Love is This, Also Love is That
Prologue: Beauty Never Lasts
Love is the road that leads
Our souls to union vast.
Love is the passion-storm
That sports with our vital dust.
…
Beauty was such a fleeting, trifling little thing.
It hardly seemed worth the effort to apply the makeup each day, to commit to a regiment of skin care (he couldn't really afford) just so he didn't end up like the other cheap whores on the street corner. Arthur rather enjoyed being a bit more classy than the others—it gave him the upper hand in sales, at least.
Yet, despite his efforts, each day Arthur looked it the cracked mirror on his wall, he saw another blemish, another scar, another line just waiting to wrinkle like burned paper if he ever saw the light of the sun again (he barely remember what it looked like). He'd become a creature of the dark, wandering and looking for prey in the forms of willing men with money weighing down their pockets.
Most nights, Arthur would turn out successful. Under the veil of night and sepia streetlamps, a lonely man, sometimes woman, would drag him along to nameless motels and inns. They would do what they wanted with him (naturally), and leave a wad of bills at the counter before he could even fully come to. Sometimes, they would even tip (What was he? A waiter? He hadn't had that kind of job since high school).
He realized, one pensive, lonely night many years ago, that his life was reduced to nothing but a blemish on lonely men's consciences, so much like the marks on his skin that were being left with age and experience.
He would give anything for that everlasting beauty that some had (those who lived highly) so that he could live his life in peace. He would no longer have to scrounge for rent money in a place overrun with rats and roaches. He would no longer remember the feeling of being hungry, of not having eaten in days, and with that, would no longer be able to trace the outline of ribs against his pale, moonlight-tanned skin. The cough that seemed so insistent on staying a part of his daily life would disappear like any normal cold, instead of festering into whatever chronic illness it had become.
A mere twelve years ago, this had not been his plan.
He had been so… something many years ago—felt invincible, as teenagers were wont to do. Now, at the age of twenty-nine, he realized the folly in his arrogance. Who was he to believe that misfortune had no hold on him?
Yet, she had wrapped her cold hands around her neck, and in his haste and a poor choice (as well as naïve foolishness), he found himself under the yellowing light of approaching night, hoping for whatever change came his way.
He would give his greatest treasure (of which he had none) to find the secret to beauty, so that maybe, it could somehow lead him from this life he had stumbled upon. That maybe, like some fucked-up fairytale, he would be saved like a damsel in distress. Maybe become a real-life "Pretty Woman."
And yet, while he found himself wanting to loathe this lifestyle characterized by hunger and pain, he didn't have the energy to bring himself to. Hate was such a tiresome emotion, and he had spent so long musing and blaming everyone, including himself, that he had only dug himself deeper into the hole of destitution.
But there was no more time for musing—the sun was nearly down, and there were bills to be paid.
