Bhai on a Horse

It is strange how relationships are quickly forged with some friends. To establish a connection from a series of senseless signals and maintain it effortlessly. Some relationships need work, time and the whole gamut of attention. This is not one of those. For two years, our relationship transitioned from acquaintance to friendship to brotherhood, demanding little from either of us. It is the ideal relationship in many respects. There is love, but one that which cannot be confused with the love that needs consummation. It is sometimes possessive, but is still not stifling. It can be overprotective, but not to the point of reducing the other as a helpless and hapless soul. It thrives on its own, in shit and in beauty.

It is a relationship that does not judge; which sees you in your broken state and revels in your catharsis. Like a padded room where you can release your tension and anguish and come out revitalized and clear-headed. It is a saferoom where you can be your most vulnerable and trust that you will not be respected any less. Where you can shout your fury and break every damn thing in sight and not be charged for damages. Where you can whine and crib about life’s little surprises and love’s guileful tricks. It is the place where you can lose your wits and then catch a grip. Of reality. Of yourself.

In this world, it is lovely to have somebody who will take your side whatever the argument is; because to him, your side is in itself the winning argument. Who will see your point, however twisted and irrational; because he knows it matters to you that somebody else sees as you do. Who will beat you up unflinchingly; because he intuitively knows you are about to make the biggest mistake of your life. Who will beat up anybody and everybody; because you asked him to and because he wants you to smile. Who will give you one thing simply because you want it. Who will spoil you because he can.

So let me wax sentimental of what has been and slightly mourn what it will never be again; because this boy is about to make a woman’s life beautiful and it will be their story. For now, this was ours.

Something Left Out of the Decalogue

Thou shall have no more than one bitching buddy.

Many alliances were forged out of a shared source of crib. Through litanies of imprecations and emotionally-charged rants aimed at a common target, a bond is formed. Something about human decency that having somebody else muck-deep in the shit with you makes for a comforting thought. Sometime in posterity it was determined that shit-slinging, whether in the professional world or in your friendly neighborhood, is supposed to be a group activity, like coup d'etats and coup attempts.

Though bitching buddies are good for the worst of times, it can be somewhat different from when the going gets good. Since the relationship was forged out of shit, it can't thrive on anything rosy. So, as much as you can expect a shoulder to cry on when bastard A was in his dastardly element, you shouldn't expect the same when things turn out to be roses. For as fast as bitching buddies are formed, the simple reality is that when you run out of things to bitch about, all that will remain is, er, nothing. And it is at this point that things turn heinously ugly.

For bitching buddies come equipped with the latent ability to mutate into the worse version of the very thing you were bitching about. And because they have the advantage of knowing your colorful opinion of bastard B, they are more decidedly dangerous. In this world of assholes, you can expect asswipes at every corner. As such, 'every word you say may and can be used against you.'

Therefore, thou shall bitch only to thy wives, husbands, gfs, bfs; as they are, anyway, conveniently accessible in the event that you need to kill them.

Big (Wet) Apple

Fall Break is the time when you reward the boy for his sterling efforts. From "I won't show you my grades; in fact they don't show our grades to us either" to "I could have gotten more than 119/120" is nothing short of a great leap to the fantastic. So, thrusting him to the gaping mouth of a city in perpetual (ordered) chaos is naturally the best reward, never mind if he would rather spend the five-day recess vegetating on the couch and communing with the bed. A change of pace, a deviation from the accustomed landscape and a slight decrease to the Chinese: Amrikan ratio are what constitute a vacation these days.

NYC tourist circus masters are peddling tours of t.v. and movie sets made famous by sex, violence, hilarity or any combination of the three. For an arm and a leg, you get to indulge your cravings for the histrionics and be vicariously at the center of the universe or, at the very least, a multi-billion dollar industry. Production sets of Sex and the City, Taxi, Forest Gump among others, are hawked as your passports to abscond the monotonous stretch of Fifth Avenue.

***
Actress: (wailing) You're no fun; you don't want to go anywhere.
Actor: Stop it.
Actress: (Convulsed in paroxysm of tears) Stop saying stop it.....
Dramatic egress.

***

Being a meticulous manipulator, you want to generally be in charge of everything. Itinerary, transportation, accommodation when all poked and needled, they nullify any possibility of a vacation morphing into a paralyzing headache. And then there are the things to do and the things to bring: Called aunt/uncle ABC? Check. Money? Check. Closet? And so on and so forth. But in your overzealous efforts, you find packed in your suitcase, wedged between the superfluous and the essential: your bellicose hormones and his fecund impatience. The two things that should have been left behind.

***
Actress: That's it. (Pointing at the Empire State Building)
Actor: What's that?
Actress: That's what NYC is all about, now let's go home.
Dramatic egress.

Wracked and Wrecked

She:'Baby?'
He:Grunts.
She:'Do you know?'
He:'Yes.'
She:'Okay.' Sighs.

Silence.

He:'Do I know what?'
She:'You said you know!!!'
He:'Okay, okay I know.'

And he did and he does. When you're a neurotic, your mind is consumed with its frantic romp through the limitless possibility of something going terribly wrong that you have no time to delineate to anybody what exactly your fears are. So it helps when someone knows, just like that.

And when you're lucky, you get to at least smile at the inanity.

Penny Philosophy

What's up? I'm at the library leeching on free internet and posturing as a stressed scientist in the middle of a world-changing breakthrough. I'm not sure if i look convincing enough in my lounge pants but I'm sure the frown that's creasing my forehead is deep enough. If there's a fail safe way of disguising oneself as an intellectual giant, it's by contorting one's face into a multitudinous wave of jagged lines. It's not about the number of grey hair on your head; wealth of wisdom is denoted by the depth and breadth of frowns. Who the hell thinks about anything complex while smiling? Rather, who the hell smiles while thinking anything complex? The sufficient condition being: one doesn't smile and the latter being the necessary condition: while thinking anything complex. As such, arriving at the contrapositive we get: if one is NOT thinking of anything complex, one is smiling.

I'm not going to write anything substantive and i just stated the obvious. I'm mostly feeding on my craving for something intellectually relaxing but at the same time stimulating. So this is an exercise of stringing together paragraphs phrased in an officious convoluted style of literati nonsense as a vehicle for my penny philosophies. My penny philosophies are your typical observations of the prosaic (see above) that are not completely devoid of worth. However, the maximum worth they can achieve is greater than 0 but less than 2.

At this point, you might have expected an extended literary drivel exploiting the rich analogistic possibilities that the fusion of penny and philosophy permits. However, I want to assure you that there's a limit to madness and an order to chaos. As such, I won't extenuate your time further and instead assure you that this won't be a regular programming.

I bid thee all a good life.

Borders

Our relationship is an occasional continent of Arab nations wantonly annexing territories and adamantly refusing to coexist; It just sometimes begs for peace. Just a few days ago, when my word was refused to be taken as the bible, I left the bedroom and took my histrionics with me to the living room and punctuated the whole performance with 'banging the door shut.' Simmering in a mostly self-generated vexation exclusively aimed at the boy and his doubts, I established a patrolled neutral border abutting on his territory and mine. As such, the map of ephemeral peace was: bedroom, his; living room mine with the wall separating the sane from their wits. Contempt is not a very good company by the way, in a dingy barn of a room. No wonder the animals who flock and infest the place always do so in herds. Our apartmentmate will call them friends, but that's generally a matter of opinion.

Immersed in isolation, one attains a heightened sense of reality. And insecurity. Five minutes into the exile and already I was hungry for company. In an instant, the bleak monotony was shattered by a bat--that nocturnal ebony winged cave-dweller--which declared its ominous presence with a flurried flutter of wings. I didn't have time to question its interest at cohabitation nor did I have time to appreciate its kind thought of proffering its society to me. Trespassing borders, seeking asylum and survival ultimately took precedence. I charged into the boy's room and declared unequivocal peace and issued a cry to get rid of the thing.

He didn't do much, of course. Then again, 'much' is relative. To some, regarding one's hysterical girlfriend with a cynical eye, walking out of the bedroom to investigate on the alleged bat infiltration, shrieking at the sight of it, rushing quickly back to the comforting arms of the bedroom are 'much.' But there's something about sharing a common shriek that is rather comforting: Shriek and I'll shriek with you.

Inevitably, peace was restored; borders were broken. Our relationship is an occasional continent of warring Arab nations and a constant United Nations.

Middle Path

He doesn't love--he owns
Arrogantly, he possesess
Defiantly, he discards
She's to be had, not to be held
She's either his, or she had been
She either meant the world to him or she never existed
She longs to be loved--that's her curse
He can never own her--that's his