Blood on the dance floor

Masochism is underrated.

There’s a moment, right before knife meets skin, when it knows what’s coming. If you look at the eyes, the guy said, you can tell it’s not scared. He said you have to look it in the eyes, show some respect. Make it fast, greased lightening fast. He said don’t grunt. Be quiet. Somber. Allah-u-akbar, whispered, never yelled. Look it in the eyes, and it won’t bleat, it will let you kill him. It will make it easy for you, it will comply to its own demise.

He was full of shit, I was sure. Then he looked it in the eyes, and he placed the knife on the neck and he whispered and he pulled and the blood spurted out and the legs kicked about but it didn’t bleat. It fucking didn’t bleat.

Not a single one of them did. He said, most don’t know, most treat the slaughter like a job. It’s a service, he said, a delivery service. Goat to God, direct, never late. Destiny he said, naseeb. Your naseeb is to kill? I asked. To redeem, he said.

Strange fucker. Don’t expect profundity from my butchers nor do I desire it. But he didn’t even ask for money. He said the prayers of the bakra are enough. How do you argue with someone who thinks goats pray? That’s a level of faith I don’t expect to reach, nor do I desire to. He stole the skins on his way out, put my guilty conscience to rest.

Mom was jaw droppingly awesome. I hadn’t ever really noticed how difficult the whole butchering and distributing thing is. Sat right next to her to keep busy, wouldn’t dare let my mind float free these days. This guy sitting with one razor sharp knife stuck between his toes and one in his hands getting yelled at by my 5’1” mother. I’ve never feared mom, she’s never feared anyone. She says she’s scared all the time, she tells me stories of how she ‘adjusted’ to dad’s lifestyle, dad’s mom, dad’s sisters, dad’s customs. What’s yours, I ask. You, she says.

Who did you love mom? She doesn’t say. She doesn’t even say love, I love your father. No way. But she doesn’t say no one either. She doesn’t lie, just doesn’t tell the inconvenient truths. 35 years with someone you don’t love. Kinda makes love seem irrelevant. Dad said he loved mom. He never looked me in the eye while saying it. Dad could lie, dads have to. Some moms do too, the hypocritical kind. I know who daddy loved, and I know who mommy loved, I know who you love. But I don’t know who loves me.

There’s a phone call I need to make. There’s a conversation I need to have. I wish I felt it was the right thing to do. Infringe upon her happiness, just for a second, to redefine mine. Won’t though. There ain’t enough whiskey in the whole damn world to make me drunk dial your number. I remembered it. Somehow, all of a sudden. I remembered. I’m supposed to call. I should. But won’t. You’ll be nice, and I’ll be nice, and I’ll wish you a happy ever after but I won’t mean it and your thank you would be equally hollow. Wish as hollow as receipt of wish. And both soaked in long fermented venom. You will never forget, even though you won’t always remember. I wish I could understand what you hold against me. I don’t want to hear your voice again. There are specific words that I need to hear. Specific lines spoken in a specific tone with a specific sadness in your eyes and a specific tremble on your lips. You’ll never say and I’ll never ask. And within that oblivion of never ever will exist this fissure that both divides and unites us.

Something has given way. A trap door has dropped open and I’m unable to not jump in. The whiskey makes me softer, more pliable. The wall falls and I’m ruptured. Feelings take control, center stage, the reins and the remains of what I callously left behind in my unwilling manner of editing you out of my future.

Drunken proclamations. More honest than anything I’ll ever say again. More meaningful than all the bull shit in all the letters you hurled in my face to create the beautiful illusion of being in love. I want you, I said, over and over trying as hard to convince myself as O. It wasn’t a weepy statement but a defeated one. Iwantyou declared in spite of the explicit knowledge that I don’t, not really. Vengeance is what I want. Tear your dreams to useless shreds, make you suffer make you pay. Fuck nobility, I’ll save it for a better lover. I want to look you in the eyes and slit your throat just to see if you’ll bleat.

The list of mistakes is long. The list of conclusions is not. Too fast, too passionate, too early, too late, too much, too little, too true, too fickle. Not meant to be. The time spent wasn’t all a waste, only mostly. The words said weren’t all a lie, only mostly. But the words written, the ones dragged, snatched, cajoled out, now they tell the truth.

The truth is that destiny is overrated.

The truth is, that your happiness, your perfect ever after, this lie you’ve told well enough to believe your self, the web of hypocrisy that you’ve laid down to protect yourself, is one email from ruin. Now it’s only a matter of me deciding whether its love or hate that will propel the muscles in the finger that rests unsure on left-click as the arrowhead hovers over send.

The truth is that every second of happiness that you will know from this day onwards, every fucking smile across those lips stained with my spit, every night of peace and every day of languor, every dream fulfilled, every curse denied, every hug, every caress, every orgasm, the first kid and the last… everything that you will deem precious in your life to come, is my gift to you.

Don’t you ever fucking forget that when the choice came to me, I chose love over everything else.

Again.