I was sitting in a restaurant, having lunch with a friend. This friend was the much talked about Goat, who often turned up for no reason other than to keep a story going. This time, however, it was clear that he was out to change this, by actually trying to get a story started. It wasn’t long before he said to me, with a tone of voice that might lead one to conculde that he was recently kicked in the gonads, “She…she broke up with me!”
Not knowing what to actually do with this information, I asked, “What do you want me to do with this information?”
“Help me, please. I can’t go on like this.” Then, after wiping his dripping nose on a paper napkin, he continued, “You recently had a break up, how did you deal with this horrible ache?”
“Ah, the ache,” I said in wistful nostalgia, as I thought back to not a very long time ago, when I had my own heart ripped out for my body, and still beating, injected with a nauseating shot of tear-gas. Also, I remembered that since this break up, I had taken to yike-inducing illustrations of my painful circumstance. Now I believe my pain was compunded even further by a missed dental appointment, which caused a great thawing, radiating aura of uncontrollable throbs, and which each throb, I had wished that I had never been born. Well, more like I had been born in a different time and a different place - preferably as a notorious writer of sexually explicit poetry in 19th century France.
But then, I began to think of that brief moment a week later when, in a serendipitous revelation, I realised that what I needed was that which got me in the situation in the first place, and what was, at that moment, staring at me while blowing spit-bubbles.
“Well you see,” I said to the Goat, “I simply forgot about the break up and threw myself head-first into the role of Dutiful Uncle. Isn’t that right, you little monster?” I shifted my attention to the Ball seated on my lap, and made a series of duck-like quacks, which caused him to squeal in glee.
“Yes, um…” I heard the Goat say, “I was meaning to ask you why there was a baby on you lap. But if you’re trying to tell me that I should convince my brother to have a baby, then this lunch has been in vain. Besides, my brother is unmarried and five years younger to me. Society would ever accept it.”
Once again, I thought back to my own experiences, and how I managed to somehow pull myself through the ordeal before I had my serendipitous revelation. I had a brief flashback in which I saw myself standing outside her house, yelling obscenities and hurling exagerrated diatribes about her shortcomings, and then running away as soon as her big bulky brother came out with a hockey stick.
Seeing the Goat’s reasoning, and not wanting to let down a kindred spirit, I said to him: “Well then, you could do the next best thing. Do what Billy Joel did. Write some mean-spirited song called She’s Always A Woman, wrap it in pukeably mushy music and sing it to her.”
“What the hell are you talking about? That song is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, one of the purest expressions of love that you can find!”
“Oh, really? Have you even listened to the lyrics? ‘She’s frequently kind, and suddenly cruel’? And then, ‘She’ll careelssly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding’?! Hardly a beautiful love song. More like, That Woman is a Man-Eating Psycho-Bitch And I’m Glad I Got Out With My Danglies Intact!”
It didn’t take him more than ten minutes of going through the lyrics before he was not only convinced but also working on his personalised version of the song that he would sing to her at a mutual friend’s party that night. I helped him with a few lines, like, ‘She’s freaky like Carrie, and burps like a man/And she lies when she’s hungry, and she’s cheating on Dan’. In fact, once I got the ball rolling, the Goat too came up with several stinging lines himself, the best of which being, ‘She’s just a fat slob, and her butt’s one big blob /And she wears sleeveless tops, but her pits are unshaven’. The only rule to the song, really, was that no matter what he said, he simply had to end each verse with ‘But she’s always a woman to me.’
When the song was finished, the Goat looked up and smiled for the first time since his break-up. “This is perfect,” he exclaimed. “Thank you. Thank you so very much.”
After that, the lunch progressed into a normal happening between friends, with us quizzing each other on the goings on since school got over, life after school, and such. It was at this point that he asked me, “Why didn’t you come for the school reunion? It was great!”
“I was at the reunion. And it wasn’t great.”
“If you came, then why’s it that I didn’t see you there?”
I thought back to the reunion a year back, and remembered how I had gone through great lengths to make myself inconspicuous. After all, it was all I could do, after having failed my examinations and on top of that, not having an unbelievably hot chick to compensate for it, at least in the eyes of those school people who I didn’t want anything to do with. So, I went with nothing to show for myself, for my constant spewing out of hatred about school and everyone who went to school and for my proclamations that I was so much better than them. So, I simply lingered in dark corners and stood against a background into which I could blend - wearing a Hawaiian shirt would in most cases have drastically cut down the opportunities to do so, but luckily, the reunion had a Hawaiian theme, so I did this very well - after all, the Goat hadn’t even known that I was there. To change the topic, I quickly asked him something I had wanted to know for a long time. “Do you know what Fornicating Baboon is up to these days? I mean, do you know what he’s doing now?”
“Oh, Fornicating went to Australia. He’s doing his college there, and most probably won’t return for another three years, at least.”
“Ah.”
***
On my way home from the lunch, I went over all that had been done and accomplished, and all the false alarms, the wrong turns and blighted opportunities that had dotted that one year. I went though all this in my mind, and at the end of it, I was surprised not to feel a depression approaching. I wondered why while walking home, but was interrupted by the sight of a flower bed being overrun by a speeding car, whose driver apart from having had a bit too much happy sauce was also desperately trying to make some savings while maintaining the constant flow of alcohol and for this reason had mixed some kerosene with the petrol in his car. The car’s exhaust created a dense smog, and a group of little children playing at a park nearby started coughing. Quickly, I held the baby close to me, and ran as fast as I could to get away from the smoke, so as to protect the little fellow, who simply let out one of those happy squeals that can change lives. And change lives it did. All I could see in my life for a radius of a few kilometers was nothing but smooth sailing, as I was then, a man with a mission, a mission to protect him from all the idiots who mixed kerosene with their petrol. No measly break-up with someone whose name I couldn’t even recall could overcome that feeling. As long as that joyful bundle was by my side, nothing could affect me.
And then I reached home and found a Mexican standing at the doorway, grinning a uniquely Mexican grin. “Do you hearing?” she asked me. “We going after today. Baby now old enough to leave, and I get back to work. You say goodbye to Baby soon, for he gone tomorrow!”
***
So it was that I sat in a restaurant again, with Goat, our roles reversed from the previous day. I made the appointment soon after I realised that my glue for a broken heart proved more tenuous than I had expected, and so sought to get my favour repayed. After all, was it not because of my doing that the Goat was able to expel his grief, and was then sitting there, quite possibly the happiest man in the world? Of course, I did my best to hold myself together - my attempt at this consisted of enquiring about his ex-girlfriend, which would also serve the purpose of reminding him of my great service to him the previous day.
“So,” I said to him, managing a smile, “how did she take to your little song?”
The Goat looked at me, his eyes soaked in tears, and in a whisper, he said, “After that song…she realised that I really loved her. And she said she’ll love me forever. That song worked wonders.”
I spotted a flaw in what he had said, so I said: “But you didn’t really love her, remember? You thought that she was a freaky psycho, and that she burped like a man!”
Before I knew what was happening, my shirt buttons were airborne as its collar was stretched far apart in anger by the Goat. “If you ever say that about my babe again,” he hissed at me, “I swear, I’ll make you realise how painful childbirth is!”
Then, I watched him as he left, and greeted a slightly plump girl whose T-shirt had noticable sweat patches under her arms, before leaving with their hands entwined completely.
“Oh, I’m so alone!” I wailed out, and sat on the floor, as everything came crashing down around me.