Christ, why did he fucking have to look?
Maybe somebody should have given the godforsaken cat a warning. It's been a long time since anyone got this close to Corey. He has never been able to handle close relationships, either way. Because he has been raised a fucking man, and they are weaned off feelings at about the same age as they are weaned off diapers.
Briefly after they learn that, for hygienic reasons, they should do their number two in the loo and flush it down, they are taught to treat their feelings just like they have learned to handle their stinking pile of shit.
Like something inappropriate, disgusting, unhygienic, and stigmatized in the adult world. Like something they should break themselves off, like a drinker off the bottle.
Because if they squeeze a pile of feelings into the diaper that is a relationship to someone else, this mishap will only make them feel uncomfortable, so they are taught.
It will start giving off an awful fucking stench, and in public people will turn up their noses at them.
As soon as they have it internalized, and notice the smallest skid mark of feeling in one of their relationships again, they quickly throw it away, wipe their asses clean, and wrap them up in a new diaper, which will initially fit particularly well and feel exceptionally fresh.
Depending on how digestible the time spent with another person is, a smaller or larger pile of feelings will end up in their new relationship again, and before it, too, develops the disgusting stench of a rat that has died underneath a bed, they throw that one away, as well.
In the long run, this carry-on creates a huge amount of fucking waste. Which is why after a while they decide to keep their asses naked from the start, rather than wrapping them up in relationships again.
If a rumble in their stomach announces a pile of feelings, either way, they hurry to a quiet place and push it out, with as much sweat on their brow as pain around their anus ring. They don't even give the end product in the toilet a final glance, before they flush to make it disappear as fast as a cheater would his mistress, when he hears his Mrs.
Flushing once is no longer good enough. They flush over and over again, so that no trace of shit remains which could reveal to someone else that a pile of fucking feelings has ever cooked inside of them. Only they themselves will be reminded of it for a while. By growing hemorrhoids, and a sore ass that will take more time to heal than a middle-aged vagina after giving birth again.
In some cases a particularly hard squeezed out pile of feelings leaves a bigger wound, and if it contains exceptionally aggressive bacteria, too, then their own emotions poison their blood, travel to their godforsaken heart, and cause an infection, which is often fatal.
This is how men like Corey would sometimes give their fucking life for a feeling they didn't allow themselves to be feeling. With a sigh, he looks at the cat.
Looks like he should have resisted what the yenga-tower built from recycled trash that is society these days has tried to teach him long ago. But even if man becomes man enough someday to recognize it, and feel the need to change it, resisting it is just as fucking hard as for an adult is wearing goddamn diapers.
Well, now that is that!
Just like too much spicy food straight after diarrhea, Corey was never able for close relationships for this reason, but used to have cravings for them either way. That was a long time ago. Now he doesn't anymore.
A black cat is purring right next to him, and with its head, it pushes the can away that his hand took up again. It tries to jump up on his lap, so it can rub against his chest, but he has no desire to be as close as this to anyone.
It's been too fucking long, and close relationships aren't the same thing as riding bike, having a wank, or swimming. Unlike those, you forget how to do them, the longer you don't experience them, and at some point you're too fucking old to even understand them.
Maybe the black cat that has pushed its way onto his lap can smell it off his unwashed torso, and is trying to challenge him now, with all the purring, and rubbing.
What a bastard! That's enough!
Corey will move, so it will get that he wants it off his lap.
Well, isn't that a knockout?
It is a female, and when she realizes that he is pulling away, she is clinging to him even fucking more. She is clawing at his pants, and they are ridden with enough holes as it is. At least it isn't like her goddamn claws are destroying much, but they sure are stinging as fuck.
Like a tattoo machine, he should probably push her like you would a lover who´s too rough.
Nah. Honestly? It feels as good as a passionate kiss on your neck that leaves a teeth mark.
Feeling anything is rare out here. The trash in the hollow doesn't feel, and neither do the godforsaken crackheads, or the cell phone-addicted teenagers who are swallowing even more out here on the weekends than the fucking prostitutes. Then there are homeless people like him, who cannot really feel at all, ever since last winter, when Baby Jessus gave them fucking frostbite as a Christmas gift, and just took off again thereafter. A bit like Corey´s godforsaken father, who wasn't really one at all, and only came by once a year, completely wasted, with the first snow. After his binges, he would not have enough money for fancy presents. So he would only give Corey a void in the soul, and the certainty that he would never celebrate Christmas again. Thinking about it, even the frostbite that the last winter bestowed on him is pleasant compared to this.
Well, like his father, the winter left only little traces. A few shaded spots are still wearing a dusting of snow, but what has remained is the numbness in Corey´s fingers and toes. Now they are touched by the first rays of sun, but he can no longer feel their warmth.
Therefore, thank fuck for the cat's stinging claws!
He should stroke her, so she´ll keep it up, and that always works. For your information, girls, with a cat it does just the same as with a man.
Does she even like me, he wonders, the fingers buried in her fur. More often than not, the answer to it would be no, when he would wonder about it after first dates in his early adulthood. Well, with the cat it is probably a no, as well. She is only doing what cats are meant to be doing. It is following an innate instinct, and stomps for milk when it feels safe. Well, it feels safe with him? Huh.
That would mean that she is. not afraid of him at least. Somehow, that's a win, and more than he could say for most of his first dates back in the days.
Most people find him intimidating. Perhaps because he embraces a sun that is biting him, his eyes wide open, and despite the pain he cannot ever look away.
I should have bought a fucking cat when I could still have cared for one, he catches himself dreaming the godforsaken boredom of the day away. He should have, back when he still had fucking options. An apartment and a goddamn job that he misunderstood as a calling,
Ridiculous!
Why did he pass on everything that could have made him happy for something that landed him here?
What fucking fool considers searching for the truth more important than looking for their happiness?
He must be a goddamn madman to believe that, without truth, happiness is fucking worthless.
It may be spot-on that joy is exclusively reserved for the stupid, because they don't think about anything, and certainly not about something like this.
Unfortunately, stupid, Corey is not and that's why he failed to prioritize his happiness. Thus, there was no cat for him. No companion like the black one that is vibrating on his lap now. What fucking irony is that?
Perhaps his stupid obsession with the truth was a mistake. Now everyone can see where it has led him. Never to pleasant fucking places, but here, where the sense- and useless accumulates, like piss in a urinal, and the truth itself is pissed on out here as well, because it has no meaning or purpose anymore these days.
In a world where no one wants it, it ends up under the train bridge with people like him. Amidst the outdated, discarded, and broken things that no one needs or misses.
Who even knows what to do with anything that is true in a time that is caught between two fucking stools? In a time amidst the emptiness, a time just like this that confuses people's godforsaken senses with nonsense, so that no one is fucking surprised anymore, when the truth itself is declared a madman's thought.
Or, like in Corey´s case, a terroristíc act.
The black cat continues to purr, like she is unfazed by it all, even though these days everything is as twisted as a hockey player's arm after a foul.
She keeps on purring, while modern people rather change their fucking gender than anything that truly matters. She purrs and purrs, as the masses wholeheartedly support a war in order to restore the peace and don't even fucking hear how paradoxical it sounds.
She doesn't stop purring, while hundreds of billions are invested in warring parties, instead of used to declare a war on the godforsaken housing crisis.
She continues to purr, whilst freedom of speech mutates into a fucking facade that is meant to camouflage the recently built prison for the opinionated, where anyone who dares to think themselves will end up these days.
Fucking, damn you, René Descartes! You have been proven wrong! "I think, therefore I am" is the fuck not valid anymore. People who think for themselves are no longer nowadays, they are declared insane.
The black cat on Corey´s lap keeps on purring, either way. She purrs and purrs, even though modern people would rather have no opinion at all than a point of view that they have to stand by.
She is purring and vibrating, even though no one tolerates the fucking truth anymore, but what they want to tolerate, instead, are women who are men, men who are women, and those who want to be both.
For a long time no one has wanted to be who they really are anymore, and being real is what people nowadays cannot endure at all, because on most days it causes pain.
Perhaps most can no longer even be fucking genuine, since you forget how to entertain a close relationship with your godforsaken self just like you would forget how to be close to someone else. Apart from that, being who and how you truly are means committing to a thing, and commitment has long gone out of fashion.
No one has to commit anymore, not to a gender, not to a partner, not to a matter, not to a promise, and least of all to trades of character. For the past years it is not only like the need to commit has been missing, but more like you aren't allowed to commit anymore.
You stand out and are despised for committing to yourself or anything else. That is what happened to Corey. He stood out, and now he is despised for his commitment to himself and to the only things that ever truly mattered to him, the truth itself, and the undoing of lies.