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.

His scent

   I loved to be the one hugging him, tightly, beneath the covers when it was raining outside or above them, naked, during the summer. Waking up was always one of the best parts of my day because I would notice his scent so very close to me. It didn’t matter how much we had moved during our sleep, it was always a please to feel him close to me. And I think, even if I would never dare to speak on his behalf, that he thought exactly the same thing. I think he loved me back, maybe even more.

 During the week, we would wake up at the same, even if the other had nothing to do that day. Sometimes it was me who kissed him before leaving for work, some other days it was me staying there, organizing my space and feeding the dog we had adopted together. Its name was Bumper, because he loved to bump into everything. Maybe the thing was that our dog was not very brilliant but we loved to imagine he had some traits of both of us. Maybe he was clumsy like me and distracted like him.

 Our favorite days, or at least mine, were Saturdays and Sundays. We would wake up earlier and I would make love to him for the longest time. I loved to explore his body slowly, even to the point that I would turn off my cellphone in order not to be interrupted from that beautiful task. I got to know every single centimeter of his body and I was proud to know every single corner of him. After a mutual orgasm, we would stay silent and then talk about our lives, fun little snippets every day.

 That’s how I think I know him. I think feeling his heart while sleeping, his breathing while we made love and his warmth when we kissed goodbye, it all made me understand him and really know who he was and what he wanted out of life. It didn’t take a long time for us to hold hands in public after we had decided to properly date each other. Same happened with our “sudden” decision to live together. We just knew we had to, it was meant to be and only we could understand the feeling.

 So, it’s pretty understandable that the worst day of my life was the one when a policeman, a man with a stupid face, came to our home and told me they had found him, the love of my life, dead on the street. It happened one night, when he was coming from work during one of those horrible thunderstorms that are becoming more and more common in these parts. According to the policeman, he had been assaulted by a group of men. They had taken his money, his belongings and had then proceeded to kick him and punch him until one of them decided to pull out a gun.

 My first question was simple: “Where is he?” The idiot policeman repeated that he was dead and I didn’t ask again. He offered to take me to the police station, so I grabbed a jacket and went along. It was so very late; I was already in my pajamas. It was very awkward, but I started crying in the police car, en route to my lover. I couldn’t stop crying for a second, only when I had to step out of the car in order to enter the police station. He never asked me if I was fine or needed something.

 The doctor running the morgue was a woman and I was thankful for that. She seemed to care for every single one of those corpses, of those dead people that for some reason were there, lying on their back inside a gigantic freezer. I started shaking the moment I entered the room and I lost any attempt to seem calm when she unveiled his body to me. He was naked, of course, and very white and blue. It’s a silly thing, but the first thing I thought was the fact that he hated both those colors.

 I took one of his hands and caressed it; I kissed his cheek and his forehead and held on to him. I could hear the dumbass policeman asking me if that was my “partner” but I didn’t care at all. I wanted to stay there forever, whit him, even if I had to die too. The doctor was very silent and it was obvious she would have preferred for me not to touch her patient but I couldn’t stop holding on to him. If I had let go, he would have died forever and I just couldn’t afford that to happen.

 However, all the crying and the memories and the deep pain got to me. I had been waiting for him to come with food, so my stomach was empty. The doctor, hours later, told me that could have been one of the reasons for me to faint right there on the morgue. They carried me to the police station’s infirmary and gave me some ramen soup, the kind you can make in the microwave. I ate that hot cup in silence, still crying. A massive headache began to brew.

 His family came in some hours later, after I had signed every single paper that had to be signed. Between those, I had to ask a friend to go to my house and bring me our marriage certificate, which only a few people knew about. It was hard for me to tell his family that we had been married for a couple of months and that it had been his decision not to tell them because he wanted it all to be a big reveal. He was planning it all as if it was the marriage of two famous people. And know, it had been me telling them all of it, with his cold body not too far away.

 They were shocked to hear it all, of course, but I honestly think I was the most affected by the tragedy. I kissed him several times once more, before I had to leave in order to go home. They promised they would arrange it all for his body to be prepared for whatever I would decide to do. I took the doctor to the side, and told her we had talked about being cremated together in a huge pyre, holding hands. She gave me a nice smile and told me to get back to her the next day.

 Sure enough, they sent his body to a cemetery where he would be cremated and given to me. I called his family to tell them all about it and they didn’t say much about it all. They seemed to be still in quite a shock. They did show up to the place and we even held each other for a moment, in silence. We saw his coffin, a very modest one; enter the oven and the metal door close afterwards. Tears rolled down my face but I didn’t cried loudly like before, I was under too much pain to do that again.

 They gave me his ashes and the doctor was there to pay her respects. I hugged her tight and cried some more. She offered to take me home and I accepted. His family didn’t say another word to me, even when I saw them looking at the urn with his ashes when they were handed to me. I wanted to make peace; I wanted them to understand what we had together. But it was too little too late, so I just went home with the doctor. She kindly stayed for a while but I have to say it was better when she left.

 That’s because I spoke to him for a while, as frankly as we had always been when he was alive. I told him he was the best thing to ever happen in my life and that I was proud that I got to meet such a wonderful person in such a shitty world. I thanked him for being my lover and husband, for making me enjoy life and people even more and for always been there for me. I hoped him the best for his afterlife, if there was one. If there wasn’t, I wanted him to know I would always be his.

 Another storm was brewing when I opened my bedroom window. The wind was beginning to howl. One strong current was enough to take the love of my life away from me. I saw him float away and then disappeared into the dark clouds floating not so far away.

 I left the urn right there and then dropped on the bed. His smell was still there. I closed my eyes to feel him one more time and it did work. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt. However, when I opened my eyes everything was real and raw. He wasn’t there anymore.

You reap what you sow

  Its name was Cotton and he had been a member of the Northam family for at least ten years. He had been given to a young teenager named Martha, the oldest of the Northam marriage. They were a very wealthy family from the coastline region, controlling most of the fishing industry in the part of the country. They named the cat Cotton because of the color of its fur but also because the family also owned several cotton plantations on near the ocean, which they exported with ease.

 Martha had never really wanted a cat. She was not the kind of kid to like animals or anything that was alive. To be fair, she had problems at school that had resulted in her removal from the education system. She was then educated at home by private teachers who would come for at least five hours a day and try to educate her a bit. But the girl wasn’t interested, only being moved by the love of her father and his tendency to give her what she wanted whenever she wanted.

 Her mother Nancy had never agreed to that behavior but Mr. Northam, as head of the family, made all the big choices around there and she couldn’t really protest any of the decisions he made. If he wanted something done at home or not, if he wanted the children to go to school or not and even what kind of food would be served at home, it was him who decided it all, even if it didn’t really affected him. Because, you see, Mr. Northam was never around in the house, too busy with his business.

 Many, for a long while, had guessed he could be one of those men that has several mistresses all around and even other families but that was proven to be false when Nancy, on a very rare glimpse of attitude, had decided to follow her husband one day in order to se what he did with his time. It had been the most boring experience for him and had just sealed in her mind that nothing would ever change in that house because there was nothing unpredictable about the things happening all around.

 Cotton was officially Martha’s, but the cat spend much more time in the kitchen, sitting on an old wooden stool, while the cook did her chores of the day. She was a big woman, much bigger than any in the family, and she would often give the cat bits and pieces of everything she made. Everyone always seemed to be astonished at how fat he became over the years. No one knew about where he went every day and only the old cook knew and never told a soul. After all, Cotton was a bit like a companion, even a partner in crime if you will. She never felt alone when he was there.

 For Alysia, the cook, Cotton was more human than the people she made the food for. She liked the cat because he seemed to listen to what she said, even if it was ridiculous to converse with a cat. However, that all changed when Martha discovered the cat coming out of the kitchen one day, when she was about to leave the house after finally ending her high school years. Her father had agreed to pay a very expensive university far away in order for her to become a clothes designer.

 Even so, she complained to her father about the cat not being with her, as he should even if she didn’t want him around, and being with the cook instead. The children had never seen the cook’s face but they had been raised to believe that was far a reason, something to do with them being better than others although with a different wording, in order not to seem heartless and insensitive. But the truth could never be masked by pretty and false phrases that meant nothing.

 Mr. Northam’s response was pretty straightforward: Alysia was fired and replaced with another older woman, as big as she was. The cat stopped going to the kitchen because the new cook would always try to scare it off with a broom or something. So Cotton, once again, became an object for everyone in the house, as useless and uninteresting as a lamp or the rugs that were all over the place. No one cared about him afterward, being the gardener the one in charge of filling the cat’s bowel with food and water.

 Alysia leaved in a small shed was forced to leave it once she had been fired, as all of the housing in the area was exclusive for people that worked for the Northam family. She was evicted along with her few belongings and at age seventy-six she was forced to leave the region and go to a big city in order to try to find a new job, because she didn’t have enough money saved to pay for anything. Suffice to say that working for years had not made her a candidate for a pension or even health insurance.

 Cotton escaped one night and went looking for Alysia but he never found her. Not only because he arrived at the shed she used to leave with and no one was there, but because he was an already very old cat and couldn’t properly use his natural talents to find anyone. He was confused and tired, so he decided to go back to the only place where he could rest for the rest of his days. At least the small boys were now bigger and didn’t bother him and the rest of the family was too submerged in their own businesses in order to care for what a cat would do or not do.

 In the city, Alysia eventually found a job knitting for a store that made baby clothes. They required her skills to be almost out of this world and she was just too tired to do it as fast as they wanted her to be. So they also fired her from that place. She would never find a job ever again and, in a very sad turn, she died in line while trying to get into the office that was supposed to help her sue the Northams for everything that they owed her for all the years of service. It wasn’t peaceful.

 No one attended her funeral and she was cremated because there was no determined place to put her body. Some nice person dissipated her ashes in a park in the city, but that was it for her. She had raised a family, had endured after losing her husband and had made everything possible for her children to have better lives than hers. She failed and succeeded but all of that never mattered in her golden years, that time you are supposed to be at peace and with no worries.

 As for the Northam family, they didn’t have the best of lucks either. Because of very poor business decisions, a competing company was able to outgrow them and eventually they were forced to sell to them. Everything went, even the palatial house that had been their refuge for so many years. Every employee defected fast and many other were only fired with no compensation. Some of the old sheds were demolished and everything that had been a reality for so long had been turned into dust.

 As for Martha, she never returned from abroad. However, it was known by everyone that she had never paid a single semester in that fancy university, instead blowing the money in alcohol and drugs. A couple of years after her family’s bankruptcy, she was found dead because of an overdose. It was the final nail in the coffin for her family, a very big coffin with a very large amount of nails. Her parents divorced and her brothers never spoke to any of them again, separating forever.

 Cotton was a witness in all of this. However, the cat was very old and tired when it all happened. However, the gardener decided to keep him when things were being sold. After all that time, he had also developed a fondness for the furry creature.

 The cat died only a year after that, not being able to fully enjoyed proper love in a much better, although smaller, house. Some called the whole thing a curse but there are no such things. It’s more the phrase that grandmothers say: “You reap what you sow”.

His right choice

   I took off my clothes and just tossed them to one side, on the sand. The wind was chilly and every single hair on my skin rose because of the cold. But I didn’t put anything back on. I left the clothes there to be carried by the water later on. There was no point in hiding them anywhere or trying for them not to get wet. The truth was I didn’t care anymore about anything and I still don’t. I didn’t even looked back when I started walking, looking at the rocks far on the other side of the beach.

 The water washed my feet, as if a thousand knives stabbed me slowly. It hurt, of course, but I knew that was going to happen and my body was getting ready for it. I was so tired of everything, of people and life and everything surrounding it. I just wanted to walk the beach, the only place that could relax my mind. Eventually, I would have to get into the ocean and breath in some salt water. But I didn’t know when that would be happening. It was better to take it one step at a time.

 Pembelton Beach was far from any settlement. There where some houses close by but it would take them at least fifteen minutes to get to me if they realized I was there, my some miracle. All the details had being chosen carefully. I didn’t want anyone to stop me from being free, at least once in my life. I had felt imprisoned from day one, from the first moment I realized life was just this unfair list of things happening to a mere body, an essence that has nothing to do with anything else.

 Society failed me. Or maybe I was the one who failed society. Anyway, we were not meant to be together. I had always felt strange in social situations, such as parties and crowds. The “odd one”, was my nickname back in high school. People thought I didn’t know that but I knew, I heard every word that they attempted for me not to hear. They didn’t have the balls to say it to my face. I would have preferred that. And it was the same in college and in other contexts.

 To be fair, I have to say that university was the best place for me because I could be whoever I was without really caring about others. I had what you would call friends but they are not around anymore and I don’t blame them. Or maybe I do blame them but, what’s that good for? People have excuses for everything and I have run tired of listening to them. As I said before, I don’t care anymore. Not at all. I just want to move on to something else, whatever that may be. Does it sound tragic and melodramatic? As you might guess, I don’t care.

 After the first twenty minutes, the cold water started feeling less painful, as well as the wind. I stopped crossing my arms over my chest and I just held them to the side. The ocean was getting more and more violent, as a storm was clearly coming from deep into the open ocean. The clouds had rapidly turned from white to almost black. And I could even see some thunders far into the sea. It was beautiful in a way. It seemed everything I felt was being reflected by the weather.

 I would have wanted rain to come faster but it didn’t seem to want to downpour just yet, so I walked on. I remembered many other times in my life when rain had been a factor. When being stood up by someone or just staying home safe, as it was the only place I could really feel protected. I lived with my parents, of course. I still do, in a way. The point is I felt taken care of because they were there and because I knew there was no other way for me. I can hear you think…

 Love was always a really weird thing for me. To be honest, I don’t think it exists. I never did. I did see some traces of it in other people’s lives but maybe it was something else. Maybe it’s just that people are too afraid to be alone and they just cheat themselves into having a relationship that they think it’s based on love, when in reality they just have a very basic human need to feel someone else close by, to feel someone else’s warmth. Of course, I felt that too. Not that it mattered.

 The sand on Pemberton Beach is very black, probably because of the ancient volcanic origin of the region. The big boulders scattered all over are also dark, doubling as a home for many sea creatures. As I walked down the natural path, I saw several crabs, in various sizes. Those small creatures made me think that life may not be as complicated as I think it is. However, they free of our society, our brains that torture us every day with things that will never happen to us.

 Someone once asked me what my dream for the future was. It happened on a job interview and it kind of shocked me. Not only because dreams are not something I have, but also because the question was asked in singular, as if most people had only one dream. Maybe they meant work wise but I just couldn’t answer the question. And I have never being good at lying, so I told the man I didn’t have dreams for the future, only hopes. For a future where I could be free, truly free. Of course, the man ended the interview there and I never heard from that company again.

 I went to several interviews and I applied to so many jobs. That ended recently, when I finally got a menial job at a company handling papers and getting coffee. After so many millions spent and time wasted, I ended up being the guy they ask for more milk or sugar or those stupid stick to stir up the coffee. You can guess I wasn’t very happy with it and that’s why I left it last week and came to this beach. My parents were disappointed but there was no other way.

 Begging was involved in getting the money for this trip but they eventually gave it to me, after promises it would be just for a weekend and that I would help them by looking at some houses for them to buy. They want a house by the beach to spend their elder years. With that excuse I travelled here yesterday and now I’m naked on a beach, far from any other human being that could intervene at what I’m going to do. That’s exactly how I planned it, many months ago.

 Because this idea had been around my head for a long time. It had appeared first when I was in school and many times more until now. The difference is I can finally do it now because I didn’t feel any remorse. I just felt I had to do it and I didn’t care about anything else. There was no other way right then and I did not want to listen to long speeches about people who cared about me, or wanted me stay around. If they did, they would have been around. My parents, they were prepared, or so I thought.

 Pain is always harder at first, that’s always the case. They knew how to handle it and had other children, which helps. As I entered the ocean, after a long walk, I realized it was the right moment to do it. I felt happy for the first time in a long time because I knew I was doing the right thing. I was finally doing something that made sense. My life was explained to me in those last moments and I realized it served a purpose. But that’s a long explanation, and I’m tired now.

 My body was drowned in just a few minutes. It is one of the most horrible deaths but I did it exactly as I had researched it. Big gulps and avoid moving too much. It worked exactly as it was supposed to. I was washed ashore the next day, when they discovered me.

 Now, I’m at peace. I’m finally free at there is no way someone can convince me I didn’t do the right thing. What was my function in life, if not ending up here? I wasn’t good alive, I was a waste of space and matter. Now, I’m finally who I was supposed to be.