Reality and Fantasy

Reality and Fantasy
Roberto woke up after a difficult night, checked his emails on the iPhone, and shuddered at the messages left for him. All the usual, boring bellyaching and misunderstanding. All those unaccomplished, insensitive, unperceptive folks out there read too much of themselves into his words. They acted in a self-important manner. They forgot they didn't mean much at all in that strange world of his. He lied and made up stories as he went along the process of indulging himself called writing. He knew he was not good enough to be a real writer. He was not even a wordsmith. He wrote because he was in pain. Simple but true and sad.

He turned on the porno DVD a friend of his just lent him. He watched it for a few minutes and he shut it down. All the gyrations and huffings and pantings just made him feel sad and think of Laura. She is ubiquitous. She is his curse. After she was gone, he turned to other women for comfort, to no avail. His writings have been rooted in the wish she would drop dead. His words hold the world tenously bearable enough for him to live on for another day. Everyday, he must artificially create a hunger to live just one more extra day, so he had the strength of not killing himself. This game he played with himself everyday was raw and lonely, but it was the only game he knew. Of course there were always words, a lot of them, that accompany the artificial hunger.

The numbers didn't mean much. They actually enhanced his feelings of loneliness. It's not the body count, a supporting evidence to a childish boast. Wives, girl-friends, admirers, one-night stands, but never paid companions. He was too vain and cheap to go through the last route. The numbers were there for him to see his search was futile.

He went to the bathroom to relieve himself. All the shit that had been accumulating weighed more than the mental anguish he was experiencing. On the way back, he paused and examined himself in the mirror. The face was still good, but the body was going to pot. The once washboard abdomen was getting a paunch. The body was losing definition. He was over his normal weight by 15 pounds. He made a mental note to change all that in the coming year.

He was back to his bed and reached for a pen. And he scribbled furiously. All the animals were so stupid. They didn't understand him at all, he said to himself. Then the phone rang. He looked at it. An unfamiliar number. He said, hello. His heart almost leaped out of his chest. The voice was unmistakeable even if he had not heard it for 38 years. "Is this Roberto Wissai?" He said very softly, almost inaudibly, "Hello, Laura."