Amid Gloom and Jungle (In Class)

The climate had first bothered me, but now it was really affecting me. The humidity and unstableness of the place were an influence, too. The ecosystem itself was something amazing, and there was so much green and variety, and it was beautiful. But its niceness was gone after being in it for about…what was it? My stupidity amazed me. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that I was stupid. Maybe it was reasonable to start forgetting about your past when the present and the near future completely suck. And I had been stuck in the present long enough to believe my past to be some sort of dream.

And so as I made progress through the jungle—or I hoped to—I tried hard enough to ignore everything that was molesting me. But the humidity made my clothes stick to my body with such pressure and determination, and the heat was something like I’ve never felt before.
I didn’t have to anyway. I used to live in the city, where the weather was everything but warm and sticky. If it ever annoyed me, was because it was certainly too cold. Not that that worried me too much. If you’re cold, you might as well stick around in your house and drink hot chocolate and sleep like a bear till cold’s over. Now, that’s something you can’t do with the heat. Unless you’re valiant enough to take off your clothes in whichever place you happen to be, when heat strikes.

I looked around. There wasn’t anyone around that I was aware of, and so I could take my clothes off…just that I didn’t want. It’s not my fault that I’ve been living all my life clad and I’ve gotten used to it. Not my fault either that I didn’t want to feel all Tarzan-like.

All my life. I sat down on a nearby trunk, and tried to feel its texture as if it were a welcoming and comforting first class airplane seat or something. I tried to ignore its roughness, and the fact that trunks are home to more than a thousand bugs each. Relax, Relax. Anyway, I believe I don’t deserve the life I got. Why did I get did? Bad luck, I guess. Cause I wasn’t and bad. I’m still not that bad. I went to church on Sundays, and I did social work whenever I was asked to. I think I’m pretty average. Compared to the rest of the world, there are billions of people that give a damn of charity or the less fortunate. I cared, and I thought about them. Hell, I did. I was never, too, a great consumer. I placed my socks and shirts in the same drawer, and I never brought crackers or gum just because I felt like. I did my own laundry, and people said I smelled funny.

I never did marry anyone. But that is more of a personal choice, rather than a reason to punish someone. Who would’ve wanted to punish me? I was never mean to anyone, except to the people that tried to steal my lunch in the Elementary School. I think about them. What’s of their lives? What have they been up to? Robbers, I say. Because all their money, they ate it. And so, if robbers, why aren’t they punished?

Women, maybe. The women who were secretly in love with me. Who? I laugh a little. The women that ‘loved’ me, maybe they wanted to punish me, because I didn’t marry any of them. As if they cared. They all liked someone else. They were probably married already to that someone how’s karma hadn’t been as badass as mine.

Suddenly, I remember. 14 years. And so I depress myself being logical. In 14 years, millions of babies were born, and infants became notorious teenagers. People died. Someone whose determination is infinite might have been able to cure cancer. Maybe there were people living in Mars already. Maybe humanity had discovered some other long lost place, or invented a bug repellent that actually worked. Perhaps carrots and cows had become extinct, and now people had to find other ways in which they could eat calcium. New elements might have been discovered, and in places were density is not as abundant as in the jungle, maybe, just maybe, gravity had decreased. In 14 years, it was probable that Global Warming had done sufficient effect on Miami, flooding half of it. Maybe California was known as Lake California. Maybe, my sister had found a man that she loved.

No, she didn’t. I’m glad I remember my sister. I admit she was the one, her face, who encouraged all this. The escape, the force, energy and determination I had needed. She had guided until now. But, for the instant present, I was seating on the comfy trunk, trying to find warmth and happiness within my messed head.

The last time I saw her, she as 19. She was totally reckless, and didn’t even try to play hard to get, because she was. Studies were 3rd on the list, just beneath party and list-making. I remembered I was mad at her because I was studying and the odor of a burned surprise birthday cake had filled in the house. It was my birthday, and yes, I had an exam the next day. Talking about bad-timing, of either my stupid teacher, or my mom. She got even angrier, and said that she was trying so hard, and that I was being mean to her. She wasn’t the best cook, and everything she did was too lastly. Last time I checked, customs and history didn’t make salty birthday cakes.

I think about it now. I’m too old and wasted-up to cry in despair. But I think. How I would like for my life and death and resurrection to smell of that cake, rather than be filled with never-ending solitude—and godamn heat.

Heat was good when we were in the beach, in vacations, and she would chase me around with some hideous creature at hand. Surprisingly, she was manlier that I was, because I never dared to touch one of those. I want to, now. She seldom cried and felt sad, but when she did, it was something similar to like the end of the world. She would bang her head—against her pillow, thank god, but tears flushed down her face for a long time. Unlike me, because I felt sad many times, yet I never dried as much as she did. It was certainly more of an inner thing going on.
The day that happened, we walked towards campus, and she headed up faster, because she had seen a group of her friends, and she wanted to chat. I lit a cigarette, and kept going at my own pace, looking nowhere interesting. Then, a car stopped beside me on the sidewalk, and I was something, and I didn’t remember what. Next thing I know I am in the jungle, laying on the floor, feeling insects crawling all over me, in such an uncomfortable position. I seat up, and there are people around me. Their clothes are ripped off, or almost, but the gloom in their faces is what I care about the most. It makes me feel hopeless. I only need to glance at the small house beside me, with men in green uniforms inside it, laughing, to realize where I am.

Traffic around college was never abundant, and I’m glad I remember. It probably was the reason why it was so easy for that car to stop and attack someone. Because there usually wasn’t much spectators around.