Red downtown heaven
By: Red
Joker
If
you must really know who I am, I am a prostitute. The funny thing is when you
are walking across a street or wandering through the streets full of people you
will only see me as a normal boy. I too, have my mask and adjust it when I come
in contact with people. All of us put on different masks but they don't fool me.
I am not saying I will be able to stare into your naked soul or anything. It's
just that it has been a long while since I have stopped seeing with my eyes.
When people come near, I let my senses wander and just feel their
being.
Today
I was sitting in the library hall, my back towards the world and losing myself
to the to the universe created inside that little flickering box. I had an
e-mail from my sister. No I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back to
those hollow stares, to the emptiness, to nightmares...I get out. The world is
quiet; the silence surrounding me is made of glass. I scream. It shatters. I
pick up a broken piece and cut my flesh. It bleeds and Bleeds. I dig further
till I get to that nightmare lingering somewhere in my unconscious. I want to
cut through that too.
One
great thing about this new life is that I don't have to cope with my family
anymore. They were a really good family in case you are wandering if I left home
because I was mistreated. There was one thing wrong with them though. They all l
came from some exotic universe and they were pretty amazing people when you
thought about them as natives of a distant planet. I left home because I was
rotten inside and out.
My childhood was pretty silly. The funny
thing is I wasn't so naïve and good as other children even back then. I remember
myself stealing crayons and hiding shoes that I had filled with mud. I remember
myself throwing a gold wedding ring down a pipe, my sister's wedding ring to be
precise and getting in trouble for it. I am proud of myself for that. I never
was like other kids. I was simply a self-centered idiot but a happy one. I lost
myself in the world of poetry and book and made up the oddest characters from
the people I saw in the everyday life.
It
all changed pretty quickly. I split apart when I was 14. It just all happened
because I had to grow up over one year. I don't blame anybody for that really. I
lost my friends, my sanity and my sense of belonging. I grew distant and one day
I just took off on my wings and ran away from it all.
Now I travel playing my fiddle in the
corner of the street and gather money. I don't belong anywhere and I am not
committed to anybody, not even God or myself. I have slept in lots of weird
places. For me prostitution is a form of survival. I am actually afraid of sex
and you know something? I die every time it happens or else I would be screaming
or crying from pain. I like my life this way; I get to be reborn a thousand
times in a lifetime.
When
I am all by myself lying on the wet asphalt staring at the red downtown heaven,
I dream of the stars I will see tonight. Nothing can disturb my peace as I open
my chest and let the night sink in bringing the all the beauty and bitterness of
an unknown mystery inside of me. The mystery of night. I am not a stranger to
the night. It hides in the castle of darkness and when I am down, it sings to me
or takes me to chase the moon in the water puddles till I am nothing but a faint
shadow, part of the background of this city, of this world even. That's why you
can never tell I am a prostitute even if you stare into my naked soul. Each
night I am baptized again in the forever cycle of death, birth, life and
eternity.
