I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am a physically healthy man, full of vigor, though I believe my mind is diseased. I know nothing about it, which maybe also explains the depression and the ADHD (self-diagnosed) and the sometimes intrusive thoughts of violent death (mine and that of others), which might indicate that I am also an angry man. I don't appear angry to my friends or colleagues. Most would probably say I'm a "nice guy". Or better, a "good guy". They have no reason to think otherwise. I try to make myself helpful when needed (though I never volunteer) and put on a smile when it's called for, but I prefer my own company and my own devices, far away from the mundane and pathetic existence that others call 'life'. Most people sicken me, and those who don't I simply tolerate, like the way a cat tolerates people, somewhere on the periphery. You might wonder why the pretense, but to that question I'll ask; how many authentic people do you know?
Smiles, nods, and handshakes are nothing but automations. I do it to be left alone. Behaving how I'd truly like to behave would, unfortunately, bring too much attention on me. Worse yet, it would quickly turn into negative attention, which is not something that somebody like myself wants to attract. Perhaps if I weren't also a coward, but, alas, we all have our imperfections. It doesn't shame me in the least to say I'd be looking to save my own skin first in the event of a terrorist attack, or that I would not run into a burning house to save the dog, let alone the baby. It's called self-preservation; it's the human imperative.
I have no interest in turning anybody's bad luck into mine, but again, it's one of those things you don't talk about openly, like most fundamental topics that people ignore in favor of that bland water cooler dialectic. There is the issue of suppressed anger and frustration. I often take it out on objects, kicking, punching, or throwing them at walls, but so what? The coping pills prescribed by some quack wouldn't fix a damn thing, so that's that, let my mind stay ill! Let it become more ill, even, let's see how crazy this baby can get!
The First of May
I was lounging on a yellow inflatable lounger in a swimming pool in Alphaville, or "Alphavilly' as they pronounce it, on the outskirts of Vitoria (ES), wondering whether it would have been preferable if my wife had cheated on me with multiple partners, once each, or if her year-long affair with Nate was the softer blow. I supposed the latter but maybe only because, by now, I had come to terms with it. Also, I suppose, an affair over the course of a long marriage has the potential to become little more than an isolated drama, while the quantity hypothesis insinuated a voracious and maybe even unquenchable appetite.
I left it at that. There were other things to think about. Like Ana, for example, with whom it would be only too easy to fall in love because guys like me like crazy girls like her. Or more to the point, I might be the kind of guy who falls in love with whores. Maybe I had already fallen for her. The number of times I thought about her throughout the course of a day stood as testament to something beyond casual attraction.
She had replied to my Instagram selfie, taken only minutes earlier, showing off the dream lifestyle in the pool. Que delícia! I didn't know if she meant me or the context. She'd also said the exact same thing to a dick pic I'd sent her months earlier. I fantasized about her, remembering our sweaty weekend dalliance on the bottom bunk at a cabin just outside Sao Paolo. Isso, fucky me, fucky me. Her whispers were tinged with a misplaced urgency alongside the cheerful notes from the pagode our friends were playing outside, which wafted into the dim room through the partially closed wooden slats that stood in for a window. Then I fantasized about my wife (soon to be ex?), who, that morning, had sent me a nude of her lithe body taken in our hallway mirror. Then about both at once, one on each side of me, their thighs on top of mine, our smells mingling, secrets evaporated. I shifted my weight to one side until the inflatable flipped over and dumped me, erection first, into the pool. I let myself sink, face down, the water bubbles gurgling out of my nose and over my head, and then quite suddenly the void filled my ears. I floated like a corpse, imagining that I was a suicide, that death, when it comes, is not unlike a refreshing dip in the pool; intense and then peaceful. I twitched the tips of my fingers for the full corpse effect. Maybe that's how one ought to live life, constantly daring it to take you out and always pushing back to the surface; taking a deep breath then plunging in again.
