Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta past. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta past. Mostrar todas las entradas

sábado, 26 de noviembre de 2016

We all know Doris

   Doris had never been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was rather plain and didn’t have anything special going on for her. Besides, she was already over fifty years old and women her age simply didn’t have the same opportunities in life that younger ones. She couldn’t complain about her job, because she had been very lucky to keep it for so long but she would have loved to get married at least once in her lifetime. She had always dreamed of wearing a wedding dress and having one of those fun parties to celebrate her nuptials.

 She had her chance when she was around twenty-four years old. An older man had wanted her in marriage and her father had agreed to it. Of course, Doris didn’t want to marry him but, in those times, women did whatever their father told them to and it was very difficult to do something different than what parents told their children. Doris cried and stopped eating for a week but that didn’t change his father’s mind. However, the old man that wanted to marry Doris died only a couple of days before the actual ceremony so she was saved.

 When she looked back to that memory, she found herself thinking very differently from that young girl she used to be. For example, she regretted the fact that she was never interested in knowing more about the man she was going to marry. Of course, they practically didn’t know each other but she could have asked and maybe, just maybe, that would have changed everything, even the fact that he had died. Yes, fifty year old Doris thought it was a good idea to marry a man that was, at least, thirty years older than her.

 Be that as it may, she never got to wear that wedding dress. Besides, she had to see her two brothers and three sisters getting married. She had to go to their weddings and pretend to be happy for them but she never really was. She also had to go to other weddings, where she was even a bridesmaid. That was even crueler for her because she got too close to the real thing but it just wasn’t the same. It was all an illusion to keep her away from the one thing she wanted in life, the one thing you couldn’t really buy or force to happen.

 In her work, however, Doris was successful. She was the assistant of the principal in the same high school where she and her brothers and sisters had gone. At first it had been weird to work there but she adjusted just fine in no time. Now she loved to reminisce about all those good-looking boys that had walked the hallways back when she was a teenager. She found herself thinking about them a little bit too often and even took to the social networks to track some of them down to see if they had changed a lot or not so much. The results were predictable.

 Before turning fifty, Doris had gone over backwards to get a man. It sounds a little bit too desperate but it was what she wanted. She opened profiles in most of the matchmaking sites in the Internet and also downloaded several apps on her phone with the help of one of her nieces. She even started going to bars on Friday nights to see if she could attract any man. Doris didn’t even mind if it was only a crazy sex night but that didn’t happen either, which was frustrating and also hurtful for her. She felt even older than she really was.

 As her birthday grew closer, she decided to go to all these events that advertised that you would get a couple in no time. Some of them were events where you met several men in a limited amount of time and others were holidays for singles in which the goal was to meet all of the people that were there with you and then just see who you had the best chemistry with. The thing about all of those was that they were only a waste of money. She always came back home disappointed on everything and even sadder than before.

 After she turned fifty, it was as if something inside of her changed. She didn’t want to keep being desperate and accepted the fact that she was never going to find anyone. Of course, she remembered all of those family dinners for special holidays when she had to lie to her family or confess to them that she was still alone. As her family was concerned, Doris had been in a relationship with several men but it never really worked out for several reasons. Some didn’t have a job; some others were scoundrel and they were even a couple that ended up being gay.

 Now that her parents were dead, those family dinners were over. She rarely met her brothers and sisters, only in funerals and such events, which was great for her because that way she didn’t need to talk about her private life. Stopping the lies had been really good for her because for a fragment of her life, she knew too well all the things she need to say to make a believable lie. She was so good at it that it seemed that she was beginning to believe everything she said herself. It was a very sad thing to do and it was for the best that it was all over.

 So, after fifty, Doris was not interested in finding anyone new. She wasn’t interested in anything to be honest. She went from her home to her job and back home every evening. On the weekends, she spent several hours tending to her dog Fluffy and her small but well taken care of garden. It was her pride and joy, as she really loved to spend hours and hours getting everything to perfection. It was her passion and it helped her not thinking about thoughts that hurt her.

 One day, by the advice of her next-door neighbor, Doris sent pictures of her garden to a specialized magazine, just for fun. Her neighbor had said that sometimes they sent people over to take pictures for their magazines and that was always fun. She thought that Doris could be one of the proud owners of a famous garden. At first she wasn’t too sure but one night she decided to do it, just to add a little bit of fun to her life. Maybe it was the wine she had been drinking, but she was as happy as one could be while taking the pictures.

 Days later, she received an email from the magazine telling her that they were interested in a visit and asked her about her availability. Sure enough, they were there the following weekend. Her neighbor stood close by the whole time, showing Doris her two thumbs up every time the photographer took a picture or when the interviewer asked Doris about some of the flowers and she answered in the best way possible. They were only to people but she felt overwhelmed for a moment and had to take deep breaths when they weren’t watching.

 The interviewer, shortly before leaving, told her that her pictures would be in the mix for the next issue, which would portray suburban gardens from the country. She could be in or out, they didn’t know yet so she had to be very attentive of the issue. For Doris, it was a torture to wait that long because the magazine was released every two months. But thinking about it also made her very happy and proud and it was certainly better than wondering why she was not married or why no man appeared to have any interest in her.

 Sure enough, almost a month and a half later, the magazine’s new issue had her garden in the front page and in at least four other pictures inside. There even was an awkward picture the photographer had taken of her looking at her tulips. She was a bit embarrassed by it but many people thought it was a very nice picture. She kept the issue by her bed, to look it every time she felt down. Doris knew not many people knew about that magazine but that didn’t matter because it made her feel great and that’s what mattered.


 However, the following week every single person she met greeted her kindly, smiled and congratulated her. At first she was very confused but then she read a letter she had gotten from the magazine: she had been awarded a prize for the best suburban garden in the country. The prize came with a cash prize and an actual medal that would be given to her in a ceremony in the magazine’s headquarters. For the first time in her life, Doris was really happy, for real, and did not relate her mood to her relationship status. No man could make her feel better than that recognition.

martes, 8 de noviembre de 2016

Home

   Some people refused to understand. They had an idea of family in their heads and they couldn’t be bothered to change it, even if the city they lived in was one of the most progressive in the world. They stared and sometimes even laughed. But the trick was not caring at all about what they said or did. Moving forward and just doing your thing was paramount in order to survive the horrible feast that was living in a suburban neighborhood like White Pines. There were things people had to do and one of them was having a thick skin.

 Diego and Liam had moved from another city two years ago and even after that time people still looked at them as if hey were the weirdest people in the world. Yes, they were married to each other and yes, they had a son called Duncan, but they often felt it that what people saw was so much more than that. Actually, it was Diego who had to endure most of the social pressure of the neighborhood because he was the one that stayed at home. Liam saw some of those things but he refused to acknowledge it was serious in any way.

 Mothers specially, were vicious against Diego. Well, at least most of them. From the first day he brought Duncan to school, he was a topic of conversation of the group of mothers that helped with several matters like organizing parties or fundraisers. After all, the school that Duncan went to was a very high achieving one and it was paramount that all the children and most of the parents got involved in some of the social crusades that parents loved to be involved with such as feeding the poor and organizing lavish parties to give a few bucks to a charity.

 Diego wasn’t used to that. In the city they lived in before, his life was kind of different. He had always tried to be a writer but never really realized how hard it was. Liam tried to help him but nothing ever worked. Then, they had the idea to adopt a child, so they did and that was how Duncan became a part of the family. Now, the boy was nine years old and Diego was what you would call a “house husband”, completely dedicated to Duncan and to the new house they lived in, which was substantially larger than their former apartment.

 They were all happy, in a general way. But Diego soon became frustrated with all the parents thing. He thought it was quite an old fashioned idea that only women would leave their kids at school and be the ones who helped for all the things that they needed there. He was the only man to do so and he had done it after Liam and him argued about the school and him not having a job and so on. He didn’t like to go to those meeting but he felt he had to because of his responsibilities towards his son and his husband. But even so, it was very annoying.

 Most of the meetings lasted for more than an hour and, for Diego that was excruciating. Not only because the women rarely stayed on topic (whatever it was that they were planning in the school) but because they always stared and asked the silliest question, just as if the last hundred years of social progress had never reached their homes. He got asked who was the woman in the relationship or if he felt emasculated for not having a job. They also looked at him constantly, as if he was some kind of strange creature walking around the downtown area.

 Sometimes he skipped sessions and he had to come up with excuses. There were times when he actually did have true excuses and other times he just came up with something. But that didn’t matter because they always would look at him as if he was lying and, even more annoying, as if they pitied him for some reason. It was as if they thought he was just a poor soul that they were helping, kind of one of those charities they loved to donate. One day he had enough of their nonsense and just stormed out of one of the meetings, with no explanation.

 When he arrived to the house, he realized two things: that he had to come back in a few hours for his son and that the place they were living in was too damn big. The house looked like one of those in which people live in commercials or something. It had a big backyard and a front garden too. The kitchen was enormous, as was every other room in that place. Diego didn’t like to say it but he missed his apartment from before. Not only because it had been something his family had passed on to him but because he felt really at home there.

 In that cavernous house, he only felt at home when Liam and Duncan were there. But Liam was always at work or busy doing something else and Duncan was at school or at some friend’s house on Saturdays. Only on Sundays they behave like an actual family and even then Liam was distracted by his phone every minute and Duncan was exactly the same thing. Diego didn’t really have any friends to distract him. He only had a couple and rarely spoke to them because their relationship was a bit different than normal.

 When he was alone at home, which was for several hours a day, he would clean the house by himself. He even refused to hire a maid because he argued that it would make him turn alcoholic in five days. So he scrubbed the floors, the toilets and trimmed the grass all by himself. It was very hard work but he enjoyed it because at least that way he was distracted doing something productive that maybe his family would acknowledge. They never really did.

 He decided not to return to the meetings. However, he was surprised to realize, one day, that they had called Liam and told him about that. And the fight that ensued was just ridiculous. He said it was his obligation to go to those meetings and help and Diego replied he wasn’t going to be their animal to look at anymore. He would rather feed the poor himself than helping in those ridiculous parties. Liam said the husbands of those women were the one doing business with them and Diego said he didn’t care. It wasn’t his problem.

 Liam said he would never understand how working and living a good life really worked, al the thing you had to do to make it work. Then the fight got uglier, with Diego telling Liam he knew he never really approved of his choice of not having a job but at least he was there every day of the week and not having meetings that took hours and not even looking at his eyes for several days. Liam couldn’t respond to that and Diego just turned around and left the house. He jumped into the car and drove off without much thinking about his destination.

 He used the car to think, to try and get an idea of what it was Liam wanted from him. But he just couldn’t be that submissive person he obviously wanted to have by his side. He wanted him to be like all those other women and there was no way Diego would go down that road. The fact that he wasn’t a working guy did not mean he had no integrity. When he realized it, he was driving to the city they lived in before. It was only three hours away so he pressed on, thinking it could be a nice idea to go back to his real roots in a place he loved.

 He arrived in the morning. Thank God, they kept the keys in the glove box of the car. When he opened the door, a cloud of dust escaped the apartment. They hadn’t been able to rent it, partly because of the chaos they had left in there. So, out of the blue, Diego started cleaning, opening windows and buying products to get the place in perfect condition. When he went to the supermarket, people greeted him. They remembered who he was from childhood and from living there with Liam. They asked for him but he didn’t say too much.


 After a week, the place was perfect. He let Liam know he was there and he announced to him he was going to stay there. He actually told him that if custody were not his, he would fight for his right to Duncan. And so it happened, months after. He got his son to live in his former house and he noticed how much better it was for both of them. As for Liam, he had been seeing some woman for many months, so he stayed with her in the other town. Diego didn’t mind. He had returned home and he would never leave again.

martes, 25 de octubre de 2016

Cheese, bullied

   Every single time she ate cheese, she suffered from stomach ache and the most awful and embarrassing case of gas that anyone could suffer. As many people with the same problem, Lila had learn to ask every time she ate in a restaurant if the meal she was about to ask for had any traces of cheese. Some people did the same with peanuts and others with other types of food, but her problem was with cheese. However, she did have to see cheese ever single day at home as everyone else was able to process it normally, so they ate it.

 She really didn’t like to be a nuisance, a problem of some kind. She knew it was very annoying for other people when she had to ask for traces of cheese. And when people didn’t want to understand what the problem was, it was extremely embarrassing to tell them what would happen if she ate just a small piece of cheese. She would go very red and her voice would tremble and every person would feel awkward because it seemed she was over sharing when she was just explaining how awful it was for her to eat something that could even kill her.

 Lila had discovered her condition in high school. It was one of the worst memories for her to remember. When she was a very little girl, she actually loved cheese and her mother would always put some string cheese on her lunchbox because she knew how much she adored it. Lila would eat it very slowly; enjoying every single piece as if it was some kind of delicacy that only a few people had access to. Her friends always thought it was something very weird but they never said anything about it, at least not back then.

 Years later, when she became a teenager, she still had much love for cheese. But it was one day in high school when they were presented with pasta for lunch and she decided to practically cover her plate with Parmesan cheese. Her friends laugh and she did it partially to be funny. When a teacher noticed what she was doing, he told her she had to eat that whole plate of food if she didn’t want to be taken to the principal’s office for wasting food and playing with it instead of eating like all the rest of the students.

 Lila accepted the challenge and ate the whole plate. The teacher watched her do it as well as her friends that applauded her once she was done. It was one of those really cool moments in school when teacher get served when they’re being impossible and just ridiculous. However, only five minutes after finishing or so, Lila began to feel really bad. She felt as if someone with a knife was cutting her stomach from the inside. It was awful. She tried to resist the pain for a while but she finally asked her teacher for permission to go to the nurse’s office.

 And just as she did so, she farted. It was loud and clear and charged with a foul smell that filled the rather small classroom. Every single person there complained and laughed and booed her. She had to run away, having the door behind her open. Her body had betrayed her in the most awful way possible and, to be honest, she didn’t even think about the nurse when she ran out of the room. She regretted leaving her backpack. What she really wanted to do was to go home and never come back to any of her classes for the rest of the year.

 However, that was not possible. She wandered around school until a teacher saw her. Then, she almost ran to the nurse’s office and told her what had happened. Nurse Holly obviously wanted to laugh but tried not to and instead told Lila to lay down in order to be properly examined. As it was obvious, her stomach was bloated. That and the foul gad indicated she had something to eat that wasn’t very well received by her stomach. The nurse asked her to remember what she had eaten so they could know what it was that caused it.

 Of course, the huge bowl of pasta came to her head fast. Nurse Holly said it could be either the cheese or the pasta because many people in the world weren’t able to eat either of them. So she gave the girl a pill for her ill stomach and told her to remain there for a while until it worked. Then, she could choose going back to class or going home. It was only an hour and a half to go to the end of the school day so there wasn’t much difference, she said. She clearly didn’t know how embarrassed Lila was about had just happened.

 Her mother came to pick her up and she wasn’t very happy about it as classes would finish in only an hour. She told her daughter she could’ve resisted a little bit more and just come on the school bus as every single day. She was obviously not very happy about having to pick her daughter in school because it disrupted her schedule. She was a realtor, selling properties in the area to people that wanted to live in one of the most well taken care of area of the city. She made a very nice living, so her daughter interrupting wasn’t the best thing to happen.

 When Lila arrived home, she quickly ran to her room and closed the door. Her mother didn’t understand how embarrassed and humiliated she felt after what happened. She had tried to explain but her mother was too busy with her things to actually hear her daughter speak for a couple of minutes. So Lila would rather just be alone in her room and suffer her stomachache there without anyone that would make her feel annoyed or underappreciated. After all she was teenager in her most difficult years.

 She didn’t really want to go to school the next day but her parents said that food poisoning was not an excuse to miss more than one day of school. And they were so strict that missing an hour was for them the same thing that missing a full day. So Lila had to hop in the school bus in the morning and from that point on she felt every single look on her. She could even hear the laughs and jokes but she tried hard not to care or, at least, not to be aware of everyone for the rest of the day. She just wanted every class to be fast so the day could finish soon.

 However, that rarely happens in high school. Her first subject was History and, for her, there wasn’t a more boring assignment. She normally wandered off in that class, drawing doodles on her notebook or passing little notes to her friends, normally talking about some boy or mocking the teacher. But this time, she wasn’t included in that activity. She noticed when one of the girls turned around, looked at her as if she was garbage and then passed the note to another girl sitting beside her. That felt even more humiliating that the fart.

 Her social life went in decline since that awful day. So much so than the following week, Lila didn’t have someone to sit with her at lunch. And then, the jokes got meaner and they weren’t whispered anymore but yelled in the hallways and everywhere a large crowd was inspired to laugh at her and imitate the sound of farts with hands and arms and mouths. It was very humiliating. Lila tried to talk with the principal but he dismissed her saying that she was imagining things, as people didn’t get bullied in his school. And then it became clear to her: she wasn’t the only one.

 Many others were bullied in school. Of course, not for the same things as her, but it did happen and more often than the school would admit. They teased a boy for being gay and a girl for not dressing “fashionable” enough. And of course, they teased people for being fat and others for being poor. So Lila decided to punch back and tried to talk with every single one of those who had been insulted, pushed around and called names. She wanted them all to be with her in order to do something that, she thought, would make things change.

 Her mother had sold a house to a very renowned news anchor and she had become friends with him. Lila convinced her mother to let her talk to him and her mother, seeing how insisting she was, accepted. The man thought it was a very important local subject and assigned someone to it. A week after, everyone in the city knew about how bullying was going rampant in schools for the stupidest reasons and how no one was doing anything to help. The report had serious consequences and all because of a plate full of cheese.

sábado, 8 de octubre de 2016

What I saw in the cave

   No matter how much I try, I will never forget what I saw in that cave. The scientists had already done their digging and everything was as organized as it could be. To my surprise, people I had known from the past and from afar, were working with them. I didn’t know why but I never asked anything in detail, it was better if I was in the metaphorical dark. In the cave I was in the real dark, a humid place that appeared to be like a museum, at least in the first area I stepped in. It was a scary thing to do, entering that place, but I did it anyway.

 Then, I saw him. It was very strange: he came up to me and said “Hi” and I answered. We knew each other but, deep in my being, I didn’t know from where or why. He seemed to stare at me to much, making me a bit uncomfortable. I tried not to look at him too much because he made me feel worried somehow. Then, another man appeared, one that was already leaving the cave. That one I knew very fast who he was: I had bought my ticket in from him and I think I don’t really have to explain what that’s supposed to mean.

 We didn’t looked at each other for long, instead pretended to ignore one another. A kind girl I had known back in high school gave me a helmet and some protective goggles. I had to loosen them up a little bit because they were really tight around my head and I was already getting a headache from seeing two guys I had been intimate with in the same place. I suppose that didn’t really spoke very well of my behavior but, to be honest, I don’t really care how others perceive me as long as I’m able to get whatever it is that I want.

 With the girl, I started to descend into the depths of the cave. I was getting more and more nervous because I knew what they had found there, I knew very well why I had come and it was because I wanted every single piece of the truth in my power. I wasn’t going to give up an ounce of the knowledge I had gathered along the years and I certainly wasn’t going to pull back from getting my hands on every piece of information I might need. I think everyone that knows me has that in their mind when they see me and, to be honest, I like it.

 Julia, the girl who takes me deeper and deeper into the ground, doesn’t seem to care about any of that. She had always been so kind and respectful of everyone when we were in school together. She was a little bit like me: never excelled in anything, always been a very average student. However, she had it clear in her mind what she wanted to become: a renowned journalist. She worked her ass off for it and made it. Now she worked with this corporation because she thought she would get the first scoop on the story.

 I got scared for the first time when I stepped on a rock covered in moss and I almost fell right in the hole they had made in the ground. Julia was very agile and managed to grab my hand in the almost dark, pulling me back afterwards in one go. She was stronger than I had imagined and now I understood why they had hired her. Maybe she had being trained, like all those other security guards that I had seen around the compound. They were like huge rocks, impossible to overcome. They weren’t even scary but massive.

 We descended a little bit more until Julia took my hand and told me to let her lead, as there was a doorway built into the wall that lead into the space which I wanted to visit. After walking for a bit, we crossed a plastic curtain and then there was a very potent light. She told me to grab one of the hazmat suits that were hanging on hooks on the side of the tunnel and put it on as fast and as efficiently as I could. I don’t know why, but I started to shake a lot right there.

 When I was done with suiting up, I realized she had been ready for a while. I couldn’t hear her and she couldn’t hear me. I guess the suits prevented even know from getting in or out. I felt strange, not very sure of what I was doing but I was already there and there was no turning back. Julia walked first and I followed her. The tunnel continued for, at least, fifty meters and then it opened up into another chamber in the cave system. Julia had a flashlight and made me realize how massive the space was. A building could have easily rested there.

 Then, she grabbed my hand and indicated with her hands that she was going to be pointing the flashlight downwards. And then she seemed to ask something of me: to remain quiet. I didn’t really understand why she would do that sign. I did moments later when I didn’t obey her advice and screamed at the top of my lungs. It was the most awful thing I had ever seen and the image was now stuck in my head, in my eyes even. She pulled me out as fast as she could and, in what seem seconds later, we were on the entry point of the cave.

 I ripped off my suit and decided not to listen to her orders or to anyone else. I dropped every piece of equipment as I walk straight to his office, to Michael’ office, the guy I had slept with in order to get in there. He wasn’t in the office. I started looking around for him but the small group of trailers that made up the camp next to the cave was not exactly a big one. There were not really many options to where he could have gone. I left the last pieces of the suit there, turning around as if going crazy.

 Then, Alex came and grabbed me tight. He took me to one of the trailers and close the door. He was the guy I thought I knew but didn’t quite remember. When I saw his eyes from a close distance, I remembered him all right: Alex had been one of the guys in my life that I had to convince of things that weren’t real. That was my life and now he was in front of me again and the worst part was that he seemed to still think that everything that happened was true. But I wasn’t up for that, not then.

 I asked him, before he could say anything, if he knew about the cave, if they all knew. He told me only a handful of people had gone down there. He hadn’t and neither had Michael. Only Julia and the group of scientists had been there but the rest of the crew in the camp knew exactly what was down there. I started crying. I couldn’t control myself. I told Alex that it was horrible and that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I had wanted information and now that I had it, I didn’t know if I wanted it anymore or if I could do anything with it.

He held me in his arms, which were very strong, and I realized how nice it felt. Actually, I remembered how I had lied to him for a long time in order to get to another secret I was seeking. He knew who I was and, instead of trying to arrest me or something, he was hugging me and trying to make me feel better. We looked at each other’s eyes and I realized he was crying but I never got to know why that was. Someone was knocking on the door and Alex opened it. He got out and I got confused for a second and then I saw Michael coming in.

 He closed the door behind him and demanded me to tell him what I had seen in the cave. I told him he knew exactly what I had seen and demanded his thugs to let me out of the camp. Michael smiled in the most awful and disrespectful way and told me that now I was theirs and that I had to work with them as a mean of payment for what I had seen. I told him he was insane if he thought I would tell anyone about what they were keeping underground. I would never be able to reveal such a secret to anyone a live unless I wanted to scare them for life.


 He grabbed me by the arm and reminded me how I had thought I had used him to get inside that camp. Now, he was giving the orders and the most important one was that I wasn’t going to get out of there anytime soon. Then, I felt the most awful look all over my body. His eyes felt like the most awful medical devices, making me feel more than naked, almost violated. He got out of the trailer without even closing the door and I collapsed on my knees. My job, my life choices, had taken their toll on me and now I had become something I had never wanted to be: a prisoner. Basically, they had beaten me at my own game.