The body I had been born with and had tried to mold to no avail. I moved a little but my opinion of it didn’t change. It brought tears to my eyes, because I realized I was still that young boy from many years ago.

 I had tried exercising in all sorts of ways. I had tried poses in pictures, different kinds of outlets. I had tried all sorts of things and now I was almost thirty years old and I had realized that all my fears and insecurities were still there. I could hear people talk and laugh and then the scar on my face would get larger and more visible, like a red crater on my face. My stretch marks looked brighter and my penis looked smaller. And then I grabbed a shoe from the floor and threw at the mirror, shattering in several pieces.

 They found me on the floor, crying in silence with a piece of glass in my hand. My fingers were all bloody and my eyes were lost, far from that bedroom. They rushed me to the hospital naked, as they had found me, trying to prevent more blood to leave my body. I had used that piece of glass on myself.

 I spent years in therapy, months in a special facility and countless hours trying to get over all of it. I’ve never been able to completely but at least I get to breath now, as never before. However, I now always stop at mirrors and pierce them with my eyes.

 I do it in defiance of what they had done to so many others and to me.  Of what I had done to myself because of the world, because of all the pressures coming from places I cannot even explain. I still feel it but I can now fight it. And I will keep on fighting as long as I can.

Friends & Secrets

   It was very problematic for Sean to admit that his life had improved dramatically since he had joined the gym. He didn’t want to tell anyone about it and only went there once a day, six days a week. Of course, sometime people would ask him where he was and what he was doing, but he had created the illusion that he was attending cooking lessons at a school that happened to be in the neighboring building of the gym. The smell of warm and fresh croissants was almost constant and made almost impossible to focus on one's obliques.

 Sean had never been the kind of guy that went to the gym and cared about his body. Earlier in his life he openly mocked those who took too much care of their bodies and looks. To be fair, he still mocked only that he refrained himself from saying anything out loud because he would really look like a hypocrite if he said something. The difference was the he didn’t exercise because he wanted to look better but because he wanted to feel better, which were too different things. Most of the people there were just show offs that already had a great body.

 Since he was a little boy, he had loved eating candy. His favorites were salted caramel and chocolate. His life wasn’t complete when he was at school if he didn’t have a piece of chocolate with his lunch. It was kind of a ritual, a weird tradition that he had with himself. He kept that for years, until very recently. Actually, some of his friends had begun wondering what had happened to the chocolates he always ate and also about the ones that he kept all over the house in case he wanted something sweet to enhance his day.

 All of those chocolates had disappeared and no one really understood why. Some were not idiots and had realized Sean had lost some weight and, weirdly enough, he looked as if he had grown taller and bigger but not in a bad way. They asked him about it and he only answered he didn’t really knew why and that he partially blamed work and the classes because of the tension he went through every single day. Stress could be a powerful force and could certainly be blamed for many things, so it was a nice save that not everyone bought.

 One of those who hadn’t bought into the story was Billy. He had noticed something really strange one day they were at Sean’s apartment watching a movie. At one point, they were having popcorn and Sean asked if they wanted more. Of course, everyone said yes. To be funny, Sean raised his hands in the air and exaggerated a positive response. It was then when Billy saw it: Sean’s shirt had been raised and instead of a normal belly, he saw a body in the process of getting really ripped. He knew his friend had never been like that.

 Many times before they had taken trips all together. Billy knew his friends bodies, not because he had an obsession with them or anything but because he had seen them in their trunks and bikinis. He knew what they look like. So the new appearance of Sean’s body was a very big surprise for him. Now that he was thinking about it, he remembered that Sean had not attended their last trip to the beach. He had told them that he didn’t feel quite right but when they came back he looked exactly the same, like a normal healthy person.

 Billy decided to follow Sean one day. He worked for his father so he asked him for a day off from the office in order to attend some personal business. His father never asked many questions and agreed almost immediately. They following day, he woke up really early and decided to follow Sean by bike. He decided not to take the car as he suspected Sean would know it was him if he saw it. The first time he saw Sean that day was at seven o’clock, time he left at for work. He stayed in his office until midday, when he came out to lunch.

 It was then when he saw the first red flag: Sean had never been the type to eat big pieces of meat or a large portion of anything. He knew how to choose what his body was capable of consuming. However, he had never been the type to refrain himself from eating something delicious, even if hat something was not especially good for you. Billy remembered fondly the time the two of them had eaten a big plate full of spicy hot wings by themselves, no beverages or carrot sticks with ranch sauce. That had been a fun day.

 But now, he noticed that Sean had bought a salad for lunch, a salad that didn’t even had a piece of chicken or bacon or anything. And the worst part of it all was that he really seemed to be enjoying himself while eating it. Sean stopped looked from a distance and thought that maybe he was been too judgmental and a tad exaggerated. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all if Sean was taking care of himself. He was trying to feel better or maybe it was that he wanted to look hotter or even that he was dating and he wanted to look great for that person.

 That all went to the mental garbage when Billy saw Sean pulling a bottle of water from his backpack and drinking from it. That was just ridiculous. One thing was to take care of his body and all of that but drinking plain water with a lunch that consisted mostly on a bunch of leaves only a turtle would eat, was just insane. Billy thought that there was something really wrong with his friend because he had never seen him like this. Something had to be wrong, that was clear. But what could it be or why could it be?

 After waiting for several hours in a café across the street, Billy followed Sean again and the next destination, to no surprise, was the gym. Granted, it was not the type of gym that had many windows and looked more like a giant fish tank than like a human building, but nevertheless it was a strange thing. Billy decided to go in, as he would see nothing from outside. Of course, he had to pretend he was interesting in joining because otherwise he wouldn’t have been allowed entrance. A trainer showed him round but he didn’t really listened.

 He only saw Sean many minutes later, working out on a huge machine that seemed to be used to help exercise the abdominal area. He had no trainer besides him and seemed to be focusing a lot on what he was doing. For Billy, the sight was really strange but not because it was his friend but because he had never seen someone so focused to do something like that. For a moment, he even thought it was quite admirable that Sean had decided to take on such a challenge, but moments later he felt betrayed again, as a friend.

 He decided to confront Sean. He ditched the trainer telling him he would join after walking around alone and then walked, almost ran, straight to where Sean was. As expected, Sean was quite taken aback when he saw his friend standing there. But then he decided to finish his exercise and then finally stand up, sweating more than he would have wanted to in that moment. The two friends looked at each other and didn’t say a word, not until someone dropped a weight somewhere, slamming his foot. They both laughed, which eased the tension.

 Sean explained to his friend that he had always had self-esteem problems, going back to his high school days. He had always felt fat and ugly and he recently had realized he could actually do something about it. He had begun exercising over a year ago but the change in food had been done very recently. He didn’t call it a diet because he ate as always on weekends and he couldn’t say he was going vegan or vegetarian because his favorite meals consisted of pork chops in a pineapple sauce. Anyway, he was trying something to help him achieve his goal.

 He told Billy he was sorry for lying but Billy interrupted him saying he was a bad friend for never having really talk about their past in a much more open way. If they had, he would have known his buddy’s struggles and could even have helped him. He told Sean he was sorry and then hugged him, which was a first for the two as they had always been the kind of buds that only shake hands. It was a new beginning to their friendship, a much needed one.

Self-made woman

   Sam had always being a very confident person. She wasn’t he most beautiful girl in the world or the most athletic or anything like that. She was just an average girl that never really had a problem with her own body. When she was at school, she saw many people being bullied because of how they looked or how they dressed or things like that. But the bullies never got to her because she simply did not believe anything they said. Maybe it was the way she was raised or maybe she had been born with a very thick skin. The point was no one could take her down.

 As she got older, she decided to try a little bit of everything. She did theatre and always went to a summer camp not far from home. She would also love to help recycle and clean the parks of her city. She earned some money by walking her neighbors’ dogs and she had at least five pen pals from all over the world. Sam lived to be active and to feel she was doing something. She even approached the kids at school that were bullied and tried to help them by giving them more things to do. Sometimes, she succeeded.

 After graduating high school, she entered a proper acting academy where she was always one of the most advanced students in the class. She got the directions of the teacher very fast and knew how to connect with a character in a matter of minutes. She became that person fro a while. It was amazing to see her as all those characters, no matter if they were men or women, young or old or foreigner. She always knew exactly how to do it.

 The school lasted for years year and by the third year her parents announced to her that they had financial problems and that they wouldn’t be able to give her money for transportation and food for her third year and that they had no money for her fourth and last year in the academy. For a moment, she was very worried. It was the first time in her life that Sam didn’t really know what to do right away. She spent a whole night without sleep thinking of solutions.

 However, the solution came to her the next day. Her acting school was part of a larger university, so when she went to class she always walked by a big board where people would pin down what they were looking for. She checked the board to see if there were any jobs she could take part time in order to help her parents pay for her stuff or pay it herself in any case. She read many little papers looking for something good and a blue one got her attention.

 Sam had never cared about what people said about her. She had never really had second thoughts about what she wore; how her body was build or the things she had to do to get somewhere. She was a fighter and very hands on kind of a person. So after class, she went straight to the classroom written in the blue paper. They were looking for men and women that would pose for the art students.

 It was in an area of the university she rarely went to. Outside, there were about three people waiting. When the door opened, a woman asked her name and physical data. She wrote those down in a sheet of paper on a clipboard and then closed the door after one of the people that had been waiting had entered the room. Sam could only see one other person inside with the woman: a middle-aged bald man who probably was the teacher for that class.

 She waited for an hour until the other two people had passed. Apparently the “audition”, or whatever it was, could be very exhaustive. When they finally let her in, they immediately asked for her to remove all clothes and to step up in a square that was about thirty centimeters tall. She did exactly that, feeling a little scared at first. The woman, who was probably an assistant, was doing some kind of sketch on her clipboard. The man just turned around Sam, looking at every single inch of her body.

 Suddenly, he asked Sam to pose in three different ways. He showed her three different paintings and she had to imitate the positions of the models in them. Sam wasn’t very into painting as such but she knew those pictures were rather classical. So she immediately knew there not going to do anything very modern in that class or at least not from the first day.

 After the first ten minutes, she was very comfortable posing as a goddess shooting an arrow at a centaur and then being seductive, half covering herself with a very silky and transparent tissue the teacher provided for her. They were there for more than an hour until the assistant told her she could grab her clothes and dress. They told her they would call her in order to know if she had gotten the job. She asked if she could know how much they paid and the mentioned the number. It was a very good one.

 She got the job and worked there for her whole third year. She had to arrive to some early classes, which was awful because of the cold, but the teacher was always kind enough to bring a portable heater for her not to freeze. Then she would go to her classes and sometimes she would come back late in order to pose for the advanced students.

 Sam didn’t really tell many people about her job. She certainly didn’t tell his parents. They were happy enough seeing their daughter knew how to move around in the world. And only a couple of friends knew. They even went once and told her how odd it was that no one really saw her but instead saw her body as if it was some other person. It was very strange.

 That year, se won a lot of money. With that and a job she got the following summer, she was able to pay her last year of acting school. She kept modeling during that year but she didn’t do as many hours because the audition part of her life had begun and she really had to be looking for all the parts possible. Once she graduated, she began to do so more actively, landing roles in plays and even movies.

 Her breakout role was the one of the heroine of a post-apocalyptic story involving zombies. She signed on for one movie but two more were made. After that, she did more elaborate stuff like a costume drama that happened in Africa and another where she was a woman that had a very awful disease that was deemed incurable for many years. For that one she received the most praise and Sam was even considered for many awards. It was the best time of her life because she got to travel a lot.

 When she turned 28, she got the role of a woman trying to save millions from genocide in a war that people didn’t even talked about. Sam researched the role and actively pursued it for many months until they chose her over many better-known actresses. She was careful about every aspect of the role and was able to do her best performance ever. That year was a whirlwind for her as everyone praised her work and called her a “revelation” and things of the sort.

 She began being nominated for many awards. Every time it happened she would call the director of the film, a woman called Flora, and they would chat for hours about it. However, something happened that would sour their happiness for a while. Someone had gone through Sam’s past and had found the portraits she had posed for and some pictures too, as she modeled for the photography students too. The tabloids had a field day and everyone else started to talk solely about that and not the movie.

 Sam apologized to Flora but the woman told her never to do that. She hadn’t done anything wrong and it was nothing that would affect her forever. She encouraged Sam to be herself and confront the issue as herself and as no one else. And so she did. She released a statement and even made a video that went viral, when she explained how she had always trusted herself and wanted everyone to feel the same way.

 She showed everyone that she was not ashamed but rather proud of being a woman that did not have to hide or feel bad because others wanted her to feel like that. She had made a life by her own hand and she was also proud of that. In her video, she invited every woman to be comfortable in their skin, take nudes pictures or just looking themselves at the mirror and accepting who they were because everyone is one of a kind.

 Many attacked for the way she saw the world, mostly men. But she had decided she would never care about what destructive people thought. She knew most people were not like that, she knew they would all see what she meant, where she was coming from.

 Her chances of having a great career were never harmed after that. She eventually won an Academy Award and went on to pose for magazines naked, in order to prove that they couldn’t take her down or shame her. Sam was there to stay.