To The Last Man I Loved

Everyone was dead.

A bunch of lost souls dying of boredom and angst.

I used to feel alive - all smug and superior,

I used to watch everyone from the sideline,

a whole exciting life was ahead of me but today I am dead too.

All those men leaving me profoundly in love and too soon after - plain broken and alone:

the ignorance of it, the continuation of life as it was, regardless of it, the failed job interviews and business endeavours,

the trivial chit-chatting, the house evictions the lost friendships the noise and the lack of noise, the unbearably quiet basement apartment reeking of self-hate, the jazz I never heard

—- I wanted to be grateful but I was having a hard time with it. I wanted everyone to be alive again despite of the ugliness of being human.

Have you ever counted the times you’ve walked on the same street? I counted walking on Kensington Church Street up to hundreds of thousands of times - dry-mouthed, out of breath and in a hurry, I kept counting as if I was waiting for something to happen had I reached a certain number -

“Why are you still here?”, “Why haven’t you changed?”

Walking, the same old roads thinking of some past life when I was a young Mexican lad with a sweet girl by my side asking her to marry me.

Diving in the Caribbean, breezing through life - the tequila is cheap and delicious, the sunset lasts beyond midnight.

This never happens.

The alternative was walking down Notting Hill Gate through Holland Park Road, and back home again.

People say you have to be brave to chase your dreams - but what happens when you have already done that and you spend the rest of your life spiralling in regrets? You go for your morning run in Holland Park unless you’re hungover, depressed or lazy.

You run because you don’t know what else to do and while you run you create alternative realities in your mind before going back home. Everything ended with the ‘going back home’. The moment we came back home to make dinner, watch a movie and crash we had given up on any other reality.

As I walk home from Holland Park, I think of the last man I loved. He returns from a run in Venice Beach and gets ready for a date.