Poetry by eyes of repulsion
Sadly enough I've been a busy bastard since the last Hugi and can't bring you more than two chapters this time. Blame Sony and the Swedish military. They fit nicely as part three though as the story changes a bit after chapter twelve. If you've been unfortunate enough to miss the ten earlier chapters, please read them here. Comments are as usual very welcome.
Like always I must point out that I'm not Rick and only his director. What he thinks, values and does is his business and not mines, even if they may resemble each other sometimes. I hope you'll find his struggles interesting and that you'll feel like you understand him by now. If you've ever been in love you should, I think. Hate him or love him - love always controls hate.
- Morph 001102, morph@elenziah.com, http://i.am/morph -
11.
I decided to take it a bit slow, more like a wuss than a real man. Too much was at stake to act stupid, and acting smart is never stupid in the long run. We would fly back the following morning and I thought it might be best to come home first, be apart from each other and then tell her. It would be more natural, that my sudden enlightenment slowly had made me realize the truth while being away from her. I just felt so extremely worthless because all of this shit - how the hell did everything get this complex? All the problems with falling in love with one's best friend when being millions of miles away is one thing, pretty understandable in a way, but why fuck everything up again this time? Couldn't I have been a normal loser when I met her again, asking her for a date or whatever? At least just something giving the impression that she was too perfect to just have as a friend... This incurable disease was worse than having been treated with sandpaper in the anal orifice for seven years, damnit...
If I just slipped a declaration of love through my lips at the moment, would my bomb be a small, invisible little firecracker or some new type of devastating nuclear weapon? I didn't know. But what could go wrong really? She loved me as a person. She loved me as a friend. She knew that I felt the same about her. She knew I could make her happy. What would be so terrifying if I told her that I - without expecting or demanding anything - thought she was a bit more perfect than I perhaps should? If the feelings weren't mutual - what's the fucking problem? That would be my burden to bear and not hers.
While having the creative part of my mind on hold I thought of testing her a little, hopefully to perceive what the hell my next step would be. The trick was nothing really. I placed a picture of her from my wallet under my jacket as if I'd dropped it, saying "will I ever be able to find anyone better than this perfect woman?" on the backside, ready for her to find. It couldn't turn into any kind of disaster, I thought. She could see and read it, become happy and shut up about it, or the same thing but ask me about it. Of course something could go wrong as well, so she didn't find it at all. The last alternative would be that she found it and got disappointed for some reason, but if that would happen I guess my chances were none anyway, realistically.
It went my way. Later the same night when Candy had gone to bed and we were having an ordinary, cozy evening with deep talks and nice Hungarian food, she told me about her discovery under the jackets. Conveniently I blushed like a kid when she told me what she'd read on the back of the photo, and I - the lying hypocrite said to be her best friend - was definitely not a suspect of fraud. She said that it had made her very happy and started asking me lots of predictable questions, all being answered in a very correct way. She now knew that she'd always been superior, and most importantly - that she still were. Disturbingly something made everything screw up - it felt false, just polite, like my words were empty. And right when the moment for "do you mean that you're in love with me?" would have been perfect for her to ask, she began babbling about Charlie in escape. That of course made the theme of this evening's conversation more difficult to direct, something I didn't care about - I was tired of this. Without dragging my own feelings into the topic again, I got her to speak about men. For more than half an hour she spoke about all the men who'd tried to win her heart even when Charlie was around, and how men always had treated her like shit. It didn't seem like she knew I was one of those creatures with penises - I was something else. She ended the conversation telling me how the ideal man should be, for another fifteen minutes or so. She described me - there were no doubts about that. As I knew - or so strongly hoped that it felt like I knew - that it would be like hearing a story about myself I couldn't resist throwing that in her face. "Yeah, you really need a guy exactly like me..." I said with a smile, receiving a shy, blushing "yeah" with a laughter in return. She looked away at her cute feet on the other side of the small sofa, giggling nervously, looking uncomfortable in the situation and changed subject. Anyone would take that as a positive sign - I didn't. I knew her far better than that. I felt more rejected than ever before, ditched like hell. To give up now and whine for some hours again would be my typical procedure, but I was too damn bored. "Then how come you've never been in love with me?" I asked, as my words meant nothing. She was extremely cute looking pressured. "I..." left her mouth as she took her focus off her feet and at my face, "don't know really..." "Try...?" I bravely continued, now looking straight into her angelic eyes which, like always, made me lose touch with the real world. She thought for a while before saying anything. "I don't know, Rick... I really don't. I'll give it some more thought and then we'll speak about it again when I'm not this tired, alright?" Even though it sounded like nothing more than an easy way out for her, I agreed, skeptically if she'd ever bring up that subject again. Ten minutes later we were lying next to each other in a bed again, she unaware that her curly, fragrant hair had trespassed onto my face, right under my nose. I was in urgent need of a remedy for my remedy.
12.
My mind was fucked. Having to struggle to understand and have control over myself was painful enough - I surely didn't need Michelle to be another fucked-up riddle. Hell, what kind of a man did that woman see me as? I knew that her feeling of unawareness about why she'd never been in love with me was too profound to just state that easily, "because you are too stubborn" or something as weak as that, and that the answer was a more complex one. But what the fuck - love is always a bitch once in a while, why the hell keep away from it and be self-deluded just because it's a war in the beginning? She'd built so many fat walls to stay away from trouble with me she'd lost the full picture. I almost felt certain about it now - she was in love with me and had been so for a long time. What was harder for me to catch was her image of me. It was really difficult even to guess, not only because I didn't know how she saw me but also because the possible truths were many. Some days the most logical answer was that we in fact were biological siblings, that our parents always had lied but told her the truth and made her promise never to tell me. It felt quite possible sometimes, but I guess my mind just enjoyed fucking with me... or that I'd been watching too much crap on TV. Sometimes I thought that she was a demon sent to this world to torment me because of something evil I'd done in my life. The dumb guy who directed my dreams was fond of that idea. But the truth I most often considered the ultimate one was that she could - as I've thought before - feel that I had no interest in her as more than a friend, at least not that I saw her as a candidate. That she was like a little sister I took care of, almost like a daughter. Sometimes, too often, I'd behaved like that, always ahead of her, self-secure and without any major problems or feelings of powerlessness like she sometimes had, and therefore helped her instead, in the long run creating a inferiority complex she was able to hide as she knew I cared for her so strongly. Whatever answer I found logical, the reason of this big mess was I, and I had no clue on how to fix it. I was the fuck-up, not able to do jack shit about it which drove me mad like hell.
Meeting Michelle again after all these years became more of an adventure than I had imagined. As my mind felt like a cold bubble-bath of some disgusting liquid, not capable of sorting anything out, separate good from evil, right from wrong or what was the truth and what wasn't, it had made me lose contact with Rick. If Rick ever existed, that is. If the truth was that I'd always been in love with Michelle that naturally had formed me into who I am now - someone perfect for her to love. I'd always known what she'd wanted and instinctively adapted to fit her demands. Not only in all the big issues but also in the on the surface smaller ones. It wasn't difficult to change opinion if some song on the radio I found so-so later would show to be her favorite, for example. It was the same thing with everything else - from smaller things like movies to what people we preferred to be around. Love took control over me because of the feelings of affinity, changed me, and was my driving force in life.
This was getting awfully monotone, way too long-winded for me to stand. Something drastic had to happen. I'd been mind-wrestling so much I started questioning if it was smart at all to do so - who the hell behaves like this? Normal people care about their work and egoistically invest all their time in that, meet someone, take mutual interest in each other, shag and then boom - they're a couple. I was fucking demented. I'd been obsessed by a woman for all my adult life, thinking about her all days and never ever felt meaningfulness in anything as she obviously was the missing link for me to be able to feel anything deeply positive at all. I'd tried everything else - been successful in most areas but never felt any satisfaction for more than a very short period of time. To be respected or even idolized is comfortable until you get too much of it, maybe even realize that you can accomplish anything or get anyone you want to like you, if you really want to. I'd been there. A great economy making it possible to travel the world, buy whatever you want and never have to care about the cost is great, as long as you don't start feeling lonely and everything suddenly gets boring. It's as in the saying about spending time inside a huge and beautiful castle with all its keys without finding any room to enjoy - totally pointless. I'd been there too, and now money was like water to me. I'd even tried to buy love, something that made me unhappier than ever and made me long for Michelle even more. I was a sad, crying child not knowing what toys to play with to have fun again.
The sense of being really powerless for the first time when you feel that it is the moment of your life is not a satisfying feeling for sure, a feeling that without doubt was to be deleted very soon. I was so damn tired of this whining that my current biggest problem was to hold my horses until we got home and then spoke again. I knew exactly what to say, how to behave and how to get her to understand how I felt when the moment occurred. I was used to this, it didn't feel like acting any longer. I just wish I could plan her reactions too, as well as my own if she wouldn't respond in the way I so very much wished she would. I didn't know the Rick without Michelle - I was even deeply intimidated on who he'd turn up to be...
To be continued...