NOTE: This guy lives mostly...in my head...
It had all ended in a non-dramatic fashion, not at all what he had imagined. She was worn out by the drama. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time when it was not there. The humiliation had turned into something he couldn’t deal with, something that he could not name. He felt like everybody they knew, had heard about it, her side of the story, of course. They all looked like they were pretending not to know. Their smiles looked strained, like their jaws hurt. Serious facial muscle exercise all for the sake of not showing him they knew. How considerate. But he could make out fake smiles from a mile away. He could just imagine what was going through their minds and it ate him up inside. He knew how to play the game, though. His mother had taught him well. Never ever let “them” know that you are not okay. Wash everyday, shave like it was your wedding day, walk with a perfect posture, always…always strive to look “okay”, whatever “okay” meant. He was trying. Every single day, he tried.
But slowly, that feeling started crawling into his mind, invading every space he had tried to protect. It was no longer only when he tried to sleep or when he had a flashback of that fateful night. These days, it came all the time. Like the time he was called into the boss’s office for the “disciplinary hearing.” He could see his lips move, and the look of concern on his face (yet another great performance), but his voice somehow floated far away from his ears. He kept on mulling everything over and over in his head. He had done this so often that nothing made sense anymore. He knew that this one-sided memory of the entire thing was fucking with his mind in a major way. The more he thought about it, on his own, without a second opinion or an interrogation of sorts, the angrier he got. It was the kind of fury that drove people to kill cold-bloodedly. It scared and frustrated him all at the same time. He was too much of a woose to take his own life, let alone anybody else’s. Besides, he wouldn’t know who to kill, really. Her? He knew he had fucked up majorly. Him? He was just some other guy who was there at the right time.
Why couldn’t he have been the perfect boyfriend she wanted him to be? Why couldn’t he have grown up in a normal home like other people? The word ‘normal’ was beginning to get to him, too! She kept repeating it, over and over to him, like she was doing it on purpose. It was almost like she knew that he would never be normal. She kept demanding the impossible. He had lost the understanding of the word. What the fuck is normal anyway?
He needed a drink. He had tried to stop, for her of course. But things seemed so much better when he was drunk. No, tipsy didn’t quite describe the state. Motherless would be the appropriate adjective. He wanted to drink everything, anything, just to get a taste of that freedom again. He didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of him when he was drunk. The fake smiles didn’t bother him so much. In fact, they cracked him up. He didn’t care if they thought he had lost his mind. But most importantly, he didn’t care how he looked. They could talk about it all they want. Him, rugged, having been drinking since the sun came up, samples of his various beverages of choice all over his white shirt. It seemed the best place to be. He could taste yesterday’s alcohol, that sourness stuck in his throat, head pounding. There was only one thing that could take that away and that was more alcohol.
He couldn’t stop. His so called friends showed a lot of concern. Even those who were not close to him, showed a lot of concern. A bit too much, when he thought about it. He knew he was flavour of the month. Their boring lives had suddenly been made mildly exciting by his crazy antics. He thought he should get a Nobel Prize for it. What would Joburg North suburbia be without a charity case like him? He reminded them of what they used to be. Reckless, was the word. Behind their masks of stability, lay envy. Of course they would never admit it to themselves or to each other. But they yearned to let go, like he had.
Yes, he loved her. He had never loved so much. It was the kind of love that was doomed. It was just too much, almost unbearable. Sometimes he couldn’t breathe, at the thought of it. He knew he could never ever shake it off. It was like some plague he had knowingly contracted and now no cure in the world could rid him of it. He couldn’t imagine how she could move on like that, get engaged to the first guy who came along. He was prissy. The kind of guy who would laugh at the sight of an obese woman trip and fall. He was the kind of guy who could hold an entire conversation about how cheap the next guy’s shoes were. His face just screamed “punch me, hard” and it seemed like however much or hard you punched, the idiot would never wake up to the fact that he was a fucking loser. He had no substance, he thought. Perhaps she was doing it to hurt him? Perhaps she was going to come right back when she realizes that she could never love anyone else.
Perhaps he had worn out her heart so much she couldn’t love that way again.
All he knew was that he couldn’t afford to love that way again. He had been a victim of big love way too many times. This sensitive shit made him too vulnerable. He couldn’t run away. He couldn’t kill himself because he was just plain chicken shit scared. He hated to admit it, even to himself.
There was just one thing left he could do. He could be the asshole that all women seemed to fall for. He could try out an entirely new image. Nobody would fuck with him, now. It could be his little experiment. He could finally get a taste of what it feels like to be normal, be one of the boys. Yeah, perhaps that’s what she had been saying all along.
