Askhole

It has been a while, hasn't it? It's pretty a while that the little grape trees that I planted grew up to the size of my thumb, spiraling all over the poles, with the leaves drape down like a curtain in some wild fantasy movies. It has been a while that the grape trees wilted, died, and grew back again, just like the green grasses that sprawling after a bush fire.

It has been that a while.

And a lot of things happened in between that. I have been meaning to write, but as I sat down on my table, fingers dancing on the keys, brain juggled in between incoherent thoughts, I yielded at the very last moment. It struck me that the stories that I was going to tell were just another repercussion of the same shit again and again. 

"You're a good person but you refuse to learn", Sammy told me one day on our way back to the parking lot. It was a cold winter evening, not as blistering cold as in Minneapolis, but it's pretty cold enough for Saudi Arabian standard. 

"You know what girl, I sat on my toilet bowl last night and I contemplated the shits that happened to me. And I was pretty darn sure that I was the source of the problem. Remember Custard? Remember how I fucked his life? And then there was Shay, and oh yes, the mighty Liam; I fucked everybody's life with my inferiority complex!"

"Yeah, and yet yesterday you were being an askhole. You want me to explain what an askhole is?"

"I got it bitch. I know what an askhole is"

"And you messed it up Z. I told you you weren't going to get what you wanted. You're gonna get hurt pretty bad if you don't stop. I mean he won't hurt you physically, but are you ready to get your heart crushed and burn all over again? You deserve to be happy, but you chose not to"

If a stranger met Sammy, he would've easily thought that she's a shrink. Or a love doctor. Or a sex therapist. Or a quack. Whatever fits at that very situation. And as for me, Sammy knows a lot about me. In and out. But all this while she thought that she knew everything, and apparently she wasn't. Everybody has their own little secrets, yours truly included. So when I told Sammy about the uncomfortable encounters in between me and Barjas, I wasn't really sure that I told him the complete see-through story. She didn't have to know the story in its entirety, she should just know the bare surface so she could grasp the funky shithole that I was dealing with.

Sammy's advice was like treasures carefully locked inside a chest. It's not like that she dispensed the advice against her will, but it was something that rarely reachable once you get ahold of it, it was something that you could not let go.

I have yet to tell her what really happened between me and Barjas. It took me to a dark road, and that dark road was not the place that you would happily jaywalk just because there's a road in front of you. 

I am pretty lost right now. Along that dark road. I am hoping Sammy would grab my hand and show me the way out. But I am pretty ruined, and I am not pretty sure that Sammy will be there again whenever I need an arm to hold on to. 


Zubaidah Arshad
The Meat Company
Adliya, Kingdom of Bahrain
19 January 2020





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Revisiting Shay

It was an odd day. Maybe it was because the clouds looked different or because I wore mismatched socks. I’m not really sure. I stood in front of Shay, the room smelling slightly of old books and maybe a bit of lemon cleaner. Shay had a beard that seemed like it hadn’t been brushed for days, but it made him look interesting, not messy. It reminded me of the scruffy dog I once saw at the park. We were supposed to chat about usual things, maybe the new movie or the book I was reading. But my mouth had its own plan. I told Shay the biggest secret I had, the one that had been piling up inside me like lego bricks. The secret about how I felt about him. He looked surprised, like when someone gives you a present on a day that’s not your birthday. For a really long time, he just stood there. The old clock on the wall kept ticking, and a bird outside the window was singing, probably to another bird. Then, Shay finally talked. “You know, I always thought secrets were like lost socks. They’re hidd
Read more

Sleep Deprivation Equals To Apple Pie

Image
It crosses my mind (at this wee hour), that when you can't get your eyes close and adrift in a good night dream, images of recipes and good foods always come uninvited. I browsed a website and dang over there were these gorgeous blueberry pie and a chicken pot roast and lemon-lime danishes and the list is further miles ahead. I can't sleep. But my brain is entirely exhausted. I worked until 6 in the morning yesterday and once I opened up my eyes exactly at 12.48 pm today (Tuesday), there were 18 missed calls from the Company. That is not the point. My point is, I can't sleep. And when I did a little rummaging just now in my fridge, I found a bag of apples, a few kiwis, gazilions of portobelo mushrooms, and a box of butthead lettuce. A thorough thinking has been done, and I am planning to mash up all the apples and make some pies. Finding blueberries here, is like digging for a little japalenos in a bunch of cili melaka. They don't have blueberries, but they have a rack
Read more

Someplace Else

You make me happy, do you know that? How so? Your existence, your breath, your caramel hair against the morning sun, your porcelain skin against mine, your squinty eyes when you're being naughty, the way your fingers slowly crawl on my face.  What else? Your smile. Your perfect teeth. Your little dance in the kitchen. The way you stand. The way you walk. Little silly things you say when you have your first coffee of the day.  You make me happy too. How so? You. You by being you. You make me happy. 
Read more