23rd chapter

chapter @£ (23): the Era of the Ogres

    Despite a common claim, Mr BooHoo was a real humanist in principle. His misanthropic feelings derived from human stupidity, malice, egoism, loose morality and disrespect towards other humans, animals and natural laws. Attitudes that most religions would classify as inhuman. Furthermore Mr BooHoo experienced all the above in a personal level and it saddened him. It was not life that was full of pain and suffering but living among other people. I shall repeat that his hate was not general, he would never kill for example, he would rather take all idiots and all bad people and let them live in a small island somewhere, so that they eventually exterminate each other. He would also be happy if it could go the other way; all the nice and bright people could form a country of their own and "live long and prosper" there happily ever after. And off course the place would be called Utopia. (sigh) Some individuals were worst than others and we are not talking about gangsters here, we are talking about everyday people that will do anything to bring you to their level and make you as miserable as possible. Whenever Mr BooHoo complained about the unfair, stupid and harmful behavior of people he met, to his mother as a child, she always said that he should be patient because the world was full of jack-asses and that he would encounter plenty more in the years to come. This made no sense. If a person was an evil jack-ass, in Mr BooHoo's mind, the victim should make the experience public, so that other people could know that this person was a bad jack-ass and avoid him or her, for their own sake. Nobody wants a thief or a rapist in their house so why should assholes be tolerated? We should he shut-up and accept such people in his life?
   When Mr BooHoo reached adulthood (old enough to vote and drink legally) he left his home-town and went to a bigger city to study. There, he managed well-enough to keep asses out of his life as much as possible. At least the really harmful ones. Years passed and he finished studding and he changed jobs and he fell in and out of love and then he fell in love again and moved in with a partner and then, ass-hole wise the shit hit the fan. The partner was a great human being but there were Ogres in the family. This is how he got involved in the following story.
 
   The head-Ogre was talking non-stop [it was a town Ogre, one of the kind that has learnt to use a fork and a knife and a computer to browse the internet, although it has failed to discriminate between truth and lies. The previously mentioned abilities have made it feel so confident of its wit that, as a greek saying goes, it thought it had caught the priest by the balls (nomizee oti ehei  piasei ton papa ap' t' arhidia- a phrase full of sarcasm that describes an overconfident person with an inferiority complex that thinks he or she has an advantage or a good deal or understanding of something)]. Mr BooHoo was feeling that he was reaching the limit of bullshit he could hear being repeated without puking blood  that would run out of his brain. Instead of putting on a set of head-phones and manifesting in this way that the speaker might as well be farting through its mouth, responded with a question. He hoped that it would make the Ogre shut up and reflect for a moment. The talk was about politics. The question was "How can you claim that it is different to vote according to your consciousness and according to what you believe is the best for the society?". Apparently the Ogres morality extended only to protecting primarily its own ass, its house and perhaps its children and the rest of the world can go fuck them selves and suffer slow and dreadful deaths. Not very ethical or good, is it?
   The Ogre kept saying that public well-fare should be considered first but it did seam to have a quirky idea of what public well-fare meant. Further on, Mr BooHoo knew for a fact that the Ogre had been supporting the dominant conservative party because they helped it acquire an important position as a public servant. Instead of fighting a corrupt and unreasonable system it tried to be safe from it by being part of it. If anything, it had no right to tell other people what to vote and get aggravated when they didn't. In addition to the above the Ogre was older than Mr BooHoo so it was completely unfair to judge other young people for the current situation because it had contributed for long to the things being as they were. It even had the nerve to say that it was left wing at heart but that personal beliefs meant nothing when it came to electing a government. It had also said that it was alright to take advantage of unfair laws if there was profit in it, that women were the ones that should take care of the house, do the dishes and bring up kids but that it was ok to have a job to bring money to the house too, that (other) people should stay in their own countries and that there would be a world-war that would extinguish
all but a privileged ten percent of the current population of the planet and this was why it was important to finance a great army.
   Apparently Mr BooHoo's ability to express an opposition to the things it said seriously bummed it, because it became offensive. It said that Mr BooHoo did not watch enough television or read enough newspapers to have an opinion, that he was a victim of left-wing propaganda (except that it never bothered to actually ask him what his political views were and what he thought of existing political parties) and that no person was educated enough to be able to align individual and public well-fare. Truth was that Mr BooHoo was a real book-worm and although the Ogre had visited the house where Mr BooHoo lived with his partner it never took the trouble to go through the titles and thus see that Mr BooHoo was interested in ideas and eventually politics and culture. Then it started misquoting ancient Ogre and false appeals to authority. Mr BooHoo was dumbfounded. He hadn't got involved to a conversation where one of the participants had so limited skills and so little respect for the fellow speaker, probably never before. The Ogre  concluded its monologue by informing him that he spoke as the dumb people it met at the cafe where it spent its afternoons and that he was a bad conversationist because he did not lay out enough arguments. Mr BooHoo had almost reached the spot where his grief for humanity made him feel suicidal.
   There was nothing he could do about this family. When he expressed a different opinion he was accused of being too much of a rebel, when he kept his opinion for himself he was accused of being dumb. They were everything he stood against of. Violent, short-sighted, miserable, small-hearted, arrogant, egocentric twats! And they understood shit because they wanted to understand shit. If Mr BooHoo said for example "A", they would not just say "B" because then there would be a common ground  to argue that would potentially benefit both sides. They would just say "not A, I believe in 897(random number). Worst part was that in order to respect his partner's wish to see the family he would have to see them again and again. They made him feel as if the world was full of Ogres and that this time he would have to tolerate and do this in contradiction to his beliefs and this sucked.
 

Chapter 22

Will you be so kind and start from chapter 1 if you are a first time visitor? Atta boy/girl!

Chapter @@ (22) : Gypsies

Summer was there for good and the thermometer showed constantly above 35 celcious degrees, the occasional wind felt as if somebody was blow-drying you and Mr BooHoo was suffocating. Why is it that people find it hard to breath in heat-waves? Once, on a train he had met a woman that had lived for a few years in Egypt and she said that when she first got off the airplane she felt that she was suffocating. Then she got used to it.

The heat was intolerable. He tried to start his day as earlier as possible but it seamed pretty futile as it was terribly hot even at dawn. Especially during the early afternoon hours, when the sun splashed on the tiny apartment it required some effort to stay awake. Mr BooHoo was very similar to animals when it got so hot. He felt drowsy and lifeless. Staying by the sea and swimming all the time was the only way he could tolerate summer. Now he only worked once per week outside the house but he would feel guilty to take money from their limited budget, leave his partner and dog behind and go on vacation. Thus they only went swimming on weekends, a thing he had always considered a not so good idea because, well, everyone went swimming on weekends.

Living in the capital of the country meant that at the majority of beaches even putting your feet in the water was too risky. Pollution was a huge issue. One beach that was almost decent was the one near his hometown. It has already been mentioned that Mr BooHoo went very sheldon to swim as a youngster. This was because this beach was considered to be polluted as well until a few years back. (This would be the time to go through a few conspiracy theories but I will avoid it). Now that shore had a blue flag that confirmed the suitability for swimming and also it supported wild life, urchins, seaweed, small fish, jellyfish (one attacked his partner the previous week and made his left wrist full of tiny blisters) etc. It also smelled all right and looked ok. The water was clear unless it blew towards the wrong direction because then the sand rose form the bottom and made it less transparent. Further on, it took only an hour to get there, so in general it was a good choice for a small swimming excursion.

So, I.the dog, the partner and Mr BooHoo got into their nice old car that, unlike the contemporary car design that has an uncanny resemblance to toy cars found in chocolate eggs, was big and angular an they set off for the sea. Everything looked fine, they had small sandwiches and fruit, water and books, bathing suits and towels (Mr BooHoo belonged to a sci-fi sect, the members of which are unaware of each other, with a general belief that one should always have a towel handy and that, also, one's life could be less unsuccessful if he knew his or her towel's whereabouts). All they needed was a nice thick shade.

They arrived at the beach earlier than usually but no shade was available. Mr BooHoo started cursing at the idiotic aspiring fishermen that instead of going a few kilometres further on to do their fishing they kept spreading wild hooks on the beach, where the only thing they would probably catch was somebody's bottom. The water was too shallow for fish, there, anyway. Bloody buggers! Eventually they found a nice not so crowded and hook-free spot under a tree and they declared it theirs. I.the dog seemed to take it up on her to keep intruders away and the rest of the people that were already there to behave. Next to them was a charming little family of gypsies. They never got a good look at the purple-clad mother's face, as she was constantly taking a nap on a thin carpet. The father was dark and bearded and he was obviously enjoying life as he was playing with his three pre-school rascals in the water, making a very good impression to Mr BooHoo who wondered if his father had ever had such a good time with him and his sister. When they got out of the water he dried his sons' heads with a thick towel. He seemed to have a perfect mixture of concern and recklessness so as to raise perfectly healthy children.

More gypsies arrived, calling each-other cousins, with more children of various ages. They spread another thin carpet behind Mr BooHoo and with a couple of pillows they formed a nice impromptu outdoor living room. Although from that point on it became much less interesting for the dog, that turned into a rather pissed-off bitch with the new arrivals and had to be restrained, it became considerably more interested for our little hero.

Mr BooHoo always felt all right around gypsies, except for one time and even then it was his fault. Of course he had avoided having his palm read a few times and refused to buy stolen flowers a few more, but this doesn't really count, does it now? At primary school he had a few gypsy classmates but they dropped out after a couple years. He remembered that he got along fine with them. They did not hung around together during recess, but then again no one hanged around with him either. They even stood on his side a couple of times when he was being bullied. Once he had been the accidental receiver of a large spit from one of them. The real target ducked just in time but the spitter seemed sincerely sorry for having spitted on the little Mr. Mr BooHoo did not mind it that much. He was mostly sorry that the actual offender had not been spit upon. 


The people on the beach were just as kind. Women were a little reserved at first but then they also talked to him. One of the men said that the dog would be great for hunting hedgehogs and then a woman said that they tasted great and gave an extended description of  how to cook them. You skin them with a knife and remove their intestines, then add your spices and then cook them on a stick on a fire. All other manners of cooking are also ok. Another said she thought this food was disgusting. Their friendliness made Mr BooHoo feel like a dork. He felt he did not know how to behave and that he was pretentious. Although generalizing is wrong, he felt that he had never before seen such an immediate reaction to kindness. What a smile these people have! He was reading so much literature on social disobedience and had been thinking for so long of himself as a well-mannered Parias and suddenly he was among people that had always been living in the margins of the western society, that he felt it caused all his troubles and confusion, and still they survived without it, assimilated some of its parts and kept their own ways for others. Could he ever fit in such a community? Being a weirdo there would be different from being a weirdo in his own environment? Was he such a big idiot so as not to understand that he was a true breed of the civilization he was trying to reject (a very lukewarm rejection that is). These people knew how to survive. He liked hedgehogs and was against hunting. Well, they did not seem to get all their food from the supermarket. They ate hedgehogs, too. Thoreau claimed to have eaten a rat. He supposed that when it comes down to your food, killing it is a vary respectable choice. And he kept thinking. Another time on another train he had become acquainted with another very charming gypsy. They talked and eventually that person suggested that he cancelled all other pre-fixed plans about his life and that he went on to sell watermelons in an open truck. Mr BooHoo never forgot about this alternative and often wondered about this life-style. 


His day was turning out pretty awesome. He got into the sea again and swam for some time. Then he lied backwards and let himself float with his ears in the water. All he could see was the bright blue atmosphere and hear almost nothing. Is there a kind of yoga or meditation one can practice in the sea? If not they should make one. Le-vi-ta-tion. He hoped that this could be a day that he could look back to when feeling sad. And he hoped than when he did that he would not think of himself as merely "easily amused".             

Chapter 21

I would like to inform the unimaginative that the fact that this the 21st chapters signifies the existence of 20 previous chapters. Also, the story is sort of linear, so, I would advice you to go back to chapter 1 if this is your first time here. 

Chapter !@ (21) : The beginning of the 28th summer of our anti-hero

Summer had arrived at the land were Mr BooHoo dwelled. It was hot and as definite as it could. At that particular part of the planet summer was rather unpleasant unless one had the privilege of living near the sea. Mr BooHoo was an inhabitant of the biggest city of this country. In addition to this unfortunate fact , the climate change had altered the texture of the Sun, making any attempt to go out for the biggest part of the day a very bad idea. Mr BooHoo recalled that when he was a toddler and until he finished high-school the warmth of the Sun was pleasant in the morning and tolerable even  for someone as fair-skinned as he was during the noon. He was never a summer-person but being under the sun was never such a big issue. Now from noon until a couple of hours before dusk the Sun was sizzling. He felt as if his skin was torched. The heat and the mosquitoes made a descent night's sleep rare and he got up fairly early in the morning, about a couple of hours after the sun-rise. To battle sleep-deprivation he had started taking cat-naps during the warmest hours, when he was good for nothing anyway. The down-side of this was that he had vivid, not always pleasant, dreams and small incidents of sleep-paralysis. 

Our story takes place in a morning that followed a pitiful, four-hours night slumber. The day was not extremely hot due to strong winds, that would totally spoil any attempt to go swimming. Luckily, he did not plan to go to the beach. He would go to the mountain, or to be more precise he would take the dog for a walk up the nearest hill. 

On they went, Mr BooHoo and his half-breed pitbull, making an occasional stop for the dog to explore.         Mr BooHoo observed his surroundings. The warm smell of pines was sort of pleasant and the few weeds that survived in the heat were interesting. Yet, soon he realized that he was walking in a landscape of decay. The limited period of spring had resulted in limited bloom. The soil was dry. The grass and susceptible greenery  were yellow and dead. The dominant colours were the grey of the stone, the brownish of dirt, the yellow of dead leaves and the dull green of the thirsty pines. The dog was panting and trying to walk in the shade. Mr BooHoo found himself pondering on the endlessness of human stupidity and malice. So many things were simply wrong! It was as if idiocy had declared war against reason, progress, health and truthfulness. And people were outgoing as usual because it was "summer" and "healthy, open people enjoy summer". He felt certain that the moron who came upon that theory had serious issues of perception, or lived in an alternate universe. 

He took a large sip of the freshest air available in the city and headed back home. After all, the dog must have gotten thirsty and it was an innocent creature, that followed him around and showed affection. Mind you, he was not one of those idiots that prefer animals to humans, he would go for a nice chat with an intelligent being at any time, it's just that really intelligent people were hard to come across, especially if one tries to avoid the rest. He would just have to tolerate another day. After all, time passed, the rest of his life would just happen with or without his consent and his lifetime would pass as well, just like the summer.   

Chapter 20

This is the twentieth chapter. This means that there are nineteen more. It might be alright to read just this one but bear in mind that your experience will be fragmented and this is not a good thing. It will be like when I started watching the new Dr Who episodes in a random order and it made my Dr-Who-fan-friends want to pull my hair. Or like when my friend made me watch the 330th episode of Bleach when I was at the 220th. It was an annoying spoiler.

Chapter @) (20): On Sadness and what followed the first Age of Reason

Mr BooHoo was sitting on the toilet observing the shapes formed in the tiles on the walls and the floor while pondering on the fact that he was a sad person. A year before, when he was suffering from some physical health issues, he had promised himself that in the year to come he would try to be happy. He put  great effort to make happy thoughts. He even left himself small motivational notes, that only helped for a splinter of a second. He was not catatonic, nor was his face constantly grim, but his happiness appeared to be rather fragile. What could he do? He consumed herbal infusions and a lot of sardines but none of these helped. He was happy with his partner and his dog but they did not help either. Could he be chemically unbalanced? Did he need to play more? Maybe it was the water or he might have made a habit of it.

He remembered his childhood as a sad period. Especially the summers. Not a bleeping happy memory. He remembered sitting in their living room (an ironic use of the name as in most houses during that period people spent more time in their kitchens and the living room was solemnly used for entertaining guests), with the blinds closed to keep the heat outside (as if this could be possible), reading old Communist books (both his parents had had the illusion of being communists and rebels when they were young, thus this was the subject of the biggest part of the available literature in their home) melting away on the blue, velvet couches. Books and sleep to avoid the dull reality. They seldom went swimming and less often on vacation. They had sent him a couple of times with his uncle to his aunt's summer house, a place filled with people, none of which had the same age as him. Furthermore, they always forgot to give him something. If he remembered well, because it might have been on an other occasion, once he had arrived there without a swimsuit and once without any money. He could not swim properly, he burnt easily and he preferred to spend his time reading there as well. Reading had two good aspects. It provided with a relief form boredom and it kept people away. See, reader? Not a single fucking happy memory. Unless you want to talk about books and naps.  

Mr BooHoo was always sort of jealous of other people's vacation, happiness and frivolity. But now that he was a grown-up and went for vacation when and where he pleased (well, almost, because a failure of the system had sinked the continent in debt, his country's economy and government was in a hideous shape, the situation was chaotic and in effect, like many others, he had not been payed adequately for almost two years) he could not put his finger on the source of his unhappiness. And the bloody thing suffocated him. It sat on his chest and blocked his throat and made big unreasonable tears run down his chicks.

The other thing that troubled him was a loss of faith in humanity. The majority of the people that surrounded him were complete morons. Something, somewhere had gone extremely wrong. Evolution had not made the right steps. The world must have been getting stupider,  otherwise his previous view of it had been terribly optimistic. He was loosing hope and he was afraid that if it kept going like that he would have to become one of these distrustful,  hateful hermits. He was not a genius but the level of stupidity was, well, "over 9000". He was thinking more and more of a small house, on a top of a hill, in the country, with trees, flowers and internet, and stuff to make stuff, with lots of antisocial dogs and perhaps a crossbow for the unwanted visitors. He would not kill them although he believed that some people should be deprived from the ability of spreading their hateful white-power genes and making stupid little children that would eventually dominate the world.

Right now Mr BooHoo felt like a hermit in the city. His ability to communicate verbally was overridden by all the above. Perhaps it was just the water, or the things they sprayed in the sky.    

Chapter 19

Mr BooHoo is a character with miserable linear adventures, so you'ld better start from chapter one if it is your first time here. Go!Go!Go!

 Chapter !( (19): The smell of blood in springtime

Mr BooHoo was no big fun of religions but it was Easter and some customs were, well, interesting. For example he enjoyed the Holly Friday night, when people got out on the street and followed a box decorated with fragrant flowers, holding yellowy candles and the local band plays a lovely, crooning tune. And the following day their Lord and Saviour rises from the grave and they celebrate it at midnight at church-yards. And they light their candles, that are colourful and fancy, with a fire that never goes out in the Holly grave or another place of that sort. So, Mr BooHoo felt that on a night like this, when you have absolutely  nothing better to do you might as well go mingle with the locals and observe their odd, pagan habits adjusted to the new religion (if one can claim that a 2000 year old religion in new).

There he was, little mr BooHoo, at the church yard feeling oddly alone, candle in hand, observing. It was a strange thing that he saw. A shit-load of people trying to carry the flame at their houses, the female of the species on extreme high-heals, through miniature explosions caused by irresponsible adults that gave children small amounts of dynamite. Then they would all go home and start an after midnight meat-fest. This would continue the following day, and the one after that because they always cooked way to much food so they ate left-overs for the rest of the week and maybe even more.

Mr BooHoo had a very frightening memory from his childhood, of the Easter period. His grandfather would buy a very large animal, enough to feed for a week or so all of his kids and some of their husbands, wives and children, because Mr BooHoo's dad had three siblings, all married or engaged to be married. That animal cadaver (it was lamb most of the times) was hanging from the ceiling inside the living room, covered with a heavy shroud to protect it from flies and other minimal flying predators. It was particularly creepy, dead, covered and smelling of blood. Hidden under the off-white sheets could be anything. Images of zomby-sheep haunted him. Not only that but it seemed kind of fair to get consumed by your food. This year there would not be a whole carcass of an animal but smaller portions had the exact same stench of blood.

Thank goodness for booze, and it was one of these days when one was allowed to start drinking at noon. This is exactly how Mr BooHoo hoped to survive that hideous day, the day that made him think that perhaps vegetarianism was not such a bad idea. But then again, there was bacon, a serious argument against the latter eating habit.

Let the spring-fests begin.             

Chapter 18

Chapter !* (18): the perils of living with a hoarder.

It was at the last days of January that this story took place in Mr BooHoo's small apartment. The living room was the warmest room and Mr BooHoo and his partner were sleeping there. It had all started one night when the partner fell asleep on the couch. Mr BooHoo brought all the bed covers and he slept there as well. It was nice sleeping under the Christmas tree, for a change. They agreed that it was as if they were on vacation. The Christmas tree was there for almost a month and so were they. The bedroom had slowly turned into a cold storage/guest room and they avoided it. But then one morning Mr BooHoo's partner woke up rather pissed-off and announced it, saying that there were trees and bottles everywhere and that they should throw some things away.

There was only one tree and Mr BooHoo planned to remove the decorations and store it for next year the following Sunday. There were also a couple of bottles in the room that had been left there since the previous night because they had had guests. None of this things belonged exclusively to him. From his point of view non of his cherished belongings created a mess in the house. They were all neatly packed in small boxes, stored under, over and at the sides of his desk, his bed, in his closet, on selves in the bedroom and under the kitchen sink. All right. Mr BooHoo had a lot of things. To be more precise he had a lot of materials waiting to be transformed into things. He also liked clean rooms but he desperately needed storage space. From the partner's point of view they were a lot of junk neatly stalked but creating an over-all chaotic impression.

At this point it should be mentioned that the partner was not less of a collector, as in the other closet and the other desk and in the bathroom and under the kitchen sink one could find multiple computers and computer-related stuff like hard-drives, mother-boards, wires and lots of other stuff for which Mr BooHoo did not have a name. Most of these things were also collected from the street and waited patiently to be brought to life.

So, the main dispute was whose junk was real junk. Of course, you don't classify as rubbish something for which you have a use. But they had rather different stand-points on what was useful and what wasn't.

The other great difference was that Mr BooHoo absolutely refused to throw things away unless they were really useless and ugly, but his partner occasionally threw everything away. This resulted in constantly buying things and Mr BooHoo was against consumerism. His partner on the other hand did not consider his behaviour consumeristic.

On that special morning Mr BooHoo did not respond to his partner's arguments. Instead, he got out of bed and made coffee. When they woke up properly the dispute was no longer there. Mr BooHoo's small fortune was still safe. The disagreement was not over, simply postponed. Mr BooHoo promised to himself that he would try to collect less and work faster. Maybe a re-arrangement would help to make them look less. And after-all, his partner was a nice person, he would not start secretly throwing his things away, would he? The worst was that even if he did, Mr BooHoo was not sure that he would observe the losses right on.

To stop collecting for some time was a great idea, but once a hoarder, always a hoarder.         

Chapter 17

Chapter !&(17): The Mother

"How often does the resemblance between the words "smother" and "mother" come into your mind?" Mr BooHoo found himself asking himself.

Mr BooHoo had a mother...sigh...or if you prefer it would be better to say that if Mr BooHoo exists, well, he has a mother. At the time when this story takes place the mother is alive, therefor it is not her absence that causes the sigh but her very existence. Mr BooHoo thought very dearly about his mother. He could not even grasp the notion of a universe without her. No matter, though, (or is it due to) how much he loved her she could also be a source of great distress. She came from a generation of luke-warm rebellions, people that praised actions and not words but were all words and minimum action. These people were so much into words that they had developed a totally unnecessary colour of voice to speak of big things they did not really understand. To be perfectly honest, some of them might have understood what they meant but Mr BooHoo would say that the base-subject was not exactly basic. Actually Mr BooHoo believed that the world was a pretty much shitty place because people were taught to be shitty and not really think adequately on their own. But that is besides the point here and anyway, there are people that can speak so much better about politics, so we'ld better talk about the issue of the mother.

Mr BooHoo's mother had provided him with a bunch of good qualities. She had raised him not to be a thief or a cheater or a sneak and care about other people. She had also informed him that most people would treat him badly, that he would have to meet a lot of assholes during his lifetime and to fear men in blue uniforms (the last one unintentionally). In addition to the above, he was led to believe that it was very difficult to make decisions, that the great majority would probably be more successful than him when pursuing something he was actually good at, that he would never have enough (that was a good thing sometimes, not actually having less but feeling less as enough) and that the sky would eventually fall on his head if he dared to be happy for prolonged periods of time.

She could be such a grim figure. More often sad than happy and it is admitted that even her happiness was somewhat miserable if scrutinized upon.

Once they had a big fight because Mr BooHoo got fed up with her destroying his very much achievable dreams, by adding implausible details to them. For example if he wondered, say, how it would be to go on vacation his mom would say that he deserved to go around the world seven times, someday. Then she would fill him with guilt for thinking about vacation by mentioning that she had started to forget what this word meant.

The situation was tragelaphic when she spoke about how her mother used this sort of tricks and promised that she would never try to manipulate her children in this manner. And she didn't do it intentionally. She never said "do that or else you will be a bad boy", but "do that and then I will be so proud of you, me, your dearly beloved mother that gave you life, my life, and now that I have no life left for myself you are my only source of happiness". Yeap, this is how it went.

And then Mr BooHoo grew up and stopped living with his mother (they still spoke once per day, everyday, on the phone). And small aspects of his life seemed to be improving. As a student for example he did not have much but going to the supermarket was somewhat fun. And then he stopped being a student and then things went downhill for lots of people and Mr BooHoo that had being raised as a real looser found it really hard to cope. And his mother was as miserable as ever. There were times he wished he could not pick up the phone but his guilt-fed consciousness always did, only to start the same dialogue again and again.

Now, Mr BooHoo was a rather reasonable person (with a lot of peculiarities but this is besides the point) and he knew that blaming your parents does not really solve much. Still, he kept thinking of how his life would be had he been a bit more daring and confident. This is what his english teacher always suggested to all of her students. She said "chouldren, be confident". Best advice ever. As a target, on the other hand, it kept getting further and further with the passage of time and the by now familiar big imaginary L (see previous chapter) kept increasing in size on Mr BooHoo's forehead.

Well, that's the story. Sad but true.

  

Chapter 16

Note to the reader: see the note on the previous chapter, I can't be bother to compose a new one.

Chapter !^ (16): old pajamas

It was Tuesday and water was dripping from the sky, and it was following a Monday during which it was also pouring with rain. Monday was spent in bed, with a massive head-ache caused by extreme consumption of alcoholic drinks. Mr BooHoo's head hurt occasionally on that Tuesday although he had avoided drinking anything wrong the previous day. It was that particular, ominous, stress-induced head-ache that was hunting him during his adult life. Every day that passed he hated being an adult more than he had done on the previous one. The perks of being able to have ice-cream instead of a proper meal or buy his own air-plane tickets were not enough any more to appease his reluctance for unnecessary processes that signified adulthood.

It was the beginning of the month and therefor he had to go to the bank and pay the rent. There he was served by a clerk that Mr BooHoo was sure that had never been a child. The sort of anal bureaucrat that had slipped out of a mother's ass with spectacles, a tie and premature hair-loss. They had met before and Mr BooHoo was sure that the bureaucrat's  feelings towards him were equally negative and strong. It took ages to get to the cashier, despite the fact that there were only two people standing in the line in front of him, and that period of waiting aimlessly was enough to make his little heart pound. He had been experiencing miniature panic attacks whenever he found himself in that kind of environment.

After that he postponed a couple more things that he should have done, did his weekly shopping from the super-market and returned home. As he was preparing a delicious spinach-tart his phone rung. Thus he was obliged to leave his dog alone and visit an acquaintance that claimed to be in need of mental support and spend a couple of hours in a dingy shop talking about pointless crap.

Mr BooHoo had been avoiding looking at the newspapers or watching television for some time but still the news kept finding their way to him. This time the unfortunate bearer of bad news was his sister. Bla-dy-bla the government was sold-out and bla-dy-bla the salaries would be further reduced and bla-dy-bla life is suffering. The last part was not announced directly through the media, nor was it his sister's exact words but Mr BooHoo's general belief. In direct response to this his logic suggested "why bother, then" but his abnormal sense of morality forced him to care a lot actually. For everything. And almost constantly. His sister was kind enough to say after multiple minutes of silence from his side of the line "I am freaking out and freaking you out as well and this gets us nowhere" or something like that and finished the call.

What followed was a feeling of increasing stress and discomfort. A big L sign, for looser, was starting to burn on Mr BooHoo's forehead. It was just too much. Mr BooHoo filled for himself the largest cup of a concoction of sedative herbal infusions and started looking for a second and perhaps a third job. You see, the tricky part was that Mr BooHoo had this tendency to mix business with pleasure and was never sure how many jobs he was doing. He was sure he had a part-time teaching job for which he hadn't been paid for a year and some volunteer but interesting obligations on the side, he was also taking care of his house, dog and partner and he was constantly making things, when he did not have a head-ache or other important engagements.

And as he was doing this he realized that the reason why he did not have a more specific job was because he did not really want one. To be totally honest if he would start getting his salary he would probably not need one so badly. Now, it should be mentioned that among other things, Mr BooHoo was also a person that thought many steps into the future and the prospect of being extra busy made him feel more energetic, more alive and instead of a looser he thought himself as a winner! What a relief! That herbal tea was miraculous! No social stress at all! With two telephones written down in his big brown notebook he could go to bed breathing normally,with a normal heart-beat and no stomach-ache. He put on his orange pajamas with the snowman and the penguin (a 1990's relic of his childhood he had recently retrieved from his mother's house). Who knows? He might even dream of nice places and open fields and that the world had actually followed his advice and has gone fuck itself.      

chapter 15

Note to the new-comer: don't be a dork and start from chapter one otherwise I will ask my friends to tell you off and make fun of you until you cry. Then we can have a beer.

Chapter !% (15):inner piece

Mr BooHoo  stuck his teeth in the second-greasiest piece of pizza he could lay his hands on, took a bite and thought about the merits of making enemies. Earlier he had felt an urge for his favourite type of comfort food, that being the greasiest pizza he remembered from his childhood. It was the sort of pizza that would make any Italian go blind from disgrace. Its dough was thin, crunchy and oily and reminded more of pasty. It was small and round and it was sold among various sorts of cheese-pie and sausage rolls, suggested only for people with very low cholesterol. He had to beg his mom to buy him one of these and he could never eat more than a third of it without puking. Thus his mother's reluctance was perfectly justified and he does not hold it against her.

It was a Thursday and we have already been through how Mr BooHoo liked to spend his Thursdays. Unfortunately his fate brought it that way and he had to leave the house and face the world. In the morning it was bright and sunny and Mr BooHoo had slept for almost nine hours. By the time he had to go out though the sky had taken some weight, to put it nicely. Large, greyscale clouds were hanging low.  He went to the place where he was supposed to go. When he left it to go back home the sky matched his mood. It was also spitting slowly on everything. Mr BooHoo felt sympathetic towards it.

Let me tell you the in between story:

Mr BooHoo had a professional appointment with a pretentious cunt and he was well aware of it. Yet, for one more time he realized that when it came to measuring human stupidity and malice his imagination was soooo limited! He went on foot from his house to where he was going to because he hated public transport and the walk was not so bad. He would have to pass by the meat market and the china town (if such a thing existed) and eventually he would arrive at a district that used to have a lovely local colour given by antique and whole-sale shops. Lately it had transformed partly into a hipster colony but even that was not so bad. You could get a tattoo, nice overpriced clothes, a mainstream cutting edge haircut or a cup of coffee in a nice environment and be photographed as a foreign rock-star. Not so bad.

He located the exact address and rung the bell. The first thing he disliked was that he had to take off his shoes. Although he liked walking barefoot he always considered it a great insult to be asked to take off his shoes when he had not been previously notified. He did not even take it personally, it just characterized the people who asked for it as donkeys. No one in the western world should have to show their bare feet, socks or holes on socks if they did not want to. It was simply rude. He unzipped his boots and went inside. The space was nice but it was one of the occasions when the decorator has tried really hard to create a feeling of warmth and "positive energy"-as they themselves put it- that the end-result is the complete opposite. For the love of supreme beings! A very few people feel well in white open spaces with white rugs all over the place! In addition to this there was a recording of some sort of Hinduistic chant in an overpowering volume that made his mind go numb. It was the equivalent of free jazz for the drone listener or of heavy metal for your grand-grand-father. The introductory conversation moved around new-age crap. He did say a couple of wrong things himself, of which he was rather proud subsequently. For example he was introduced to a girl with an odd fashion sense whose name started with the same letter of the alphabet as his. The cunt who did the introduction said "you two have something in common" and before he got to finish his sentence Mr BooHoo said about the previously mentioned letter. Non of them appreciated his sense of humor and the only common thing was that they both knit. He also said that he was no longer a vegetarian and had never been a vegan, a remark that made them exchange a curious look with each other.

Another thing that made a really bad impression was the fact that they seemed to think that hand-washing second hand clothes was a good thing. Ummmm, Mr BooHoo felt rather certain that hand-washing does not sterilize things, which is why they usually clean second hand things with hot, very hot, steam. Hand washing them in mild temperatures in his mind should have been illegal. further more they did not offer him anything to drink which is against every idea of hospitality. The cunt also said "let me keep you no further"which can also be translated as "all right, go away now". Something was very fishy. He never made good friends with New Age creaps but these people where rude, negative, bloody fucking vampires (Mr BooHoo had a half-new-age friend who believed in the existence of energy-vampires. He did not exactly follow her thought but if there is such a thing, these people where exactly that).

He got up, put on his coat and got ready to leave when he heard them say "good meditation". A part of his brain sizzled. He could understand meditation as a need and partly as a process but to think that everybody should and do practice it was plainly preposterous. Bloody fascists they were! He needed good comfort food rich in protein. Ergo the pizza. Now he would do  the job that was assigned to him. His moral self asked him to stay away, but the robin hood in him suggested that he took advantage of them first. He would make up his mind in the future. Thursday was still there and he had plenty of knitting to do. Knitting gave him "inner piece".