Teenage stories - Love
“I love you.”
“And I finally did my nails.”
“I love you…”
“Coffee for me please… with cream… double…”
“I love you…”
“Thanks, I painted a new picture.”
“Will you show it?”
“Yes…”
A generation of dreamers and liars. No one ever tells you the truth. These days, a friend is the one who understands all your lies and builds on them — doing the same with you. Mutual understanding. Or mutual egoism. No one wants to show all the weakness and spinelessness, all the terrible things that are in every person. So we lie — for our own pleasure.
“Tomorrow I’m going to an interview. Found a job…” he said, loudly slurping his coffee.
“What this time?”
“An ad agency. Design.”
(The main thing about our time: whatever you say, everyone knows you’re lying and will never do what you say. That’s why everyone talks a lot. Or doesn’t talk at all, out of hopelessness.)
Two days passed after our last meeting. No one asked whether any of the previous promises had been kept. Only new statements. Only about ourselves.
“I read a book. About talentless people. Felt even worse.”
“I don’t understand anything… in this country you can’t even order coffee properly.”
“Caffeine will destroy your nerve cells. And you can’t lie to it.”
“You really want me to start asking you questions?” he asked, ordering himself tea.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
(You never know which is better — truth or lies. And you get equally tangled up in both.)
“What do you even want?” I asked, opening a book on a random page, pointing at a line, and reading: “Make space…”
“Recognition, fame, love, wealth and poverty, a dream… and… everything else.”
“The most important thing is that there’s already a choice…” I nearly choked on my tea.
“Everyone has it. Everyone wants the same things. Everyone wants too much. And everyone’s desires are the same. That’s what they call competition.”
“Sometimes it feels like people forgot about feelings. About naturalness. But they remember there’s competition and the power of words. Any words. They take sympathy for love. And love for hostility.”
“And the more people there are, the more identical desires there are. More words. More competition. And fear grows.”
We ended our conversation without really ending it. Took the metro and went to the other side of the city, to some friends’ place for a small house party. It’s good to have such friends, with such parties. You drink. You smoke. You grow your imagination and dreams. You slowly make them real. And the higher the degree of alcohol in your blood, the more real your dreams seem. The more words. The less fear of competition.
The absence of thought sometimes leads to an absolute explosion of genius ideas.
And then morning comes — when you can’t hide your exhaustion or your dark circles even behind verbal lies, when your foundation is gone and mascara smudged. And then everyone leaves without looking back, promising to meet again.
Genius ideas are replaced by one big idea — to get home as quickly as possible and sleep.
You sleep. Sleep. Sleep. And then you wake up. Call.
“I love you.”
“My head hurts too,” he answers on the other end. And I hear how he tries to make himself coffee, but judging by the sounds everything falls, and a lot of loud swearing comes through.
(The main thing is to never remind anyone of the lies they told earlier. Otherwise, they might remind you of yours.)
We agreed to meet. Again in the café. Again words, to which neither of us knows how to react except with reciprocal egoism and lies. Or with truth, which you still take as something against you.
Without finishing our coffee and tea, we went to my place. After that, he lived with me for a week. And after another morning tea, he left.
Bad habits don’t allow that much visual and verbal honesty.
And no one will ever know which of us was telling the truth those days.
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